Halfway There......

I can't believe that we are already halfway through CAPES! It has gone by so fast, and I am not looking forward to it ending. When we first started our group decide that we would each work with one child the whole time. We figured it would be easier to connect with the child and really stay focused on what areas need to be worked more. We have run into a few set-backs with having a child who is no longer participating in the program, as well as a couple of times that children or students were absent for a night. Because of this we have had to move things around a little.

I, myself, haven't run into the problem of having a child I didn't make a lesson plan for. We usually do our lesson plans together as a group because social interactions are a big focus among our kids. This makes it easier to adjust when have to help with another kid. This coming up week I know that we are adjusting our lesson plan to allow for another group's kid join us. When we make our lesson plans, the ideas that we come up with have been things that we can be flexible with. I think this is a big thing to remember when making a lesson plan. It is a great thing to make a plan that is set, but is easily rearranged when needed. We also have little "side" lesson plans, like a back-up plan, in case the kids don't take to what we planned, or if the activity doesn't take as long as we anticipated. By having these back-up lesson plans, it has made it very easy for us to transition into a new activity when needed.

I think as a teacher, if you have kids with special needs in any of your classes, then you should be prepared to always have them in your class, regardless of their regular class schedule. Make a back-up plan. It doesn't even have to be a full lesson plan, but perhaps just a style of teaching reserved specifically for when the lesson needs to be altered due to a change in a special needs student's schedule. You could change a lesson into an active response activity. Or perhaps just slowing the pace of the lesson might help. A big part of how to be flexible is going to be based on the exact needs of the student. Know your student's needs. Then based on their strong points in the learning environment, alter your lesson to accentuate those strengths so that the lesson is still taught, without leaving that student behind, but rather allowing them to excel with their peers.

CAPES! 4 Establishing an Effective Learning Environment!

From my understanding, an effective learning environment of CAPES! at least contains two aspects: physical environment and interactions between teachers and students. Both of them serve important functions to help meeting the students’ needs and interests. The experiences in past CAPES! nights have clearly indicated various physical environments can lead to different reactions and results with the same child. L’s performances would be an example. In the last CAPES! we did three land-based activities. He followed the directions and understood the instructions pretty well when we played the bowling ball game and sand bag game. He was on task and actively engaged in these two activities. These two activities took place at the eastern end of the Gym, against the wall, and far away from other groups and disturbs. Five of us stayed within 3 to 5 feet space from each other, and the equipment was right next to where we stood. I think this size of open special is within L’s comfort zone, and it is an area that he can handle without any assistance. In contrast, the baseball game wasn’t that easy for him. I felt I lost L’s attention in this game. The baseball game took up 3 to 4 times’ bigger space compared to the other two, and it was a new game to them. L was not fully engaged, and often he was called to be reminded of his turn. Although the result was not as good as what we expected, but I strongly believe that it would have been a great activity to meet his needs if we can provide some effective teacher-student interactions to support his learning. I remembered L did fair enough work in the foxtail game. It was also an activity that designed for a more open space. So, to help him gradually learn some skills to stay focused and follow directions or instructions in a wider special, I could use one-on-one strategy with him which worked well in the foxtail game. If we redid this game, I would have explained the game to him face to face. I would have given him 2 directions each time, and walked through the steps with him; and had him pre-play the game to make sure he knows his roles. To get him back to the game if he started wandering off I could gave him some hints then. And my feedback to him would have focused on how well he stayed on tasks.

Learn from teaching, this is what I have learned from the CAPES! experiences. Either special ed. or general ed. an effective learning environment should always take into account. Therefore, better educational outcomes to be performed and observed.

Week 4!! Our Learning Environment

In the past couple of weeks we have been trying to figure out how our kids work best, whether in groups or not, the environment, and what kind of activities. It has been a little bit of a struggle, but we are now starting to get a really good grasp at what is needed. We have realized that L would do a lot better in a smaller environment, perhaps using the racquetball courts, or by just directing his focus away from the other groups by having him face away from them while we give instructions. I’ve noticed with BV that, although he could use some focus on social interactions, perhaps a large area isn’t the best setting. It would be better to have a smaller setting and fewer people to slowly get him better with social interactions. After noticing this, we have decided to try something completely new this coming up week. We are going to take L and BV to the racquetball courts. This way they can still learn how to interact with other children, but they don’t have such a large room with so many unneeded distractions. By using the small area of the court, we can focus more on their interactions with each other including encouragement, communication, teamwork, and even following directions. I am really excited about trying this new approach. I really think it will help both kids to improve a lot.

