Today's presentation on Barb Rentenbach and autism was an extremely inspiring and engaging learning experience. This presentation left me with a different view of autism and how I will consider autistic children in my classroom. I highly recommend that future educators either read her book or look up video clips of excerpts of her book, you will not be disappointed.
Prior to this presentation, I had a very generalized view of autism that it was a disability that has a range of spectrums. When learning about autism, you don't learn the positive aspects of it nor do you learn the perspectives of people who have it. We assume that because an individual is unable to communicate with us verbally that they must be cognitively slow and therefore we downgrade their value to society limiting them from contributing. However, from this presentation I was able to see that just like there is no standard race or culture there is no standard brain. We are all made uniquely and no one can give you a uniform definition for normal. Every human being on this planet is diverse, but we're all important to this world. I learned that individuals with autism often relate better to objects than individuals, have fresh perspectives on things, make extraordinary writers, can be completely emerged in systems, processes, and orders, and that just like everyone else, they have real strengths. Just because an individual with autism is unable to communicate through expressive language does not mean that they are not receptive and are unable to communicate as a whole. These individuals are brilliant thinkers with a lot to say. They live a contemplative way of life as observers who learn from listening and seeing. They have a beautiful language when given the chance to communicate it and are capable of so much more than we give them credit for.
With this fresh view of autism in mind, I also have a fresh new perspective of how I will consider autistic children in my classroom. As we have learned, we must remember that each student in our classroom is unique and will learn in different ways. Therefore, it is important that I take the time to find out who my student with autism is as a person and help him/her become the highest version of that. I must start where my students with autism excel and where they are comfortable in their skin and enjoy what they are doing. I must also be open to other forms of communication and provide alternative ways for these students to communicate with myself and their peers. This might involve allowing them to use an Ipad or a computer to type what they are thinking. I don't need to make their assignments less challenging just because they can't verbally communicate. I must remember not to shelter them from the effort intertwined in learning. I will also allow my students with autism substantial time during each day to be inside their autistic self and schedule this at the same time every day. In addition, I will be sure to let them know what to expect in the classroom on a daily basis and give them choices and decision making power especially regarding their schedule. Most importantly, I must keep an open mind with these students and remember that just as they are learning from me, I can also learn from them. Most importantly, I must consider these students with patience. Establishing a communication system may take time, but everything is in a walking distance if you have the time.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Group Differences Forum
Write a brief reflection on the group differences forum that you just participated in.
Through participating in the group differences forum, I learned a lot that I did not know before. Through this forum, we took common diversity groups and went in-depth through discussion about how these topics appear in the education system and what we as educators can do to prevent certain stereotypes and misconceptions about these groups from happening. I learned that teachers and schools might be discouraging parental involvement of students from poverty backgrounds and that parental involvement in the classroom and school varies by race. This was interesting to learn because as educators we want to encourage ALL parents to be involved in their student's educational experiences. We want to provide the parents of our students a variety of ways they can be involved in the classroom. In addition, teachers also need to realize that cultural differences may play a part in the parents feeling the need to be involved in their children's education. In addition, I learned about the Christian privilege that occurs in our school systems and how this causes other students who don't relate to Christian ideas to feel isolated or secluded. For example, during Christmas time relating all the activities in each lesson to Santa Claus and Christmas trees without even considering that not all of the students in the classroom relate to these symbols. This proposed a fine line, to me, of how much a teacher is able to incorporate the cultures/religions of all of their students. I think from this discussion that it is important for teachers to find a way to incorporate the cultures and backgrounds of all of their students rather than assuming that each student in the classroom comes from the same background. By doing this, teachers are communicating to their students that they care about each student in the classroom as an individual and value their cultural background as something important.
The information presented in this forum will be very beneficial to me when I am in my own classroom. It will be beneficial in that it will make me aware of the fact that my classroom will be full of students from different backgrounds, cultures, and ability levels. The information from this forum will make me a well-rounded teacher by reminding me how vital it is to be aware of social and cultural biases that exist and how these may affect a parent's willingness to be involved or a student feeling comfortable and included in the classroom environment. It is important to make every student in the classroom a part of the classroom and incorporate their diverse backgrounds and cultures into the curriculum. In addition, as a future educator I now see the importance of not letting test results, statistics, and stereotypes define your students before they even enter your classroom. I want to start my school year off with all of my students on an equal playing field and provide all of my students with the same amount of encouragement and support to perform to the best of their ability. This group differences forum was very informative on the issues that exist in our school system and in our classrooms and allowed for us as a group to discuss how we could discourage these issues from happening in our classrooms. This information is something that I will carry with me into my own classroom and I am glad we had the opportunity to learn about and discuss these topics.
