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.