Sunday, June 30, 2019

Week 6 Task #1 learning resources for learning disabilities

1. IXL Worldwide

Aligned with Common Core Standards, IXL Worldwide is a dynamic, immersive website offering adaptive learning for students with disabilities. From Pre-K through senior year, IXL will provide fun exercises for mathematics, language arts, science, and social studies. Children remain motivated by earning awards like stickers and balloon animals for each lesson mastered. This site will help with my students because it tracks thier work and the students will be able to be corrected.  Not one student is at the same level.  Students have students operating anywhere from a pre-K level to a sixth or seventh-grade level, depending on the subject.  After implementing a one-to-one tablet program  students, teacher can see this as an opportunity to look for digital resources that could help differentiate instruction for all of students and automate some of the required assessment, grading, and tracking. After some research, she discovered IXL.

2. AAA Math

Children diagnosed with dyscalculia will particularly benefit from AAA Math, a website filled with free, easy-to-understand K-8 mathematics lessons. Interactive pages help remove frustration from tough concepts like division, ratios, exponents, and graphing. Practice questions and fun games like Countdown give students’ instant feedback to prevent learning incorrect methods. Separated by Grade: By separating the lessons by grade level, teachers are able sort through the links easier and also find the ones that are applicable to what lesson they are teaching. Separated by Subject Area: This feature is helpful because you can find the content area easily. Each general topic is then broken down into more specific areas. For example, under the fractions link, you can then sort by a more specific area to practice, like adding or subtracting. Spanish Version: Because the website can be changed into Spanish, students that have difficulty with or do not speak English can still be able to use on the website as a resource. Math is the universal to all countries and cultures, so the website is able to spread across more students

3. Do2Learn

Attracting over 11 million views monthly, Do2Learn is an unparalleled special needs resource website started in 1996 through a NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant. Learning disabled youth access thousands of free elementary-level worksheets for literacy, math, visual discrimination, behavior management, and more. There are also printable picture cards available to promote functional communication in children with Autism.   Some highlights that Do2Lean offer for sudents 
  • Use short and simple sentences to ensure understanding.
  • Repeat instructions or directions frequently.
  • Ask student if further clarification is necessary.
  • Keep distractions and transitions to a minimum.
  • Teach specific skills whenever necessary.
  • Provide an encouraging and supportive learning environment.
  • Use alternative instructional strategies and alternative assessment methods.
  • Explicitly teach organizational skills.
  • Keep conversations as normal as possible for inclusion with peers.
  • Teach the difference between literal and figurative language.
  • Direct student’s attention to critical differences when teaching concepts.
  • Remove distractions that may keep student from attending.
  • Increase difficulty of tasks over time.
  • Teach student decision-making rules for discriminating important from unimportant details.

Monday, June 24, 2019

Week 5 Task #2 Working with special needs students Current Issue Report #4


meeting needs of students with special needs

To create a supportive learning enviornment for students with needs start with the relationshipsCreate opportunities for students to interact by designing some relationship building activities. For example, one teacher mentioned taking three minutes in class to have students group themselves according to animals or foods they like, or their birthdays. When students see what they have in common with one another, they begin to build trust and relationships. Realizing that they might have a lot in common, that someone else in the class is “just like me”, can be used as a springboard to ongoing relationship building.

When you have a mixture of different special needs in your classroom offer opportunities for students to engage in reading together. Place students into mixed ability groups and have time to interact with each group. Students need to hear fluent reading and have practice, so by pairing students with fluent readers, students can build their skills. In these activities, both students get practice modeling good reading and working together. Some tools used for this are Lexia and Alphabet Prosody.

 The tools and strategies teachers can use when possible, co-teaching is a great way to provide additional support in the classroom. It opens up the opportunity to work with small groups or to design independent learning centers, which focus on specific skills. One EdCamp attendee shared that in her classroom, two learning centers may be focused on the same skill but delivered in a different format, or offer adaptations to help students become more independent. Making time to work with the special education teachers and share strategies is key.