                I still feel like I am struggling a little in the pool with BV, but because I think I am getting a better handle on the land-based activities, it will give me more time to focus on how to get him to pay better attention in the pool. BV absolutely LOVES diving for rings I want to be able to just let him dive the whole time, but I know we need to try and work on some swimming skills as well. I can get him to do a few things, but I can tell his focus is on “when can we play with the rings?” Last week, however, I feel like he began to show some improvement. I got him to go around on a kickboard for almost half the time. We just practiced kicking; little kicks, big kicks, slow kicks, fast kicks. I want to try and do the same thing again this week, but hopefully try and do it so that he pays more attention to his surroundings at the same time. Maybe we will try a game of Red Light/Green Light.  

                During the first couple of weeks I was worried about not meeting the needs of the kids of our group because of their disabilities. I was worried I wouldn’t know how to implement the “right techniques” or learning styles in order to be the most effective. However, I have realized that all the techniques I would use for “regular” students are the same techniques we use for the kids in our group. We use simple instructions, make eye contact at eye level when giving instructions, we promote encouragement between the kids. These are all things that are very helpful with students, no matter their learning ability.

 

ESTABLISHING AN EFFECTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT!

I have to admit, I did not really notice this shift in CAPES! that you mentioned. I think after it was over we had a few epiphanies as a group and next week we certainly are going to be shifting our learning environments, but we had a week delay. :) A few of the things that I tried with our group this week was with L. He is a very obedient kid and super quick to please. If he is not following directions I think it is totally and completely because he did not hear or register them. He also has a tendency to have his eyes wander. So getting down on his level and having eye contact while giving him directions/instructions was much better. Also, asking him to repeat what you would like him to do (check for understanding) totally works with him. (BR wasn't there so I am wondering if the same methods would work with him??? Not sure) But I had L pretty successful at playing the rules of the game and cleaning up by using that method. We discussed ways we might help him and BR with their easily distracted little abilities and we have decided to try out the racquetball courts next week for them so that it minimizes distractions. Also, not sure about BR but L is a GREAT reader. So our idea was to have some kind of obstacle course or challenges for them to complete but the directions will be written on signs with pictures possibly. This way L can go to the challenge, read it, and complete it then move onto the next one. Hopefully the same method will work with BR but I am less familiar with him.
BE is so good at following directions/comprehension. His biggest challenge is fine motor skills, so I think for the remaining weeks I am really going to try to focus on different ways to improve that. I would like to take him down to the rock climbing wall and see if he can grasp his hands and just see what he can do. I think he would LOVE to get out of his chair and climb the wall. We will see if we can get his parents on board with that.

As far as learning environments go, what I have learned is really its a case by case basis. Which does NOT make my job any easier as a PE teacher. But just with my experience with L on Tuesday, I am pretty certain what will work for him. I don't have as much confidence with BR. So, what I personally have learned is learning environments are individualized. And that transfers over to a "regular" student learning environment in the same way.

Capes! 3 Let's talk behavior.

I believe that our 3^rd night of Capes! was much better than the previous weeks. Cheers for us! The time went very fast when children actively engaged in the activities. The first activity, “Catch the Fox”, really helped them practicing some important social skills. As I mentioned in the last post, I think of improving the efficiency of communication and making sure they understand the instructions will be the first step to help us carry on the activities. The difficulties we have experienced in the past Capes! are holding their attention for a long enough period of time; so, they can follow the directions and carry on a certain activity. Our children were lack of those skills. As a result, they lost their attention with us and quickly started wandering around. So this time we changed our strategy to “one on one” by having one student teacher stand by a child to make sure he pays attention to the instructor—Jerilyn. Secondly, the student teacher models a behavior one at a time so the child can observe and duplicate the behavior. We threw the foxtails through the hoop, and so as they did. Feedback was given frequently during the activity so they know what the teachers' expectations were and what they were supposed to do. Overall, we have reached the objectives for the land time.

