Just want to say what a great class this has been. I know I learned a lot and am grateful when my students bring their diverse experiences to share in the classroom. I wish you all the best in your future teaching and hope to see some of you again around the EDB.
For the people who can't make it to the last class on Aug. 8, please post two paragraphs on an ECE topic of your choice on this prompt. Topics we may be covering in the last class, depending on interest, will be: family literacy, working with parents, school and community, inclusion, guiding students, planning and the K-1 PLO's.
For the people who presented their items for the portfolio on Monday, July 25, please briefly describe what you shared on the prompt below (scroll down), including any links to worthwhile websites, titles of books & authors, etc.
Class on Aug. 8 will be very informal and will end early. We will discuss any topics you would like to know more about.
For everyone, enjoy the rest of your summer! You deserve it.
Best to all of you,
Sue
Working with parents, school and community
ReplyDeleteI feel very strongly about this topic. Teachers need to be sure that they work with parents and the outside community to help students succeed throughout their education. Involving the parents can take many different forms. First, teachers can have parents come into the classroom and volunteer their time. They can come in to read with students, help with projects, lessons and fieldtrips as well as be their just as another set of hands and eyes for the teacher. If parents cannot come into the classroom to volunteer their time it is important that teachers and parents are in constant communication. This can occur by teachers and parents writing in planners, as well as teachers sending notices home. Often time communication occurs through letters or notes that are sent back and forth between the parents and teachers, as well as through telephone calls. Second, teachers need to be sure to bring the community into the classroom. Have parents, grandparents and family members come into the classroom and share information about their culture. Teachers can also have volunteers from the community come into the classroom to help.
Inclusion
Teachers and educators have to be sure they are including and meeting the needs of each student, those with normal development and those with special needs. I feel that having students, especially those with special needs, integrated into a regular classroom helps their social competence and increases their learning. At times it can be difficult for teachers to deal with each student especially if there is no support from an educational assistant for those with special needs. Due to this teachers need to take courses to inform them about special needs and how to better teach those with special needs. Learning about the disabilities will help teachers not only mange behaviour but also manage activities and assignments for the child. They may also be able to implement special adaptations for these children to ensure that they succeed within the regular classroom. I think that if teachers, specialists, and administrators meet regularly they will be able to create a program that helps each individual student. There should also be time set aside for team planning to take place to develop appropriate curriculum and adaptations for all the children.
Inclusion and the importance of working with parents and staff!!!!
ReplyDeleteInclusion of all students is an essential learning experience for both the class as well as the teacher. As new teachers many of us will not have had the opportunity to teach children with many different types of learning and physical disabilities. It is our job as teachers to find the best way of including all students no matter their level of disability. It is not good enough to have a student with special needs present in the classroom, the student needs to be an active part of the class both socially and academically. Adapting material taught in class is one way of having students involved academically at their level. Through centers and cooperative learning we can teach our students to include everyone socially. Play is a great way of getting everyone one involved because all students can participate at any level. There are ways of making ourselves aware of how to best teaching and include all students; however it takes a team to best help and support a child with special needs. It is our job as teacher to ensure that effective socializing and learning occurs among all students.
Teachers, parents and support staff need to work as a team to overcome obstacles for the child at need. They need to come up with plans that will support the child as he or she goes through a mainstream classroom. Teacher preparedness is probably one of the most important components to create effective staff development for the child. The teacher can look at plans made up for other students with similar disabilities as the child with special needs in their class to come up with plan as the students start school in September. The teacher needs to be in contact with the head teacher and EAs to come up with a plan for support to aid the child in his or her new classroom environment. There is always the concern that “someone will lose”. However this cannot stop the team from continuing to work together. There are some instances where the child looses out because they are not involved, supported or accepted enough. As a team of teachers, support staff and parents, communication is key to overcome these concerns. Plans and support given at school should be communicated home so parents can continue to use the same supportive strategies at home. Collaborating with other teachers and support staff that are teaching other children with the same special needs can give the team new strategies and ideas of involving and including the child. Lastly, respecting the ideas, concerns and dreams of all team members is crucial, no one knows what the child with special needs is capable of achieving if they do not have the opportunity to try and grow. All of these components must be addressed in order to give the child with special needs they best educations and support needed to grow.
