Final Reflection

What makes the inclusion of children with exceptionalities successful?

-Inclusion can be made successful; by making sure you maximize every student's learning. Students with disabilities often need extra directions, visual schedules, and peer buddies in order to be successful in an inclusion environment. Also, the regular education teacher and the special education teacher need to collaborate weekly and look at what is and what is not working in order to maximize results for the student.

What are some barriers to successful inclusion?
- I think that students who have severe and profound disabilities, students with multiple disabilities, and students with low incidence disabilities are served better in a separate setting where there direct needs can be met. Many of the severe and profound students in the classroom at my school are non-verbal had have feeding tubes. They would not benefit from an inclusion setting.
Individual perception of inclusion: Who should be included in the general classroom? 
-I have mixed feelings about inclusion. I feel that inclusion is very beneficial for students who have high functioning autism, learning disabilities, ADHD. Research shows that students learn best from their peers. Students with disabilities will benefit greatly from their non-disabled peers.

 How can you determine if inclusion is appropriate for a child?
You can determine if inclusion is appropriate for a child by progress on their IEP goals. If students are 100% in an inclusion setting and are not making significant progress on their IEP goals, maybe they should be pulled out for a session for extra support or looked at for a different placement.

Thoughts on Inclusion

I have mixed feelings about inclusion. I think that students who have severe and profound disabilities, students with multiple disabilities, and students with low incidence disabilities  are served better in a separate setting where there direct needs can be met. Many of the severe and profound students in the classroom at my school are non-verbal had have feeding tubes. They would not benefit from an inclusion setting.

I feel that inclusion is very beneficial for students who have high functioning autism, learning disabilities, ADHD. Research shows that students learn best from their peers. Students with disabilities will benefit greatly from their non-disabled peers. Inclusion can be made successful, by making sure you maximize every student's learning. Students with disabilities often need extra directions, visual schedules,  and peer buddies in order to be successful in an inclusion environment. Also, the regular education teacher and the special education teacher need to collaborate weekly and look at what is and what is not working in order to maximize results for the student.

Assistive Technology

My focus child and everyone in his Pre-Kindergarten class are verbal and able to make choices verbally, share information (sometimes when prompted) and wants and needs at an appropriate level. I did have some low tech experience with Assistive Technology in my practicum experience. This consisted of a touch screen computer called a hatch.

In the Elementary School ,where I am a special education resource teacher, we do have an Intellectually Disability Severe and Profound class where most of the students have multiple disabilities. In this class there are 3 Kindergarten students, 2 first grade students, 1 second grade student, and 1 fifth grade student. All of the students are non-verbal. 4 of them are in wheelchairs and 4 of them can walk on their own. After watching the video, many of the assitive technology devices that were shown are being used in this ID Severe classroom. The teacher uses big Mac's to assist the children with being verbal. She will use to them to help them make choices and answer yes or no questions. She also sends them home with the students periodically for their parents to record their night and home and then the next day each child can share with their classmates at school.
I am also certified in adaptive curriculum in North Carolina and could possibly teach in a low incidence classroom, and if I ever decide to, I will definitely incorporate assistive technology into my classroom.

Skill Used in Visual System

Hello Everyone!

I hope that you all had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. 2 weeks ago on my blog I accidently posted about the visual system that I would be using for my task analysis. If you missed it I did a bathroom schedule for my focus child that consisted of the following steps:

1) open bathroom door
2) close bathroom door
3) pull pants down
4) potty
5) wipe
6) pull pants up
7) flush
8) wash hands
9) dry hands
10) exit bathroom

He seemed to do very well with this schedule and liked looking at the pictures (made from boardmaker). He recently graduated Pre-K (last week) and will be attending a Cross Categorical Kindergarten class. I sent this bathroom schedule with him in his classroom folder, in case his teacher would like to use it with him in her class.

