Inspirational Summer

Temple Grandin at the Students Who are Wired Differently Conference



I had the honor of hearing Temple Grandin speak at the Students who are Wired Differently Conference in Atlanta last month. She is amazing. I wanted to listen and learn from her for the entire weekend! The way she explains her thinking process and sensory needs is really helpful to parents and teachers who teach children with Autism.

 

A couple of things she said that stood out to me...

"Are you going to allow a student to fail because you didn't copy on tan paper or other simple things?" (Temple Grandin)

"Don't praise EVERYTHING! Praise the good stuff" (Temple Grandin)

 

While there I purchased a few books that have helped me get excited about teaching this year and that have refreshed my love of ABA and inclusive classrooms.

 

I have completed reading the Way I See It, by Temple Grandin and Bringing ABA to Home, School and Play by Debra Leach. I have watched the video Including Samuel also. All I can say is WOW! I am so excited to bring these ideas and philosophies to my classroom this year.

 

All teachers need to believe in ALL their students. We can't be the one who gives up on them. As a special education teacher it is also my job to encourage the regular education teachers who have students with special needs in their classroom. Too often the students are just put in the room and left with little support. If the general education teacher doesn't have the intuition to research and learn or they may not know where to start to learn, then the teacher isn't able to provide the special need student with he/she needs.

Before teaching special education I taught First Grade. I can't tell you how many times a special education teacher would hand me an IEP and say you have this child in your room, let me know how they are doing. And that would be that. I eventually became the regular ed teacher that BEGGED for the special needs students and also spent my breaks down in the SPED hall bugging teachers for resources and information about autism and other disabilities. It's not easy, but VERY rewarding!

There are days when we cry and feel so frustrated we don't know what to do to help our students. These books and watching this video is something that I will be refer to all year long.

I hope to take what I have learned over the years as a regular education and special education teacher and help other teachers successfully include children with special needs in their classroom.

 

Apps I use EVERYDAY!

I am very fortunate that my school system purchased 1 iPad for each Special Education Classroom. I have downloaded many apps and use them often, but there are a couple of Apps that I find I use everyday.
These apps are ones that keep data, or a record of the child's activity. I think it's a great idea to have apps that keep data since it is one of the vital parts of our job. "Document growth!" It also helps me show to those who purchased the iPad that is has been a vital tool within my classroom-then maybe one day they will purchase more!


The first app I have mentioned in a previous post: IEP PAL you can see that post HERE.





The second app that I use everyday is  Toddler Teasers. It sounds like it is an app for VERY young children, and I'm sure it could be. It has several categories to purchase such as colors, shapes, letters, numbers, animals, even fractions and roman numerals. Within each category the child can match items, play reinforcement games, and quizzing games. The quizzing games keeps data for each child who is in the system. I have several students set up and it hasn't hit a limit yet, so I assume there is no limit to the number of students that can be put in. I also like this because you can pick the categories each child is working on. For example one child can be working on colors and shapes and another student is set up to work with letters and numbers...the only fall back is that you can't pick which specific items within the category the child is working on..for example: You can't tell it for Joey to work on the letters P, J, Y and the colors red,  yellow and green. All the items within that category will be taught. My student love this app because it cheers and gives great reinforcement for correct answers. It also gives you each child's REPORT CARD. You can see data for each category and it will even show the top 3 and bottom 3 items for each category. I take this data and transfer it to IEP PAL.


The 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th  and 7th apps I use daily are Dr. Gary Brown's DTT Apps.

I like these apps because they are ABA based. You can pick one item to teach at a time. You can decided how many items are in your field of choices and you can decide how you want it presented, how long between trials, voices to use and MANY other personal options. You do have to type the child's name in each time and it will give you a LOG of the data. The data does not show which items were wrong or right, but it will show you the #/10 they got correct. I am always sitting with the children when they do this this app. This allows me to see and make quick notes of what items they are missing or getting correct then I can customize it later to address the skills needed.This is all data that I can transfer into IEP PAL later! :)

What apps do you find you use the most? I'd love to know!!

Note to self

These are few things I have found myself saying lately...

-"Don't forget to download YOUTUBE videos using YTD Video Downloader"---internet at school is frustrating sometimes.I have so many songs for circle time from YOUTUBE that the kids get frustrated and so do I!

-"Don't forget to get a TARP!!!"---finding sensory play can get out of hand sometimes! Took a while to clean up the spaghetti noodles off the floor that the kiddos had so much fun with!!

 

"Don't forget to give my para-pro the lesson plans for the week" I have forgotten the past couple of weeks!

Don't forget to get paperwork together and send it to Central Office! I sure do wish I had a decent planning time or even one workday a month to get all the paperwork and planning I need to do! Hehe

"Keep 1st things 1st!" I tend to get sidetracked very easily...working hard to stay on top of things and not get behind with lesson plans, materials, IEP paperwork and parent communication.

IEP DATA

One of the most important part of a special education teacher's job is collecting data. I have worked doing Discrete Trials and love DATA!! But getting it within the classroom setting is difficult. I prefer to work one on one with the children, but some days that isn't possible. I do my best to do class projects and lessons that work for many IEP goals. Using Read It Once Again has given me many tools to make that happen.
 
 But once I do the activities I have to take data that it was done. I have kept many types of data sheets and they have worked okay, but once I was given an iPad by my district, I started researching apps that may help. 

I have found IEP PAL!! I have been using it for a couple of weeks, and have fallen in love with this!! The cost was $95 that I used from my classroom account. (I AM NOT BEING PAID TO WRITE THIS :)I played with it some over the summer, but finally took the plunge and put all my students goals, etc. in the system a few weeks ago. It took some time, but since our student's IEPs are computer based I was able to cut and past from one program to another. If you do purchase this, I highly recommend printing the manual and taking the free online training. Since vocabulary across districts for IEPs can be different some of the things were a bit confusing, but everyone within the company is AMAZING!! They take feedback and use that to make improvements to the program. 

Things it does that are WONDERFUL!
-you can collect prompt data and within that you can keep data on what type of prompts you are using
-Voice recording-you can make audio notes, or even record a child's response to use as data
-note taking-you can type up notes about progress and information about the session
-reports to show growth that are more understandable to parents 
-make notes on behavior/attention for the sessions
-have several students at a time within a session
-it is very customizable that you can make it work any way you wish! Use prompts or not, use benchmarks or not, 
-you can put data in after a session if that is needed. (once I left my iPad at home and was panicking trying to take data the old way.)
 

I am looking forward to writing my first IEP based on the data collected with IEP PAL.