Monday, April 8, 2013
PLE #10
Theories in educational psychology promote the idea that language plays a critical role in cognitive development. Examine table 2.2 (p.51), paying particular attention to the age range that you are interested in teaching. Consider how you might incorporate or adapt the strategies presented for use with your own students.
Jeanne Ellis Ormrod's book "Educational Psychology: Developing Learners" states that many contemporary theorists share the beliefs of Piaget and Vygotsky that acquiring language is possibly the most important factor in cognitive development. Furthermore, Ormrod's book discusses how a child's language development is also affected by their environment. The richer the language that children hear at younger ages, the faster their vocabulary develops. In addition, some theorists believe that heredity also plays a role in a child's language development. However, what I find to be most interesting is that children use what they hear to construct their own understanding of language, which aligns with a constructivist view of learning. Children do not just absorb the language spoken around them, they develop their own understanding of what words mean, the rules governing how words are combined into meaningful sentences, etc. through their own experiences and observations.
Children have different linguistic characteristics and abilities at different grade/age levels. I am interested in teaching K-2. Linguistic characteristics and abilities at these grade levels include:
- Knowledge of 8,000 to 14,000 words by age 6
- Difficulty understanding complex sentences
- Overdependence on word order and context when interpreting messages
- Superficial understanding of being a good listener
- Literally interpret messages and requests
- Increasing ability to tell a story
- Mastery of most sounds, but some difficulty pronouncing r, th, dr, sl, and str
- Occasional use of regular word endings with irregular words
- Basic etiquette in conversations
- Reluctance to initiate conversations with adults
Ormrod's book provides suggested strategies to use at these grade levels to aid in the linguistic development of students. These strategies are something that I will be able to incorporate and adapt in my classroom. One strategy presented is to read age-appropriate storybooks to enhance the vocabulary of my students. For this, I would make sure that all of the books provided in our class library are age-appropriate for my students in order to meet my students at their existing vocabulary. In addition, I will also provide books that may incorporate new words that my students are unfamiliar with to further build their vocabularies. I will tell my students that any time they see a word they are unfamiliar with while reading to look that word up in the dictionary and write the word, its definition, and a sentence using that word in their vocabulary journals that we will be building throughout the school year. I will also incorporate the use of a word wall in my classroom where my students and I will display new vocabulary words, discuss these words, practice using these words in real-world contexts, and recite these words. Furthermore, I will provide books that are age appropriate that use more complex sentence structure to further challenge my students' linguistic abilities. Encouraging students to read is also important because children and adolescents learn many new words through reading than they do other activities. Therefore, it is important to provide a print-rich environment for my students to enhance their vocabularies.
Another strategy suggested is to have students construct narratives about recent events. This provides practice on their ability to tell a story, write sentences using correct word order and sentence structure, and incorporate new vocabulary words into their daily language. I will use this strategy in all subject matters in my classroom through writing portfolios and journals. Each week, I plan to introduce new vocabulary words to my students and have them practice using the words throughout the week in order to store the words in their long-term memory. I want my students to write about their own personal experiences because it makes their learning relate to their own lives and therefore will increase the chances of my students using new vocabulary words in their every day language. In addition, practice makes perfect and providing my students with ample opportunities to write will result in enhancing their vocabulary and their ability to write clear and meaningful sentences in a variety of contexts.
Another important strategy Ormrod suggests for these grade levels is to give corrective feedback when students' use of words indicate inaccurate understandings. Since my students will be at very young ages of development, they will continue to refine their understandings of words. Therefore, it is very important that I pay close attention to my students' speech and written work to pickup on any misconceptions my students might have about word meanings and correct these misconceptions. In their written work, I will correct their tendency to use regular word endings on irregular words and provide the class explicit instruction on this area if I notice more than a couple of students making the same mistakes. In addition, I will provide practice for my students in learning centers and in whole group instruction on correctly pronouncing words with the r, th, dr, sl, and str sounds. By addressing misconceptions at a younger grade level, I am preventing my students from constructing an incorrect understanding of language.
Ormrod also suggests the strategy of working on listening skills with your students. This will definitely be incorporated into my classroom because being active listeners is an important skill for students to learn. Active listeners use their whole body to focus and realize that good listening requires understanding what is being said and not just sitting quietly. I will have a poster in my class that illustrates what active listeners do to remind my students how I expect them to act. In addition, I will test their listening skills by asking a student to repeat back to me the instructions I have given them in their own words or to summarize an event in their own words during one of our read-alouds.
The last strategy suggested is to ask follow-up questions to make sure your students accurately understand important messages. Since students at these grade levels have the tendency to make literal interpretations of messages and requests (e.g. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach to literally mean that their eyes are larger than their stomach), it is important to check their actual understanding. I will ask my students questions during read-alouds to check for their understanding of the stories and will also incorporate questioning in other subject areas as well to make sure my students actually understand the meaning of different topics, messages, words, etc.