Now, I will discuss my prompting competency (which I should have discussed 2 weeks ago). My focus child has trouble cleaning up after center time. He  is a very independent child and does not like to be told what to do. His teacher would play the, "We Are Family" song at the end of centers to transition her students to clean up and be seated at the carpet before the song ended. He would either a) ignore the song and continue playing or b) go directly to the carpet without cleaning up. I did the assessment on him and went down the steps all the way to full physical. I suggested that it would help if we made cleaning up a game and saying things such as, "I wonder if you can pick up the toys faster than I can?" or "Do you think you can clean up before I count to 10?" I think that he needs to see cleaning up as fun for it to work. Cleaning up was something that his teachers worked on all year and he still would not always comply with the requests.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!!

Heather

Communication Strategies

It is very important to encourage interaction and to develop communication strategies with children. Children need exposure to a language rich environment in order to succeed in school in the future. So many academic objectives are focused around a child expanding on their answer or explaining why they chose one answer versus another answer. Children need communication strategies in order to be able to expand on their communication skills.

I am very excited to work with a student on the 8 milieu techniques of communication to encourage interaction and to further develop communication skills. I think these strategies are going to come in handy on how I can incorporate communication into my daily routine of teaching.

Motor and Self-Help Skills

My focus child is very independent. He has age appropriate gross and fine motor skills. I spoke with his teacher and she mentioned that even though he is potty-trained, he plays in the bathroom (runs around with pants down, doesn't always shut bathroom door) and would benefit from a bathroom schedule. I have created a bathroom schedule with pictures from board-maker for him that include the following steps:

1) open bathroom door
2) close bathroom door
3) pull pants down
4) potty
5) wipe
6) pull pants up
7) flush
8) wash hands
9) dry hands
10) exit bathroom

I went over the schedule with him and taped it to the bathroom door in his classroom. It seems to work pretty well. I had it laminated and his classroom teacher is going to send it with his folder to his new school where he will be enrolled in a Cross Categorical Kindergarten class in August.

Social Story Skill

The student that I am working with does not always display appropriate play behavior. He prefers to parallel play and recently he has been wanting to play and interact more with his classmates.His requests to participate do not always follow classroom procedures and he does not verbally request a turn in order to participate in small or large group activities.

In order to address this social skill I am going to create a PowerPoint presentation that is called, "I Can Play with My Friends." I have taken pictures of my focus child and his classmates to use in this story.  The purpose of the social story is to teach him to ask his friends, "Can I play with you?" when he is wanting to join an activity or game.


I hope it is something that will work for him. I am going to provide his parents with a copy of the story to help him prepare for Kindergarten.

How Goals are Embedded into Learning Activities

           I implemented by first learning activity last Wednesday, June 1st.  The Pre-K classroom that I am working in was studying Nursery Rhymes last week. During choice centers I decided to have a cooking activity at the art table. I based my learning activity around the Nursery Rhyme "The Muffin Man." I had the students practice writing their last name (another skill they were working on) onto chef hats. We then sang the "Muffin Man" song and made blueberry muffins for them to enjoy at snack time that afternoon.

         My focus child's IEP goals are to: 1) share information about personal experiences or activity at hand on 70% of opportunities and 2) participate in structured and non-structured activities with 80% of activities.
I embedded the first goal into the activity by asking all students at the beginning of the lesson if they had ever made muffins before and what kind of muffins they made. My focus child was able to answer the questions and said, "I made strawberry muffins at home." I also embedded the first goal at the end of the lesson when asking each student what their favorite part was. My focus child did not want to answer the question and left the art table to move on to another choice center.
I embedded the second goal into my learning activity by teaching a structured small group activity. My focus child was able to participate and answer questions. I did use a visual recipe with pictures of each step (bowl, add milk, stir, put muffin liners in pan, add mix to liners) and put a picture of each child beside each step that they were to do. This helped my focus child stay focused on the activity because he knew when it would be his turn.

Thanks for reading my post this week, I can't wait to read all of yours!

Until Next Time...

Why are Intervention Plans and the Collection of Progress So Important?

