Week 12: Assignment 3

Please find the link to my prezi presentation on technology that can be used to enhance literacy instruction. Thank you :]

http://prezi.com/b4pt28u9qdew/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Week 12: Assignment 2

After reading the articles this week, I gained more insight into information that I have been learning throughout this experience. As technology advances and younger students grow up using that technology, we need to be able to incorporate different technological tools into our instruction not only to engage, but to help students learn in a way that is natural for them. Technology can be used simply in classrooms by accessing the internet on a computer, using a word processor, or presentation software. Technology can also be used to create authentic writing projects, communicate with peers from school and outside of school, and proudly display work for families and friends to see. One of my favorite uses of technology in the classroom is taking a virtual field trip. With the internet being so easily accessible in almost all schools now, students can take a trip without ever having to leave the classroom. This increases the possibilities for students to learn about different people, culture, places, etc. all within the classroom walls. I also like the idea of creating a class blog or webpage. A class blog allows students to reach out to experts in a field and get a different perspective about the things we are learning. A class website opens communication to parents and lets students display their work which makes the entire learning process more meaningful and exciting.  

The articles we read this week focused a great deal on digital storytelling. What I like about digital storytelling is that students who may not normally be motivated to write, could be inspired by the fact that they are moving from paper and pencil to creating a project they can share with others and revisit whenever they want. Digital storytelling allows students to creatively display their ideas through images they draw or pictures they take themselves. Writing can become more personal for students which helps them take ownership of their learning

Link to technology writing lesson plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F5FNRfUwQDKwm5kp4CVgOrTgUOTJOBBiuDcS2U1IVK4/edit?usp=sharing

Keystone Assignment: ELL Case Study

Brandy Blanchard

EDLI 636

Spring 2017

Dr. Hsu

Keystone assignment: ELL Case Study

Classroom and Student Background: For my observation this semester, I helped in a Special Education classroom for students with multiple disabilities at the Olean Intermediate Middle School in Olean, NY. The students in the school and in my cooperating teacher’s classroom range in age starting in 4^th grade through 7^th grade. This year, the class is a combination of a life skills class and a class for behavioral students. Because of the extremely wide variety of students learning levels and behavioral tendencies, the classroom teacher must have the ability to differentiate almost everything she does in the class. With so many differences in her class, the one type of student my cooperating teacher does not have in her class is an ELL. To complete my keystone assignment, Mrs. M suggested that I work with one of her nonverbal students we will call Emily.

Emily is a twelve-year-old Caucasian female in the 7^th grade at OIMS. She is an only child and her parents are divorced but she spends time with both parents who speak English as their primary and only language. Emily is diagnosed with autism disorder and does not speak at all. To communicate with family, peers, teachers, and therapists, Emily uses a type to speech device called a Dynavox which allows her to press buttons with words on them, or use a keyboard to type what she would like to say and the device speaks for her. Emily receives push in and pull out speech therapy services multiple times a week at 30 minutes a session to help her work with her device to communicate. Although she is proficient in navigating her device, she often becomes frustrated when she is asked to use it to answer questions. She would prefer to use sign language, but sign language is not used per her IEP so the push is really for her to use the device as much as possible to create a wider base of people who can understand and communicate with her. Besides becoming frustrated at times when being asked to use the device, she also becomes frustrated when she can’t navigate the device quickly enough to say what she is thinking. Although she is non-verbal, she is extremely bright and when given a task she likes to plunge ahead and get her work done quickly and as accurately as possible.

