Personal

For my blogger today, I would like to bring up something personal that I learned in class yesturday night. During my night class, we were learning to do mini case studies, and we followed through with making a 'group' PBSP I believe it was.

Our entire class did it together, and our teacher even helped us to break it down. I think that the reason I bring this up today for my blog entry is becuase it is something that I wanted to mention. It's helpful to learn it while still in the beginning stages of starting my career path, and it's nice to have a dedicated teacher working with an entire class on it. It's good to see the enthusiasm to teach the importance and fundamental process of such important documentation. However, it does not mean that I did not have any issues with it. I'll admit that I do still have some issues with writing one up innitially, exspecially when it comes to the ABC's of it. However, I also know that if I work on doing it (Mostly becuase it is something that I will have to embed into my brain before I start my professional career), I will learn it.

Anyway, I think that I do enjoy the way that we go over our PBSP documents, along with our IEP's for another class that I am taking this semester. The time that our teachers take now to follow through with us on these 'tricky' doccuments will only help better prepare us for the future.

Podcast Chicago closure of schools

Today I found an NPR podcast regarding school closures in Chicago. This is the website page that I found the NPR podcast on. It is a short news link that tries to figure out why most of the schools in Chicago have been forced to close.

Angry parents try to argue that they have the right to keep the schools, not only becuase they pay for it, but becuase their kids have a right to an education. This is true, every child should be able to get an education, especially in well adapted cities. However, the reasons that the NPR podcast went over were much different than what I would have thought it was.

NPR podcast on school closures

The reason why the schools were being shut down was becuase of the lack of students attending. A lot of the lowered rates of populous within the school caused smaller populations of students going, which led to decrease in funds as well as class sizes. Large schools were becoming small schools, and so it was hard to maintain them. The reason of population decrease was not (mainly) due to dropout rates, but more or less Charter Schools being added to that area. With this increase, the shift of population left one area for a desire in the other. This effected not only Chicago, but Washington and other major areas as well.

Informative Video

Looking over some videos that I was interested in, I found one in particular that I enjoyed. The one that I was looking over A place of our own website and found a video that I really did find informative. The video that I looked at was titled "Discussion." Discussion link to video is right here, and it appears as really small, but the audio is what matters the most.

Although the video is not related a lot back to teaching, it does go into detail about Care givers, who may or may not work with special needs students. It's about two women who are having a questionair type sequence about a lady named Jannet, who answers questions about special needs. Jannet goes on to calmly explain the more 'easy' terms of how to identify or recognize the issues that younger children who may display delays or other issues, and what we as adults can do to try and help. She reads a letter from a caregiver, who is concerned about one of her children, and wants to be able to 'reach' everyone, and asks how she can use different strategies.

Jannet goes on to explain that identifying special needs students is one of the most important things, as well as informing the audiance about how to use different strategies to work with younger children. She mentions that being able to identify what type of special needs a student or younger person may have, such as one with a language delay, will help to determine what type of strategy to use, such as verbal lessons, or other 'hands on' activities.

PEN

While looking through some PA laws that focused on Special Education, I came across a very interesting website. Parent Educational Network is a site that helps to inform parents, a well as educators about special needs students, as well as policies regarding special education.

The section that I was looking into was with regard to Parents and Professional links that could be used to help parents or educators better understand the different resources that are available to them. Some of the categories and links would include; Disability Resource Web Links, Response to Instruction and Intervention, Social Media Safety and many others.

Some of the material has a lot of pdf files that are available for download, and I would think that with my future goals, having a small binder of some of these aspects and categories would be great to keep around myself.

One of the categories that I found interesting was the Transition Services Links, which included information regarding transfer training and services for parents. When I went to the Independent Living page, which can be found right here, I was taken to a page that listed many different listing of multiple issues. It gave examples of short handbooks regarding Autism, FMLA documents, and housing sources that parents would be able to look into.

I think that this website is very helpful, and that it would be something for both parents as well as educators to use or even glance over when dealing with policies or resources that can help parents and teachers help with the living, care, and education of students who have special needs.

Video

Today I found a video on youtube that has some oldtime favorite characters in it. In the video we have Elmo and his father who are singing a song about potty training.

I thought that this video would be a great way to try and begin teaching kids about using the potty. Although I understand that it's the parents' job, I think that maybe if there are too many kids in my classroom having 'accidents' then it would be a good idea to maybe have a mini lesson on it, or simply suggest to the parents about songs like this that are on youtube.

