Blog Post #2
October 28th
b. Overview of your weekly experience including attendance at meetings, teaching, observations of and interviews with related service providers, etc.
This week I was able to work with students painting pumpkins for a pumpkin contest. I felt this was important and helped me build rapport with my students. I was able to walk around and help students paint their pumpkins and it was interesting how each student had a unique way of painting their pumpkins. Some students would use a lot of paint and some students were very carful about the amount of paint they applied. Some students would use lighter colors and some students only used light colors. It was very interesting to see their creative side and how hard they worked on their own individual pumpkins. I really enjoyed working with the students one on one and seeing their creativity and having them share their thoughts on their pumpkins. This project allowed for a lot of individual rapport and especially with my target student.
c. Alignment to class content and what you are learning
I have learned this week that it is important to allow your students to have "brain breaks" and provide time where they can step away from content to refresh and renew their minds. I believe this activity was important and provided that. The class has taken several unit tests recently that were very extensive so I felt this down time allowed them to connect with their peers and refresh their minds.
d. Alignment to CEC teacher preparation standards
Future activity that could be implemented to align with the CEC preparation standards.
7.1 Beginning special education professionals use the theory and elements of effective collaboration. In This standard students would be able to work on a pumpkin together and be able to make decisions as a team and create a collaboration pumpkin that would allow the students to express their own individually, but work as a team to make decisions on their pumpkin. The students would benefit greatly from this, they would be able to work on their social skills and collaboration skills.
e. make note of all the different learning activities that are taking place
- students are able to use their fine motor skills to paint pumpkins
-Students are able to express their individuality to create their own pumpkin.
f. identify barriers to learning/access you observed
A student had trouble using a paint brush as well as holding his pumpkin. Providing bigger paint brushes and a bowl to hold their pumpkin would help with this barrier.
g. discuss how these barriers were addressed
Unfortunately this was not able to be addressed due to when it was noticed the class period was over and there were no options for different size paint brushes readily available.
h. generate 2-3 UDL strategies to increase student choice/voice and remove barriers to students accessing the curriculum. Provide a rationale for your decisions.
UDL 5.3 - sensory-motor handwriting instruction
This will allow students who have trouble with fine motor skills to work on them by being provided multiple brushes and holder for their pumpkin.
UDL 3.4- Providing to do lists- often time when I am in the classroom instructions for daily tasks are not clearly listed for the students to follow to stay organized and minimize confusion. Often times the students are given verbal instructions and there are not written instructions written on the board for the students to refer back to so that they are able to stay on task. This often will cause a lot of problems in the classroom and I believe it can be eliminated by this simple strategy being implemented.
UDL 3.3- Auditory wait time- This is very important so that students are given time to process information. I do not see this given very often in the classroom and if the students are given this wait time they will be able to give a well thought out answer.
Hi Gabby! I thought it was neat how you learned about brain breaks this week! Brain breaks is something that is used often within the classroom that I am assigned to. We have students grades K-2, therefore they often get flustered and loses focus very quickly. So we use some videos on youtube, such as a dancing video, or Jack Hartman's exercise counting video, and let the students have a break for a few minutes. After the break, the students typically hone back down and are able to focus once again. It is crazy how one little break can help refocus the students. But it works for the classroom that I am in! Excited to read about your next blog post!
ReplyDeleteGabby, I am glad to see that you were able to build good rapport with the students in your class through the lesson they were doing in which they painted pumpkins. I especially love when teachers are able to incorporate relevant topics into their lessons as Halloween was approaching. It also seemed like a fun activity. I also appreciate you speaking about brain breaks. When we did our practice lesson plan in our PLC, we incorporated brain breaks as an element of UDL. Maybe this your field experience is where you learned about them. They are super important in keeping students fresh and engaged in the material without getting to bogged down. Your blog is very thorough and informative.
ReplyDelete