Getting into the pool was another story. L was afraid of water. When we got him into the water, he held on my neck tightly with his arms, his legs were twined around my legs, and repetitively said “wow, wow” in a shrill voice. I understand his fear of water, but his overreaction in the pool was inappropriate. He did not take any notice of his surrounding in the pool. Every move we made only made him became more nervous. Towards the end of lab, he was feeling more comfortable in the water, and he was able to play some games with one hand. “I did it, I did it!” L was very excited about his progress. I think the achievement he made and the confident he gained might help him improve his behavior; but I also guess he might go through the same emotion and express similar behavior when we meet again next time. Be, another child in the group, who loves the water, shows no fear in the water. So I think I will have L watch Be play in the water to help him overcome his fear. Also, I think we will use “one on one” strategy in the water. I will need Jerilyn to demonstrate some movements in the water for L.

I am looking forward to playing with them on next Tue.    

Week 3

Tonight was my second night with BV because I was unable to attend last week. I am still trying to get a feel for  the biggest difficulties I will face with BV. I am noticing that he has a difficult time staying focused when we are doing land-based group activities. He has a harder time listening and following directions. I feel like I should take him off so that we can do our own thing, but I know that social interaction is something that his parents want us to work on. I think that maybe instead of trying to do so many interactions with the other kids we will limit it to one activity as a group and then work on our own to try to get him better at following instructions without getting distracted. Then perhaps in a couple of weeks we might be able to become a little more involved with the other kids of our group.
BV also tends to get a little over excited during the water-based activity time. He has a hard time accepting that there are other people in the water. He likes to do his own thing without any regard to who might be around. I want to work with him on being more aware of his surroundings, perhaps with a type of red light, green light game to signal when people are in our immediate area. Hopefully this kind of fun activity will help him be more aware of his surroundings and begin to consider those around him more.

Week 3.. Lets talk about behavior

L is awesome. He is so optimistic, he is smart BUT he has a really hard time listening and following directions. I love him to death but that will be the death of me, HAHA. I can tell it bothers my classmates when they ask him to do something and he just ignores them because it bothers me. This could be a huge setback for him if this behavior isn't corrected early on. His mom actually came up to me at the end and asked if he was listening a little better because she had talked to him about that. I kind of told her a white lie, that he was getting better.. I probably should have straight out told her that it was the same but I didn't. Oops.
I am hoping that by having the other kids around him when we do our group activities he will strive to be more like them. I know they all have somewhat of a hard time with this particular thing but L for sure has the hardest time.
To help him with this behavior I am going to break things down into smaller steps/instructions so that he doesn't have a chance to just run off and ignore me. I might even get down on his level and tell him to look at my eyes while we are communicating to each other. I feel this might help because I don't like looking up when people are trying to give me instructions. We will see how this attempt goes! I am sure in time L will correct this behavior!

"Lets talk behavior" week 3

I can tell you right now what BE's inappropriate social behavior is, which breaks my heart that I need to try to curtail... He SCREAMS when he is excited. He SCREAMS when he is successful at something, when a peer is successful at something, when he or a teammate even attempts something, when he wants to do something. He is a screamer. It is so flipping cute that I don't want to tell him to stop, but I realized it was a problem twice this week. Once when our group was bowling. BE knocked a pin down (only one pin, he is seriously the most optimistic kid!) and he SCREAMED in excitement. His peer, L then covered his ears and made a comment that it was really loud.

That is when I realized expressing his excitement like that doesn't bother me and plenty of people probably think it is super cute, but it does bother some people and he should probably work on a more appropriate volume. The second time was when we were in the pool. BE loves to play this game called motorboat where I spin him around really fast and really slow. He never knows what speed is coming so he gets super excited in his anticipation. I use it as a reward after he has worked hard to accomplish something he doesn't love doing. We were playing it on Tuesday and he was SCREAMING again in excitement and I probably had 3 WSU students look at me like, "what are you doing to this poor kid, you must be torturing him." Because it sounded like he was screaming out of terror or misery. That is the second time that I realized that his screaming can easily be misinterpreted by people who don't know him and don't know his personality to scream when he is excited.

When he screamed and L made the comment and covered his ears I tried to get BE to realize that his volume was a little loud and I had him say something to L to apologize or something (I can't remember now what I said exactly) and then in the pool I explained that people thought he was screaming because he was upset and I asked him if he was upset or excited, and he replied that he was excited. So that is for sure something we have got to work on. I love that he gets so excited. I love that he is so optimistic. He could get that excited about a fly landing on him. He just seems to love everything about life. So I hate the thought of trying to calm him down when he gets that excited because I don't want to curtail that. But in all honestly it is an inappropriate social behavior. He needs to find more appropriate ways to express his excitement.