Sesame Street videos are not only classic, but they pin point and give very 'clear' descriptions on the majority of issues that young children may be facing. They also give good details about how to better the situation, or change it.

A fun read along!

Today I was looking online for an interesting craft site that I would be able to use within my classroom. What I found was on this site, and it related back to an idea about making reading fun.


The image above was taken from the site that I found the idea on. It deals with trying to make reading fun for younger groups of children. I thought that this was a good idea becuase it was both a fun activity, and supported the idea that this method/project could be used within any type of classroom. I believe that an activity like this would help incorporate interaction between both reader and the teacher.

Song! Learning your shapes

This song relates back to a fun little video that helps to show kids their different shapes. It's done by puppets so that it can better relate back to kids, and is done in a fun tune that children can easilly follow along with.



I like this song becuase it cane easilly be taught and relayed back to students on any level of learning. It is colorful and gives both imaginative and real life experiences with shapes.

Blog

Today I found a blog that was designed to look over different Special Education ideas, policies and many other interesting facts. This site  deals with many different thoughts about Special Education, and it also looks over many powerful facts about what may be occuring within the schooling system in the near future.

The blog looks to be updated whenever new ideas or helpful sites come up, such as a resource site that teachers can use, such as common core and read aloud standards . Another sited source on the page relates back to a more intense standing about IDEA issues. One of the links will take you to a page that shows a chart relating back to summs of money that IDEA has thought about using to cut funding.

This blog page is very helpful with providing informationt that is related back to Special Education. I think that this is a great source to read over now and again for news that relates back to my field.

An awesome APP!

This webpage  that I found relates back to a great app for the Ipad that I found. The app deals with a touch screen effect game that uses images of animals or other objects in order to help incorporate eye hand cordination as well as memory.

This could be used in many different areas, along with Special Education. I think it would be a helpful tool to use in a more hightech classroom environment. There are also many different levels of the match it up game that can be adapted to different age or cognitive development levels.

Also, the webpage can also house many different Book apps as well. This Book App page also gives many different indicators about other good apps that can be applied to different resources other than the Ipad.

Article: Teacher time use with methods....

Today, the article that I found related back to time use within Special Education classrooms. Special Education Teacher Time Use in Four Types of Programs by authors Kimberly J. Vannest, Shanna Hagan-Burke, et al... is an academic journal that I had come across. The article I found was on EBSCOhost, and this is the webpage that linked to the short, thirteen page article I was looking at. The article did a studey on about twenty four different schools within a neighboring area, and looked for different methods that the special education teachers used throughout their teaching.

The article also went onto explain the differences in the samples of teachers taken from the schools. There were 31 in total, and had 24 females, the rest being males. Also, the teachers needed to meet specific requirments within the study, such as being a certified Special Education Teacher, as well as working full time with individuals in high incidence disabilities categories. The study goes on to display charts throughout it's research to support the data that was being found.

Some of the main points within this article is that it displays the differences among the multiple classroom methods that some of the teachers are working in. It goes over to explain the Resource Classrooms, Adaptive Behavior Classrooms, Co-teaching, and Content Mastery Classroom. The article explains in further detail different methods that were used to evaluate and study the differences teachers used within these types of classrooms in order to allow for effective teaching time and strategies. There are ten types in total that most of the teachers displayed throuout a school day, some of them include: Special Education assessment, State-Mandated assessment, and Academic Instruction.

The study goes on to clarify the differences and the conclusion of the research that had been taken. Although they give a lot of images and supportive data analysis to back up their findings, there are still some slightly 'loose' fitting ideas. From what I came to understand within the article's ending though, was that they had found the research to be a success in seeing the different types of methods and how the assessment process worked alongside one another. A lot of the research concluded that  there appeared to be a well developed organization among the teachers' use of classroom resources, and that their were only really issues with the different tests that were administered to their students. Some of the limitations of the study found that some of the teachers may not have accuratly recorded their own data, or that it was a possibility that maybe some of the students should have been re-evaluated for the critiria required to become involved with special education.

Overall, the article was interesting, and I enjoyed reaching about the different findings of how these four different teaching classrooms used different assessments over multiple fields of time to gather research. By different fields of time, it is meant that some were studied over the course of a year-long progress, and others were seen only to last as long as a semester.

TED talk: Blog and video

Today I was looking on TED for an interesting blog page. I came accross issues relating back to highschool drop outs. This blog gives not only a video relating back to Bill Gates' speech on economic issues, but also dealing with education.

