Barb Rentenbach

I really enjoyed the presentation. I think it may have been very eye opening for some people. I don't think that everyone understands that even though a person has autism, they can still be an intelligent person. This can be seen by the words Barb choose for her book, as they were very impressive. Her language style is so witty and snarky, and she has a very good sense of humor. I've worked with a little boy with Autism, and he is one of the most intelligent children I've ever met. I really like what she said about people with autism finding their purpose and perseverance. I believe that given a task, everyone can do it, just in a different way. For students with Autism in the classroom, I would want to make sure that they have the accommodations they need to succeed and display their knowledge and intelligence.

What I also thought was interesting was everyone's reaction to her. I think it was really cool how impressed some pople were. Some people were very interested in her book, and her process of presenting. It was also interesting to see how some people reacted negatively to her. I heard some people around me making rude and immature comments. I think this really highlights the idea of perseverance, and the very real challenges people with Autism must face. It also shows what type of teachers some of these people will become, by grouping students with autism into a pigeonhole of low expectations.

I really liked how the first thing Barb said to everyone was "Autism in my prism, not my prison". It really illuminated the idea that autism is not what defines the person. Autism is only a part of who they are. I saw this news segment that really shows how intelligent and intuitive this one girl with Autism is. She describes why she acts the ways he does, and how it affects her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMBzJleeOno

Group Differences

I think everything we discussed today will be very useful in the classroom. I think we, as educators need to think about how each topic can be adressed in the classroom. I thought it was interesting how most of the topics related to the culture of diverse students, and that is where the issues stem from. I  I definitely learned that race plays a huge card in almost every topic we discussed. We need to find ways to incorporate their interests, yet motivate them and want to learn. Which can be hard if given such a culturally diverse classroom since every culture is so different from each other. 

I thought that everyone had great ideas about how to adress the problems. Or at least how to function around them or try to solve some of them. These ideas will be super helpful when we all have our own classrooms. Everyone is going to have students who fit in to more than one of these groups, so it is essential to realize ad absorb the knowldege of what we can do in our classrooms. I thought it was an awesome discussion, and everyone had important and powerful things to say.  I also thought it really flowed and all of the topics connected with each other. I want to keep learning about how to involve students with disabilities into the classroom with having them feel oppressed. I think it's a very deep topic and it can't be analyzed in ten minutes, but I am very interested in learning more about it.

Language

Suggested strategies I plan to utilize in the classroom:
Teach irregular word forms
Begin instruction about parts of speech
Use group discussion as a way to explore academic subject matter
Have students create short stories that they present orally or in writing

I think language is a huge component in any classroom, but specifically a deaf classroom. Since the teacher is working on teaching the students two different languages, it is essential that strategies to facilitate language exist. I would be sure to educate my students about the different time tenses in English. In working with hard of hearing kids, I've learned that this is a very difficult aspect for them to master. I would have them do worksheets that include different tenses. I would also have them create stories that I would turn into a book for them. They would write their story, and I would proofread it, then we could create a creative cover for it. I think a good way to make sure they understand the different parts of language is to have them write journals. 

This is a website full of worksheets for working on different tenses in language.
http://www.englishforeveryone.org/Topics/Verb-Tenses.htm

#9

I think both self-efficacy and self-regulation play a very important role in the case involving Lisa. It's possible that Lisa is acting out of turn because she does not have high self-efficacy. As her teacher, it is important that I help her to be more confident. I think an efficient way to go about this is to use reinforcement. I would praise her every time I observed her behaving or doing work well. I think with young kids, stickers also work very well. They get excited their work/behavior was good enough to earn them a sticker, and then they become motivated for it to happen again.

Self-regulation definitely plays a role in regards to Lisa. I've found that when working with kids with behavior problems, the best thing to do is to have them fill out a self-monitoring chart. There could be different categories like "working with others, doing fair share of work, raising hand, etc." and for each category, she would choose how she behaved by choosing a smiley face, neutral face, or a sad face. At the end of the activity, I would look it over to make sure she wasn't just giving herself all smileys. I would also know if she was lying, since I would be monitoring around the classroom. Then I would ask her what she thinks she did well, and what she may need to work on. And then I would ask her how she thinks she could improve, so she realizes that she is in control of her actions.

http://ici.umn.edu/products/impact/182/over6.html

Numero Ocho

I think there are certain tools from a behaviorist view that could help with Lisa's behavior problems. Lisa is unhappy with her role in her group, and thus acts out. I would probably use positive and negative reinforcement, and negative punishment to improve her behavior. For negative punishment, I would remove her from the group and have her work all by herself. As a positive reinforcement, I would praise her for behaving and working well in her group when appropriate. As negative reinforcement, I would tell her that if the group behaves and gets along, I would assign them less work to do. 

As for a cognitive or constructivist approach, I would use neither reinforcement nor punishment. I might ask her questions about the situation privately. I would ask her why she thinks these breakdowns are happening, until she comes to the conclusion that the problem is her behavior. I would then ask her what she thinks would happen if she were to change her behavior. That way she can come to conclusions on her own, and learn for herself. 


I found this website about what a teacher could do instead of using punishment.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/practices/practice1devries.html

#7

When working on developing reading skills, I think that metacognition and problem solving play a major role. I think a good idea may be for students to read a story together. In the deaf classroom, they would all have the story in front of them, and when called on they would have to share information with each other about what they had just read. Then I would ask them questions about things that happened in the story to assess how their reading performance and comprehension. I would have them write down their answers, and we would go over them as a class.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/21160/

Constructivism

I once did a lesson on George Washington for fourth graders, so I will discuss the sequence of skills necessary for ultimate mastery of the content. In terms of constructivism, they should be exploring and discovering information about him for themselves.

First I would ask them  if they knew anything about George Washington. I would include vocabulary and new signs into this step. After making sure they know that he was the first president of the united states, I would ask them why he is important to history, and why we should learn about him in school. Then I would give each of the students a sheet with information about him on it, and they will share with the class what they learned about George Washington. After this activity, I would ask the students to write down what their favorite thing about George Washington is.

I think this activity is good for the group, since they have to pay attention to learn trivia about the first president. Below, I just found a little site that has information about GW.

http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/trivia93.html