The intervention plan is very important in the child’s education because it is created specifically for that child to meet their individual needs in order to help them succeed at an age appropriate level.  There is a reason that a child is referred and is assigned an IEP or an IFSP. It is because when they were evaluated there were areas that they showed below average skills. All of this information was collected and a plan was created that gave examples of what each child was able to do and what they were unable to do. Goals are created based on this information and these goals should reflect each child’s specific needs. This plan gives the parents and the teachers some realistic expectations of what they would like the child to be able to do in a certain amount of time.

                Documentation towards these goals is very important because the purpose of this plan is for the child to meet expectations and not need as much support to function in his/her daily environment. Periodically as a teacher you are expected to send home a progress report or report card noting progress on each child’s IEP goals. If you are not documenting progress on a regular basis you are unable to honestly report on how the child is doing with their interventions and goals. Another reason documentation is so important is because a child will often meet their goals before their IFSP or IEP is due. At that time the team should meet again in order to create more goals in increase the child’s skills. Every once in a while you will have a child who is not meeting their goals within a reasonable amount of time or regressing.  As a teacher you would want to meet again and discuss reasons for this regression and create a new plan to help this child succeed. If you are not documenting progress it is very hard to catch regression before it gets out of hand.

IDEA 2004:Reauthorization of Law

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) was originally created in 1975 and known at that time as Public Law-142 or Education for All Handicapped Children (EHA). This law makes sure that all children with disabilities from the time that they are born until they graduate from high school are given the appropriate special education services that they need. IDEA now consists of four components: Part A defines the terms used in the law, Part B gives money to states to provide services for eligible children and youth with disabilities, Part C is the Early Intervention Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities, and Part D helps state education departments and other agencies improve how they work with children and youth with disabilities. 

The law was reauthorized by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2004 with changes in special education and related services, some major provisions were made since the last re authorization in 1997 and these provisions are still in effect today. Some changes that were made are listed below:

• Before the new change in 2004 students who were struggling in school had to wait until they were failing to get the help they needed through special education. Since 2004 schools have been able to use up to 15% of IDEA money to support students who have academic and behavioral problems in regular education, but who are not disabled. This has been able to get these services to children earlier and prevent future problems. 
• There were some provisions made for transitioning. In 1997 schools had to consider transition issues for disabled students, but did not have to set clear goals for life after school. Since 2004, schools must plan for transition by setting transition goals and providing transition services beginning at age 16. 
• There were also changes made that affected teachers. In 1997, some state standards for special education teachers were not well defined and as a result many of these teachers did not have the skills to be teaching students with disabilities. In 2004, a standard for highly qualified teachers was established. In order to be considered highly qualified, all teachers have to be fully certified in special education or pass State licensure exams, hold a valid bachelor’s degree and demonstrate subject knowledge.
• Pre-School and Early Intervention Services also made some new adjustments. In 1997, IDEA maintained two separate systems, one of early intervention programs for children from birth to age 3 and one for special education programs for children with disabilities ages 3 through 5. Now states have flexibility to develop a system to serve disabled children from birth to age 5. Under IDEA children need early intervention services because they are experiencing developmental delays in one or more of the following areas: cognitive development, physical development, communication development, social or emotional development, adaptive development, or have a diagnosed physical or mental condition that has a high probability of resulting in a developmental delay.  

All About Me!!!

Hi Everyone,

           My name is Heather and this is my first semester at ECU :). I graduated from Peace College in 2008 with degrees in Child Development, Elementary (K-6), and Special Education (K-12). I have been teaching with Wake County Public School System for the past 3 years. My first year I taught Kindergarten and last two years I have been teaching Special Education as a Resource Teacher for students in grades K-5. I love my job and working with children. There is a special place in my heart for preschool aged children and I am enrolled at ECU, working towards my preschool add-on and eventually my Master's in Birth-Kindergarten (BK). 

          I recently married my best friend, Matt,  on October 17, 2010 and we have a wonderful doberman named Penelope. In my free time I love to read, spend time with family and friends,  and watch sports (My husband and I are HUGE NY Giants and Yankees' Fans).

         I am very excited about all that I will learn in this class and getting to know each and every one of you. 

Good Luck This Semester!!

Until Next Time,

                    Heather