The beginning of the blog explains when the air date for the PBS and TED talks education broadcast will be shown. The video segment that is accompanied with the blog displays Bill Gates. He goes on to speak about state budgets and why they are important for us to keep in mind. The two main reasons he gives deals with; Big money, and Little scrutiny. He mentions that there is a deficit of 10%, where the money seems to be lost, and that there is little notice of how this amount of money goes unaccounted for. Gates tried to explain issues among revenue imbalances and how they were found, or covered up. He uses California as an example (Mostly due to the idea of that's where he is giving this segment of the TED talk), and mentions some of the ways that the issues of deficit go unnoticed; Borrowing money from private markets, borrow more from taxpayers and withhold about 110%, deferring school payments, and sell off revenue from tobacco products. One of the major points he goes over is with the healthcare issue, which will need even more money shoved into it. With the lack of money going to healthcare, money will be cut by half that will be for Education spending and funding.

He also mentions some of the impacts that an issue or procedure like this is going to have on education, such as no incentives for excellence, no bold experiements and no teacher effectiveness measurement. Towards the end of his speech, he gives a few mentions of books that parents, teachers and basically everyone should look into that deals with spending, Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go? by Marguerite Roza is one of the books that he mentions. He also mentions that there needs to be a strive for better accounting, like private accounting.

I think that this is somethign that should be looked at. Because of state funding issues, and it's not only happening within California, but elsewhere. This all relates back to tuitions, affecting high schools to colleges.

Reading Rockets!

This long video is just a little tip giver about how to participate within a child's life. It focuses a lot on parents involvement with their own kids. It also stressed about teachers and how they adapt to each and every one of their student's needs. This video podcast goes over many of the different media adaptations that families face, a lot of it being focused on technology, not only at home, but also within the classroom.

This video also gave good pointers on different educational medias that can be used within the classroom, such as videos on literacy or math on youtube. There is also a heavy indication of how context should not be subtracted from a lesson simply because there is being a video, podcast or other technological media being used within the classroom. Lessons should always have meaning and understanding portrayed to the viewers, no matter the age group.

What I wanted to focus on mainly was the site that I drew this video from. I thought that it was a great place to start with one of my projects for adaptive activities for not only students, but with parents as well. While exploring the site, I thought that it would be a good idea to archieve it, along with making sure that it could be found here. Having something like this available to other parents as well as teachers is important. I loved this site becuase it made making lesson activites easier to create. The Reading Rockets web page has many different learning activites, as well as other gread media uses, such as informative videos as well as lessons. The video above was recieved from this webpage of the site, and they have many other informative podcasts as well!

Personal

Although today may or may not count becuase this event occured wed., I found that during my SPED340 class to be very interesting.

We are currently working with chapter five, and so have begun learning how to develope goals, monitor evaluation and progress sheets, and basically make our own mock IEP paper. I think that this will be fun becuase we are also making our own charts to go along with how we are monitoring our 'fake' student. It will help to give different perspectives on how to deal with one specific area of a behavioral or social issue, and with the entire class doing this small homework assignment, there should be a lot of different feedback come next wed.

Animal sounds song!

For today, I figured I would take a break from the normal 'writen' portion of this project, and look up an awesome song for you guys to listen and watch.
The song that I found today is for young kids learning animal noises. This song goes over different animals, such as a duck, cow, and pigs. There are many more, and the song even includes people, who say, "Blah, blah, blah."
The song is slow paced, so if the kids would like to sing along with them, they would be able to do so as well. There are also plenty of words on the music video. I enjoed this song becuase I thought it would easilly capture the attention and participation of all types of students.
Here's the song!

CEC Blog on Inclusive Classrooms

Today's article was something that I found off of a blog spot based on the CEC website. Kaylie: Inspired by Inclusive Education relates back to a girl who was inspired by a few articles that she found from back in her college days. The articles related back to the inclusion of students with severe-to moderate disabilities being involved within a general ed classroom.

The article goes onto to highlight some of the writer's main points that inspired her while she was reading through the articles. Some of the points are about what the definition of inclusive classroom means, the mindset for inclusive education, and thinking differently about inclusive education. All of her short bulleted points all have small descriptions of what they were defined as being.

She also references the works that she looked over, and there is a short podcast on the web page that you can actually listen to the article being read. I enjoyed this article becuase it was not only short, but I thought that having a member of the CEC group display information about such topics such as inclusive teaching and others.