SO that was one of my objectives for this week... To try to get him to express his excitement at the very least at more of an appropriate level.

Night 2!

Communication in our group is going to take some time. My participant L has a really hard time following directions, which is something his mom wants us to work on. He is not very good in social situations BUT he is so cute because he HAS to know everyone's name and is so friendly. He just doesn't have the communication part down.
I believe as a teacher for L I can try different approaches to maybe help him understand the directions of the games we play. And I could communicate on a more in depth level than I have been.
It was so fun and rewarding this time because we were able to play real games with them. Our group participants are so cute and the look on their faces when they accomplish what they set out to do is the best! BE gets so excited he screams at the top of his lungs. B is so hyper and just wants to constantly run around and L is so optimistic, he's so down to earth.
I think next Tuesday I am going to try to visually communicate with L. By showing him exactly what I want him to do, not just by telling him. We are going to play a team bowling game, so hopefully we are able to get some good social communication in!

CAPES day 2

Communication was a challenge within our group although not with my participant specifically. BE is by far the best at sitting still and listening to instructions while BR and L have a very difficult time stilling still and listening to directions. And it was tough because we would have BR paying attention and L gone off somewhere and then when we finally got L back ready to listen we had lost the attention of BR. So communication as far as getting instructions through to our group was a challenge. 

One of the goals we had was communication and we tried to play Telephone. That was not so successful. I can't really decide if the concept of the game was too confusing for them or the understanding of the "message" but when I said my declarative sentence as "I like chocolate ice-cream" BR took it as "I like everything" then BE passed it along as "What do you like" and L then just tried to answer it. That activity was way over their heads, and again, I can't decide if that is a game we keep trying to play until the concept is understood or if that was just way over their heads. 

Those were the two biggest challenges I would say with our group. 

On a 1 on 1 level BE is pretty good at communicating all around. He pretty much understands what I say and he is able to communicate what he wants pretty easily. I would say that he is above average in his social development. However he is with 2 other boys who are below average in their social development, so the 3 of them were really not able to communicate well as a group. That is something I am going to have to think about... How do we get BE to understand the level of communication both L and BR are capable of and then have the 3 of them communicate well together???

Experiences, trials, and breakthroughs in communication??? At this point I would say we have not had any great breakthrough moments, but we have only had 2 hours with the kiddos. And we have only spend 30  minutes as a group. 

At this point I have far less solutions than I have conundrums but it gives me things to think about. How do we improve the communication within the group? 3 boys on 3 very different levels understanding and being understood? And how do we improve the comprehension of our instructions? 

An obvious answer in how to improve our communication would be to demonstrate more, but again, that only takes us so far when L is paying attention but BR is not or when BR is paying attention and L is not... 

KISS...(Keep It Simple Stupid) Maybe we need to simplify the instructions. Only give one at a time. 

Here are some new ideas: 

SIMPLER instructions. 1-2 words/phrases

Demonstrate more (Maybe have each group leader demonstrate to each kid individually so we don't have to try to get the group to cohesively watch the demonstration) 

Create a reward system for positive behaviors (Staying on the polyspot, INTERACTIONS with each other in general etc) 

Keep working on ways to get them to COMPREHEND our instructions (I think that is the biggest barrier we are facing currently) 

What do  ya'll think??? 

2nd night, it was so fun...

After the first night’s playing and interacting with K, I was looking forward to the second night of CAPES!  And to see how my lesson plan would go with K. Unfortunately, she did not show up last night. However, it gave me an opportunity to meet with other children in the group. I truly enjoyed the time B and I spent together. B loved playing in the water.  It was cheerful to see him accomplish his task in the water. L’s big smiley faces keep coming to my mind as I think of the last CAPES! experiment.  B was so excited just about everything we did. His enthusiasm motivated everyone who was around him.

Consider what we did in the experiment, I think our team could set improving the efficiency of communication as our common goal for the next night. I like those activities we did together a lot because they are designed to meet their needs and interests. “Passing the secret” would be a great activity for them if we scaffold few more steps to help them understand the game. Maybe we can start the game with a declarative sentence instead of a question. In such a way that children don’t get confuse by arising questions like should I tell the next person the question, or, answer the question and tell the next person my answer. I think this activity is great; it will help them develop and practice active listening skill.

For the next lesson plan, I reorganized the last one and added some more activities including a bowling game with team members for K. The purpose is for her to develop some friendship with other children meanwhile not too boring for her. I hope she will come and have some fun with us next time.