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ReplyDeleteThank you Sue for exposing us all to a lot of practical and hands-on activities in ECE! I really appreciated your gentle, accepting presence in the classroom :)..
ReplyDeleteI would like to give my two cents on working with parents. I've noticed from my practicum and other experiences that parents are often seen as hostile intruders in the classroom, but I feel it is so important to break down the barriers between the school (teachers) and parents by having open-communication with parents. Open-communication can be via emails, phone calls, quick chats before/after school, letters (on students' progress) sent home by the teacher. Once the parents know and are "in" on what goes in in the classroom, they can definitely serve as a supportive network for teachers! I know this outreach towards parents does seem like a lot of work from what we've seen in the past, but it can definitely be worth it, especially since parents want the same thing as teachers do (for their kids to be successful in school). Once the parents know what skills and knowledge their kids are learning at school, parents can do complimentary activities to that at home to promote student understanding.
Another topic worth discussion is partial versus full inclusion of students with special needs being integrated in a classroom full of students that aren't disabled in their learning, etc. From what I've seen, even though the classrooms are practicing inclusion, but the teachers aren't informed on how to interact and promote social interactions between the mix of students. So, even if we have full inclusion classrooms, students that are developmentally delayed aren't necessarily engaging in classroom activities that the other students are doing. I feel there should be at least a couple of activities each week so the students are interacting to break down stereotypes and allowing students with special needs to imitate other students and learn from others in a social setting, which can help them socially adjust to their surroundings. I should also mention that I feel that the teachers aren't really familiar with what students with special needs are learning and or even what's incorporated in their curriculum. Their curriculum is left all up to the SEA or other aides to take care of, to teach and to plan, but maybe because the teachers in the classroom aren't familiar with it, that's why they don't necessarily adapt their lessons to fully include ALL students in classroom activities.
And on that note.. Everyone have a terrific summer and best of luck in future endeavors! :)
Working with parents:
ReplyDeleteI believe that working with parents is a very important and beneficial part of teaching. It is important for a teacher to get to know the parents of his or her students. This is important in order to help the teacher understand some of the family dynamics that a student may be confronted with on a daily basis. This will help a teacher to understand his or her students better. I also believe that it is beneficial to work with parents in order to let the parents have an understanding of what is going on in their child's classroom. It is beneficial to the teacher to have parents involved in the classroom to create a community between the parents, students and teachers.
School and community:
Working with parents to provide a stronger community in the classroom branches off to the importance of school and community in general. It is of great importance to build a community type feeling in a classroom. I believe that it is also great to develop that community feeling throughout the entire school. I think that this community feeling can be created by holding special school-wide events. Getting the entire school together to cooperate for an event would build a great community. I also think that having "big-buddies" in a ECE classroom is helpful to build a community between the younger and older students. There are a variety of ways teachers can help to provide a community for their students, and I believe that this is one of the most important parts of a school. A community is important because it can help the students to feel safe in their learning environment.
During my practicum I worked in a classroom that had seven students with I.E.P’s. This was shocking to me, initially, because it was my understanding that there was a limit of three students with I.E.P’s allowed per classroom, but I guess that is not always the case. There was one teaching assistant in the room for the mornings, but she concentrated her efforts on one particular student. I found this arrangement extremely challenging. With the support of my S.A., however, my confidence grew as he taught me the strategies that he used to teach this diverse group of students. My SA said to me “gear your lessons towards the students who struggle”. There will always be opportunities to challenge the students who excel, but you have to start with the basic principles for the students with I.E.P.’s. He said, “Never make any assumptions, be very specific and always include exact instructions. This way all the students have an equal opportunity to succeed. The main teaching method that my SA used was explicit teaching. Whenever he would introduce a concept he would use the ideology: I do, we do, you do. He would first explain the concept in detail and then practice the concept with student input (he would always model what he expected the students to learn) and finally he would allow the students to practice the concept. I found this teaching method especially effective with Math.
ReplyDeleteThis style of teaching was contrary to the inquiry method, which was the focus of the PDP program at SFU. I found myself at a loss and very reliant on my SA for teaching support. During my practicum I tried to incorporate explicit teaching and inquiry learning. I always taught math explicitly, however, I facilitated a research inquiry project in Social Studies and some student centred activities in language arts and Health and Career. During my practicum I often wondered how I could give the students more learning ownership, while still maintaining control. This group was not allowed a lot of freedom because there were so many problem behaviours. I have recently been introduced to the concept of tribes. I believe that this classroom could work effectively if they were put into groups. It would take some time and effort to make harmonious groups, however, the arrangement would allow struggling students to learn from their fellow students who are not challenged.
