Evaluation 3 & 4

The projects go in here.
Working within a classroom with Autistic Students is a Joy!

The exceptionalities bring about certain challenges and blessings on a daily and even hourly event. Giggles and joy, or confusion, tears and screams, are common in autistic classrooms.

Working with the students of first and second grade, the delight of the morning was watching the routine being followed and the dancing and joy bubbling over. A simple routine of coming in, and doing a quiet activity- be that coloring with the SEA or lining up toy vehicles, an independent fun time of choice was always preferred. Working with Speech and Language or OT, having an assembly or a big disruption to the routine often would result in much yelling/ or loud out bursting. Not having the teachers, or expected people if absent due to sickness was so hard.

To go through the calendar, repeating the Day, Date, Month, & Year, hopefully adds awareness to the world, and marked a progression through the school week. Each day, a different student would add it to the calendar, then the goal was to count there together.

We would go through the letters learned and the sounds. Phonemes are critical and phonological awareness is crucial to students growing in words, and combining them appropriately as well as spelling them. The new program being used in our School District is wonderful, and the students are exposed while in the classroom, if they are in there during that portion of the day.

As I read the story, I asked the students to identify the letters we had just seen isolated. The goal is to recognize that our speech comes from letters which make sounds that we use to convey meaning. Having the students identify the text helps tremendously, as well as the regular rate and cadences of speaking for how our language is supposed to sound. All of this is conveyed through reading a story to children. Being able to distinguish semantics are often caught from hearing others read. Fluency comes with practice, but first one must hear something one loves read to wish to engage.

BINGO was delightful due to the repetition, and the happy clapping. It was a joy to see the student's faces light with seeing the foreshadowing of which animal would be clapping on the next page by who was on the current one. (One student understood, and the other did not). Both ultimately enjoyed the book.

While working with Jack Hartman, the students sing, and dance...or with the Alphabet, See It, Say It, and Sign It! It is all on You Tube and free, and we used it, I used it...every day. He teaches children to say, write, and read basic letters and signs. This engaging format is one I look forward to using throughout my teaching practice.

Dancing is an acceptable way to let kids get the wiggles out and help the brain associate more movement with actual motor memory for how to form letters and numbers. For these students, knowing how to form the letters, even after just learning strokes took guided practice and many repetitions.

After working the letter Gg on a sheet with their finger, the sheet with a highlighters, and the white board with a marker, we moved to a worksheet with only one line of capital letters and one line of lower case letters. The beauty is working with the students on the strokes, then letting them color as they wish.

By the end of this, they were both done. I had a game for them to play, but their attention span was done. They went onto iPad time before moving forward with their days!