 SOLOM Matrix and English Language Learners Rubric: Because Emily is not an ELL in the typical sense, I had to do my best to perform the above assessments and fit her into the categories as best as I could. I performed the assessments with her Tobii Dynavox device and tried to categorize her using the speech assistance, with the help of my cooperating teacher. For the SOLOM scale, Emily scored a total of 11, which landed her on phase 1. For comprehension, she understands what is being said to her but sometimes needs things repeated and said as a slower rate, which landed her on the scale at a level 3. For fluency, she also scored a level 3 because of the disruption of her conversation and classroom discussion as she searches for the correct words to respond. For vocabulary, misuse of words and limited vocabulary make comprehension and conversation difficult. Pronunciation was also a level 2 for Emily because she must often repeat herself and change words on her device to help make herself understood. Lastly, Emily scored the lowest at a one on for grammar on the SOLOM scale. She will say words or use sentence fragments but almost never uses complete sentences unless her speech teacher steps in and makes he re-type what she was trying to say. What I gathered from the SOLOM is that Emily needs to work on putting together complete sentences so help others understand what she is trying to say. It is difficult to know how much she comprehends from a text without her using complete sentences and keeping calm when she is asked to use the device. I had a difficult time matching Emily to the categories provided by the ELL rubric. With the help of my cooperating teacher I placed Emily on the low intermediate scale in all categories (see attached ELL rubric). Again, her difficulties seem to be communicating fully what she is trying to say without getting frustrated. Emily can write, spell, and read (at a lower grade level), but it is difficult to tell how much she is comprehending because she often responds in short fragmented phrases.

Writing assignment and Lesson Plan: With the help of my cooperating teacher, based on the results of the assessments, we decided that the focus for Emily is two parts. First, Emily needs help with working on calming techniques that she can use when she becomes frustrated after being asked a question. The second thing we wanted to work on with her was putting together sentence strips, typing them into her device to speak, and re-writing the sentence while adding in an illustration to show her understanding.

Link to lesson plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12WvwTwnG7vAlAzoZrRP1vu5iMtH4_Xo2SbIlnGVaHZw/edit?usp=sharing

Summary of teacher interviews: Interviewing my cooperating teacher on ELL was a bit difficult. The school district doesn’t have any ELL currently, and at any given time they may have ONE at the most (and it is usually a foreign exchange student). With that being said, my cooperating teacher did her best to try and apply the questions to her experience with teaching special education. A connection I made between the guiding questions for this assignment and my cooperating teacher’s answers is that individualizing education is key when working with different types of learners. As we have learned through our courses at NYIT, differentiated instruction is necessary if we want all students to succeed. Collaboration among teachers, therapists, paraprofessionals, and others who have contact with the student along with ongoing professional development have helped my cooperating teacher learn how to assess student need, and creatively design instruction to meet individual needs.

Reflection: Overall, I had an extremely positive experience working with my cooperating teacher on identifying a student to work with for this keystone project. Although I was unable to work with an ELL, I was able to work with an interesting student who struggles with some of the same things ELL struggle with. This experience allowed me to see that patience, assessment, and designing instruction based on the assessment is necessary to make and reach student goals. I believe this assignment may have been easier to do using the SOLOM and ELL Rubric if I were actually working with an ELL, but I was able to relate what I was observing to the content we have been learning about. I have a new appreciation for teachers in the field of special education because as we see in general education classes, instruction must be highly individualized. In special education, not only must instruction be different for each student, but assessment, behavioral interventions, and even classroom procedures must be individualized. I was fortunate enough to observe an experience classroom teacher who was able to do all of that and more for her students. The only issue I had during field placement was fitting in the ten hours while still working. I would have to complete my hours during my off periods when I didn’t have to work with a student or during my lunch break. This made it difficult for me to be in the classroom for long periods of time, and also made it so that I had to observe the same type of lessons each time. 



SOLOM and ELL Rubric Documents: 

Week 11: Assignment 3

Graphic organizer lesson plan links:

Lesson#1 KWL Chart
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tWhho7un5CaYDYGHSPzmd4Uaj2Ivxd_0pooNgSMOA40/edit?usp=sharing

Lesson #2 Sequenece of Events
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M7IYIO_29PBFbkeiygruIItHxJSUyyc1AygVGjcrmWM/edit?usp=sharing

Lesson #3 Cause and Effect
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Gh3Xd6k2H7uDDVQAnk-x5Vb5l2I7zDLU3mZjtpZe9s/edit?usp=sharing


Thank you :]

Keystone Assignment: QRI5 Assessment

Brandy Blanchard

EDLI 636

Spring 2017

Dr. Hsu

Keystone assignment: QRI5 Written Report

1 Student: both narrative and expository pieces used for assessment

Student Background: The student I worked with for my QRI5 assessment is a 7^th grader we will refer to as JD or J. J is a Caucasian male who has been diagnosed with autism and is reading at a 2^nd grade level per his classroom teacher. JD is in a special education classroom specifically designed to address student’s life skills needs. He receives speech services as pull out and push in sessions multiple times a week. The first thing I noticed about JD is his extensive knowledge in history and social studies, particularly focusing on presidents, past and present. I wanted to take the teacher’s assessment of her student into consideration, but wanted to start with the primer level reading list to see if I would come up with the same conclusions as the classroom teacher. The word lists were read over a few different class periods, with breaks in between, as to not overwhelm the student.