Jeanne Ellis Ormrod's book "Educational Psychology: Developing Learners" states that many contemporary theorists share the beliefs of Piaget and Vygotsky that acquiring language is possibly the most important factor in cognitive development. Furthermore, Ormrod's book discusses how a child's language development is also affected by their environment. The richer the language that children hear at younger ages, the faster their vocabulary develops. In addition, some theorists believe that heredity also plays a role in a child's language development. However, what I find to be most interesting is that children use what they hear to construct their own understanding of language, which aligns with a constructivist view of learning. Children do not just absorb the language spoken around them, they develop their own understanding of what words mean, the rules governing how words are combined into meaningful sentences, etc. through their own experiences and observations.
Children have different linguistic characteristics and abilities at different grade/age levels. I am interested in teaching K-2. Linguistic characteristics and abilities at these grade levels include:
- Knowledge of 8,000 to 14,000 words by age 6
- Difficulty understanding complex sentences
- Overdependence on word order and context when interpreting messages
- Superficial understanding of being a good listener
- Literally interpret messages and requests
- Increasing ability to tell a story
- Mastery of most sounds, but some difficulty pronouncing r, th, dr, sl, and str
- Occasional use of regular word endings with irregular words
- Basic etiquette in conversations
- Reluctance to initiate conversations with adults
Ormrod's book provides suggested strategies to use at these grade levels to aid in the linguistic development of students. These strategies are something that I will be able to incorporate and adapt in my classroom. One strategy presented is to read age-appropriate storybooks to enhance the vocabulary of my students. For this, I would make sure that all of the books provided in our class library are age-appropriate for my students in order to meet my students at their existing vocabulary. In addition, I will also provide books that may incorporate new words that my students are unfamiliar with to further build their vocabularies. I will tell my students that any time they see a word they are unfamiliar with while reading to look that word up in the dictionary and write the word, its definition, and a sentence using that word in their vocabulary journals that we will be building throughout the school year. I will also incorporate the use of a word wall in my classroom where my students and I will display new vocabulary words, discuss these words, practice using these words in real-world contexts, and recite these words. Furthermore, I will provide books that are age appropriate that use more complex sentence structure to further challenge my students' linguistic abilities. Encouraging students to read is also important because children and adolescents learn many new words through reading than they do other activities. Therefore, it is important to provide a print-rich environment for my students to enhance their vocabularies.
Another strategy suggested is to have students construct narratives about recent events. This provides practice on their ability to tell a story, write sentences using correct word order and sentence structure, and incorporate new vocabulary words into their daily language. I will use this strategy in all subject matters in my classroom through writing portfolios and journals. Each week, I plan to introduce new vocabulary words to my students and have them practice using the words throughout the week in order to store the words in their long-term memory. I want my students to write about their own personal experiences because it makes their learning relate to their own lives and therefore will increase the chances of my students using new vocabulary words in their every day language. In addition, practice makes perfect and providing my students with ample opportunities to write will result in enhancing their vocabulary and their ability to write clear and meaningful sentences in a variety of contexts.
Another important strategy Ormrod suggests for these grade levels is to give corrective feedback when students' use of words indicate inaccurate understandings. Since my students will be at very young ages of development, they will continue to refine their understandings of words. Therefore, it is very important that I pay close attention to my students' speech and written work to pickup on any misconceptions my students might have about word meanings and correct these misconceptions. In their written work, I will correct their tendency to use regular word endings on irregular words and provide the class explicit instruction on this area if I notice more than a couple of students making the same mistakes. In addition, I will provide practice for my students in learning centers and in whole group instruction on correctly pronouncing words with the r, th, dr, sl, and str sounds. By addressing misconceptions at a younger grade level, I am preventing my students from constructing an incorrect understanding of language.
Ormrod also suggests the strategy of working on listening skills with your students. This will definitely be incorporated into my classroom because being active listeners is an important skill for students to learn. Active listeners use their whole body to focus and realize that good listening requires understanding what is being said and not just sitting quietly. I will have a poster in my class that illustrates what active listeners do to remind my students how I expect them to act. In addition, I will test their listening skills by asking a student to repeat back to me the instructions I have given them in their own words or to summarize an event in their own words during one of our read-alouds.
The last strategy suggested is to ask follow-up questions to make sure your students accurately understand important messages. Since students at these grade levels have the tendency to make literal interpretations of messages and requests (e.g. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach to literally mean that their eyes are larger than their stomach), it is important to check their actual understanding. I will ask my students questions during read-alouds to check for their understanding of the stories and will also incorporate questioning in other subject areas as well to make sure my students actually understand the meaning of different topics, messages, words, etc.
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