Reference:
https://www.gettingsmart.com/2018/04/working-with-special-needs-students-what-do-all-teachers-need-to-know/

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Week 4 Task #2



How to use Technology to support ELL in Your Classroom


https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/how-to-use-technology-to-support-ells-in-your-
classroom

There are many needs for ELLs that come to our school system.  ELL is a diverse group of students in every sense.  There are many  aps and tools available.  There are lots of online tools that have built in features to support differentiated instruction for a variety of learners.  While searching for tools for ELL students the tools are usually aimed at more general student audience.  Advanced ELL, and beggining level ELLs may need more suport.  Tools to try is Newela, ThinkCERA,Khan Academy, Voice Thread, Simple English Wikipedia, and Google.  A lot of tools disigned only for ELLS is scarce, Brain Pop ESL offers a comprehensive online curriculum aimed at improving kids' language skills from beginning to advanced levels. Storytelling is an excellent, interactive learning activity for ELLs and bilingual learners of all ages and language abilities. Even though these apps tend to be aimed at younger kids (and not specifically at ELLs), they still offer opportunities for kids to express themselves while they build new language skills

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Week 3 Task #3 Cast UDL Part 2



Latonia Woods

UDL- Universal Design of Learning Three brain network

Recognition- what of learning

Skills and Strategies- how of learning

Caring and Prioritizing- why of learning

The Life Cycle of Butterflies, Day 1

Who- PreK to 2nd will be learning the first part of the butterfly cycle in science.

What- This first lesson of two is part of a larger unit that focuses on the life cycle of butterflies, including their habitats, eating habits, and growth cycle. In this particular set of lessons, students will learn about the growth cycle of the butterfly, and will extend that knowledge to understand that the growth cycle of butterflies is different from many other animals. Students will engage in several different activities to support their learning and they will have several different opportunities throughout the two days to share their new knowledge. Students will be using California state standards 2.a, and 2.b and Minnesota Academic standards IV.B. The goals of the student will identify and describe the life cycle of the butterfly is different than other animals. Students will understand that at the beginning of an animals life cycle, some young animals represent the adults while others do not.
How Share lesson goals and objectives with students: that they will learn about the life cycle of butterflies, the names of the stages, and what they look like. Ask them why they think it's important to learn about the life cycle of a butterfly, so they can understand and compare the life cycle of different living animals, how they are the same and how they are different. Present students with new information appropriate to the lesson, highlighting the various stages of the butterfly life cycle and the correct vocabulary including metamorphosis and the name of each stage (egg, caterpillar or larva, chrysalis or pupa, and adult butterfly). Students will use graphs, videos and text and graphics.  

  • Use images to illustrate life cycle stages (see attached image for your use).
  • Show the film Butterflies to your class.

Following the lesson's introduction, use a set of life cycle playing cards to reinforce new information. Tell students that each card represents one stage in the life of a butterfly, but the stages are not in order. Provide a think aloud to model the correct way to order the cards so students can accurately represent the life cycle of butterflies. Formative and summative assessments will be given.





Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Week 3 Task 2 Diversity in the News



New York City takes an important step in improving school integration by measuring diversity
According to Andre M. Perry, Diversity isn’t simply a student enrollment issue. Inclusion involves the school staff as well. Consequently, the report calls for diversity among “principals, teachers, paraprofessionals, and all other school staff.”

While housing segregation strongly influences the composition of the student body, even in diverse cities, low-income black and brown students are increasingly becoming concentrated in certain schools. This is a result of middle-income, largely white families choosing to cluster in middle- and upper-income schools and neighborhoods in their pursuit of a good education for their kids.

Using standardized testing to measure academic achievement is one way to capture how good a school is, but differences in achievement that promulgate inequality are caused by segregation. Lifting test scores is far from the end goal we perceive it to be. Integration in schools and the workplace, social cohesion, and democratic decision-making are essential goals of a democracy that schools are supposed to encourage. Becoming more educated by being more segregated, which we seem quite comfortable with, should be avoided. Schools should be held accountable to higher-order democratic aims like integration rather than just pushing students to some level of academic progress.

The report tackles the information of wealth and quality by recommending that all schools reflect the diversity of the city and borough they are in. The report asks that schools within each borough of New York City, which is a sub-district, develop student enrollment targets based on the percentage of racial and economic groups, language learners and students with disabilities within the district.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/02/19/new-york-city-takes-an-important-step-in-improving-school-integration-by-measuring-diversity/









Week 3 Assignment #3 UDL Part 1

The way people learn is unique as their finger prints.  Classrooms are diverse and curriculum needs to be disigned froomt he start to meet this diversity.  UDL is an approach to minimize barriers and maximize barriers for all students for learning.  Universal curriculum that can be used by everyone.  Each learner brings their own background needs and intrest.  Curriculum provides learning for each student. Learning is not one thing, it's who what when where and why of learning. UDL is suppose to accomodate all types of learners. To use a UDL you ask yourself what is my goal for my students, what are my barriers in the classroom.  UDL you use representation, action, expression and engagement,  UDL mean learning opportunities for all.