Community and School
ReplyDeleteThe school where I did my long practicum had a wonderful community feel to it. They used multiple approaches that achieved this.
they had the older children responsible for the younger children. The older children were assigned positions as lunch monitors, lunch servers, dish washers, supervisors, as well as in charge of running the monthly assemblies.
The school also had a community room that was always open. Parents were always in the room, which meant they were in the school. They were available to help out with random volunteer jobs, became well known by all students and staff, and felt included and involved in a big part of their child's life. The school itself also used the tribes program to create community spirit. Tribes was focused on good deeds, community clean up, recycling, composting, stars of the month, and a variety of other volunteer activities. I've never been in a school that felt as connected as this, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Guiding Students
I'm not sure if I'm in the right frame of mind for this heading, but I think the way I'm thinking of it is important. One of the most beneficial classes I've taken is a psychology course based on the emotional, cognitive, and social development of youth from birth to adulthood. Reading through the toddler, preschool, and childhood phases gave me such a clear understanding of a variety of incidents that had happened in the past with groups of children I was responsible for. It allowed me to see clearly how and why they were acting and saying the things they were, and how I could best respond.
It sounds silly, but young children need to be taught everything, including social skills. There's no reason that we should expect them to simply know what to do and how to handle their rapid developments and realizations about the world, yet I think as educators, we become frustrated when they don't know how to react properly. I think it would be beneficial for all educators to be well informed on the developmental stages of the children they work with so as to better address their needs. It's not enough to just connect with students as individuals, we also have to understand them on a fundamental level beyond personality in order to best address their needs and help them forward.
Hi everybody,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to comment quickly on the topic of K vs. Grade One PLOs. What I love about the K PLOs are the ways that they can be mixed and combined cross-curriculum. There is so much freedom there and I think the PLOs are just as they should be, as they allow for a lot of room for development and range.
As for Grade One, personally, I believe there to be too many PLOs and I think this puts a lot of pressure on the instructor to try to cover all the ground there and that makes for a really packed and challenging Grade One year. I think we need to look more in depth at the PLOs from year-to-year and how much we are asking of students making the jump from K to Grade One. Instructors should not feel pressure right out of the gate in September to cover enough ground. There should be room for community building and getting to know each other and getting re-familiarized with school again.
I just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed this class and have learned so much from it!
Community and School
ReplyDeleteI think that the most important thing we must do as educators to increase parent involvement is communication. Many parents drop their child off at school and then pick them up everyday. And more often then not, teachers never even see or meet the parents. I think that it is important during the first week of classes to make an extra effort to communicate who you are to parents and to make them feel welcome to come to you to ask questions. I think that by encouraging communication with parents helps them to feel more at ease and more likely to become involved in school activities.
But there are some obstacles that need to be overcome. I think a big obstacle, particularly in the Greater Vancouver area is language barrier. But if you allow children and parents to share with each other their background and allow for the chance of dialogue with other parents and children it not only improves their english but also their comfortability becoming involved in classroom and school activities.
Cultural Background:
Cultural backgrounds can reveal the identity of a child. This can include understanding the childs’ habits in their manners, learning styles and peer interactions. A way in which teachers can do this is by encouraging conversations and class work that involves the child to open up about their family members, family believes, attitudes and values as well as if there are any special traditions and or ethnic foods involved in their culture. A teacher better understanding their students’ cultural backgrounds can limit the amount of making false judgments on the child and increase the apathetic effect they have on the their students interests, behavior and learning style.
Teachers should also encourage class discussions and activities about the different cultural within their school and community. I think a great way to initiate the topic of cultural backgrounds is by the teacher understanding and appreciating their cultural background as this can better allow them to relate to their students and be a better role model for their students. I think by a teacher sharing their cultural background with their students it will help initiate the students to open up about their backgrounds to each other. If we can understand each other as a whole cooperating group that is made up of unique individuals, then we can better appreciate each other and ourselves. In order to build self-esteem, we need to feel comfortable with ourselves while being around others, and by being proud of our cultural identity is a crucial to boost ones’ self-esteem