Video Podcast on RTI

If you're having issues with the video, this site is where I found it! It's instructional, and has many great videos!

What I found today related back to a short video on the RTI model, and how it's been changing not only how teachers are able to reach Special Education students, but also how it helps with other groups of Regular Ed. students as well.

However, the video looks over the many different impacts on how it's been worked with Special Education students. It goes over one of the main idea of how students are now being evaluated, or identified with a disability. It showed how useful it was at finding students, but not at how it was changing the students' lessons. The teachers and staff were then able to match up the abilities of the students to what kind of methods that would help them with learning. It helped in making decisions in how they are taught.

It also spoke about how students could be identified, and the negatives of being labeled. Non-categorical models were the new name given to students who had special needs and that were less readilly known among the other students. This had proved to have taken some pressures of being a 'labeled' student off of the children that were involved.

The story wrapped up with how much the RTI scale was helping to reach all the students, and being able to show the student's where their progress was taking place. Overall, I thought this was a good video podcast on how RTI was benifiting everyone rather than a select group of individuals.

Informative Website

Today I was looking online for some coloring pages that I may be able to use within my play center for an ECED210 activity and I came across an amazing site that related to Special Needs. This website gives many different definitions of multiple disabilities. One of the ones that I found interesting related back to Dyslexia, and different ways that if can be defined. The page that it took me to also gave many different resources that both children and adults could use to seek help, or even learn about.

This site was just informative and interesting to look at. On the side panal though, it gives different links to other areas of topics, such as working with art, history and even the science field. The area that I was looking at related back to S.E.N. section. I was a little sad when I did not find too many good printables or activities though.

Collaboration for EL/Special Education students

On the Ebsco Host data base I found an interesting abstract from an article that I found. This is the link to the abstract article that I found. What caught my eye was the idea of collaboration among both special education teachers and EL or regular ed teachers.

This is the PDF file that was attached to the article's abstract. The article was made by Jennifer Canillas Stein and the article's title is name, 'The Case for Collaboration: Integrating Information on English Learners and Special Education in Teacher Preparation Programs.'

The six page article goes over differnent collaboration techniques that professions should take in order to better teach their EL and Special Education students. There was also research done on percentages comparing normal special education students, vs. the minority of language impaired special ed. students. There is also a heavy indication for an IEP team to be able to distingues language issues vs. academic issues within a student's learning ability. The article gives stressed information about the need of importance of IEP team members to communicate to one another. It speaks about the benifits that senior members can always pass down to newer members.

Acronyms and Terms

Today I was searching the web for an idea to write about for my philosophy project, and there was a thought that crossed my mind: What about if I had something handy that I could have as a reference for terms that I did not readilly know. Well, after searching for a little bit, I came across a great web page lebeled as acronym central!

After making sure that my computer will always have a copy of this, I decided to use it as today's post so that I would be able to look back at certain terms that are frequently used within the Special Educational field. I suggest having a quick look for yourself, and decide if maybe some of the terms that are being used now, really mean what you've always thoguht they were, such as CASS, Council of Administrators of Special Services, which was actually formerly known as CAPS and CASE, A professional organization for Special Education and Pupil Services Personnel.

Once Upon a School

Today I've looked up a TED talk video, and while browsing the site, I found this video.

During this somewhat lengthy video, Eggers' speaks about how different types of children and their homestyles. One of the main family structures he hits on that deals back to education, is english language learners. He continues on to speak about a part of his life when he was living near a tutor, where students could flow in whenever, and then this way they could give time to other neighborhood kids. When they had rented the space, they were told they had to use some of the space for retail value. Eggers decided to put a 'pirate supply store' in the back, where kids and adults alike could go and have a look around.

The tutoring/publishing center gave an opportunity to help students after school with homework, and being able to recieve help from adults that worked there. Eggers explained this as producing a happy family life with the free time that this produced, and that a happy family, would help support an entire community. The video also goes on to continue speaking about how in Brooklyn, another store opened, which tried hard to work alongside Eggers' idea of the after and during school tutor sessions. instead of naming itself a 'pirate supple store' though, they were titled with, 'Brooklyn Superhero Supply.'

Feel free to have a look at the video yourself though, it's very interesting, and I think that with Eggers' idea of making a tutor area that's not within a school gives kid's an opportunity to help students who may not have parents to help them when they go home after school.

Follow this link to a TED talk!