Assessment: I began the assessment with the provided word lists and started at the pre-primer level. I wanted to see JDs reaction to the different lists and get my own idea of his reading level and abilities while keeping in mind what grade level his teacher placed him on. One the pre-primer list, J scored a 17/17 or 100% on the first list, and on the second list he read “where” instead of “were” but then identified the word correctly. This gave him a score of 19/20 or 95%. Both lists put him at the independent reading level for pre-primer. On both the primer and first grade reading lists, student scored 95% which kept him at the independent level. On the second-grade level list, J scored a total 18/20 or 90%. He automatically read 14 correctly and then identified 4 others (pieces, insects, weather, noticed) with still have him considered independent reader at the second-grade level. When we moved onto the third-grade list, J became frustrated at this level. Out of 20 words, he could only automatically identify 10/20, and correctly identified three more. This third-grade level gave J a 65%, placing him at the frustration level. I decided here that the best level to place JD would be second-grade independent, with higher level second-grade passages as his instructional level.

The next step I took was to have JD read both a narrative and expository text. For the narrative, we started with some basic concept questions so I could get an idea of his prior knowledge and see if he showed an interest in the topic, and would therefore find the reading engaging. After having him answer the concept questions, I felt like JD would do well with this passage as far as reading and comprehension. The student made 5 errors while reading, and read 87 WCPM. When it came time for recall, the student could retell 24 out of the 38 details in the story, or 6% of the story. When it came time to answer level 2 questions, he struggled to recall key details in the text. For an expository text, I chose a text about U.S presidents because I knew he had a great deal of prior knowledge in that subject. I was surprised to find that the results of the expository reading were like the results of his narrative assessment. Even though he had a great deal of prior knowledge on the topic, he became frustrated with the assessment.

Student strengths and needs: After the assessment, I determined that the student is very eager to please and becomes frustrated and upset when he can’t answer the questions or retell the story correctly. A positive of JD is that he is willing to learn and wants to work to improve on his reading and retelling skills. He wants to be able to read texts about the presidents and remember what he read. JD’s needs and academic goals are to work on fluency and confidence while he is reading. As his fluency improves, comprehension will become easier for J. He often replaces unknown words with words that look similar. He is able to get a basic idea of the story but is unable to recall key details in the text.

To work with JD on his needs, I have decided that he needs to focus on improving fluency along with learning comprehension strategies (such as graphic organizers and retelling) and discussing a story out loud while he reads.

Reflection: Overall I really enjoyed administering the QRI5 assessment and getting to work with my student JD. The most important thing I learned while working with JD, and other students in my field placement, is that you cannot judge a student based on their IEP’s or what other students in the class are like. Each of the students are unique individuals and need to have their instruction designed specifically to reach their personal goals and targets. Using both a narrative an expository text allowed me to see different sides of the student and get an in depth understanding of where the student thrives, and where he needs extra attention. The QRI5 helped me design a lesson that will help one particular student in his area of need. The idea that all students are different motivates me to look at each QRI5, or any other assessment, with fresh eyes and to remember that all students do not need the same thing, have the same strengths or interests, and need to be treated as individuals with specialized instruction whenever possible. 

Link to lesson plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7UJHwESwR2dTuwE0mr4HECvnYda6fUEbTjQoDmNppU/edit?usp=sharing

Week 10: Assignment 4

Below is the link for my recapture lesson based on the ELA reading/writing lesson we viewed on the teaching channel. Thank you :]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hLW03jqrWxujaroL1LY4yDH4U_6SKFeL4FE5snIBeok/edit?usp=sharing