Portfolio Assignment!

Rebecca Young and Sarah Arrowsmith

Learn and Serve on November 18, 2009

Today in learn and serve I was able to work with a Chinese American student whom I have been able to work with each week. This week we were working on her pronouncing words and by sounding out the word figuring out which letter it began with.

It was quite interesting to see that the mistakes she was making with her letter sounds are the same mistakes all kids make while learning them. She was making mistakes when it came to the G and J, also C and K. You could see the look at her face was so confident. She knew that she knew the letters and words and was excited to show me how much she had progressed.

After we played a game and she did amazing she just looked over at me, gave me a thumbs up, and just smiled. It was so nice to see her happy and proud of herself. Before, at the beginning of my placement, she was scared to talk in front of me because she seemed embarassed. It was hard to ever see her happy, or proud of herself. It felt so good to see that she was proud of herself!

Blog November 5th

 Today in class we worked with students from opportunities unlimited. In a small group we were able to take the student around campus and work on our video/ picture project. Myself and Kristin worked with Lisa. She was so much fun and energetic. When we got back to the classroom we worked together in different stations. The different stations were story telling, play doh, building a fort, and intelligence. We were not able to do all the stations but we did the play doh and the fort. Lisa really enjoyed both. When we played with the play doh she loved talking to us about herself and learning about us. She also seemed to enjoy building the fort because she liked our team work and loved working with everyone.

My experience with Lisa was amazing. I was extremely nervous about meeting my student and was not sure what to expect. I noticed that although Lisa had a disability she was no different than anyone else. She acted and talked almost as if she had no disability. After meeting Lisa and spending time with her my nerves lifted and I became so comfortable. I felt almost as if I was just spending time with a friend!

Chapter 11 talks about students who have trouble seeing. On page 367 in our text there is a statistic that I found interesting. "Measures of social maturity and cognitive development showed delay." I was not able to spend time today with a student who vision is impaired but I could see how it would be difficult for a student who has these obstacles. The activity where we were able to go all over campus and make a film or take pictures in order to make a slide show would be very difficult for that student. Because they would not be able to take the picture or film part of their film it would frustrate them.

Learn and Serve on November 4, 2009

Today in learn and serve I was able to work with a kindergarten student who is an ESL student but has progressed so much in the past few months. I was helping her write a short paragraph about her weekend. Before writing out what she wanted to say I had her say it to me, while telling me what she did she spoke proper english. Unfortunately when she went to write down what she said it was completely different. When she was writing she did not use the past tense and was very confused when myself and the teacher explained it to her.

Another student I worked with is one I work with every week. I have blogged about her before, she is Asian American and was having lots of trouble with her english. I was quite surprised and happy to see the progress she has made in just a week. She is now speaking in full sentences, and is having conversations with me and the teacher. We were able to get her to talk to us about her halloween costume. She loved talking about it, you could tell she loved her costume and had so much fun by her expressions.

October 29, 2009

Today in class we talked about the play She Stoops to Conquer. We talked about what the play was about then we got into groups and wrote out our own little stories about each character that was picked from the play. By moving around the room to all the different story ideas it got all of our imaginations going at 8:30 in the morning.  After that we broke into another  group and started to film our video. Our group of 6 went onto the third floor in the academic building and filmed. Our short film, movie trailer, was about the love interests in the play. We spent about a half an hour working on it then brought our photos and film back to the classroom the get edited.

I noticed that students were having a lot more fun learning by doing the films. By going all over campus with classmates and filming short films gets us out of the classroom and gets us interested in what we were learning about.

I wondered how and where the idea came about to do this activity. I never would have thought to do an activity like this because I was not sure at first why we were doing it.

Next class I'm looking forward to learning more ways to teach students without sitting and reading a book.

Have you ever spent time with an adult with a cognitive or developmental disability? I have never spent time with an adult with a disability. I am actually quite nervous to spend time with the students from Opportunities Unlimited because I am not sure how comfortable I will be around them and I would not want them to feel uncomfortable around me.

Quiz 7

 What kind of activity is this?

This activity was a chalkboard activity. With this activity we drew different pictures and labeled them according to the different disorders that we have learned about this semester.

How does it challenge you?

I was challenged by this activity because it was hard to pick just a few pieces of information that seemed the most important in the reading and abut that disorder.

What background knowledge are you using to complete this activity?

The background knowledge that I am using to complete this activity is what I have learned so far this semester and also what I have seen while working in a classroom at learn and serve.

How much do you love this Blackboard compared to the other Blackboard?

I like this blackboard MUCH more than the other blackboard!

week 8 post

Before watching the video in class today I thought the top 3 things needed while working with parents are being positive about the student, being confident while talking about the student and understanding the child's needs. Another important factor would be having some of their work present during the conference.

To be an effective communicator during a parent conferences you have to be able to tell the parent the good and the bad. You also have to be able to listen to the parent about what the student is telling them. It is very important for you to listen to what the parents think about the class. You also have to be able to defend what it is your doing in the classroom and letting the parent know what the child does in the class.

 

After watching the film, Home-School Communication: The Parent-Teacher Conference, I realized that there were many more things I needed to be thinking about for parent conferences. The teacher in the film had a good amount of the students work with him already to show the parent. He showed both the positive the negative about the child's work so the parent knew what she had to work more on. There were times when the parent had talked about how the student was feeling when she came home. Not everything she mentioned was positive but the teacher not only addr

essed  those problems but he also talked about positive things that do happen in the classroom.

Wadsworth Cengage Learning: Home-School Communication: The Parent-Teacher Conference. 

10/28/09 at Sidway

Today in class we worked with the Asian American student again and helping her learn what the word under means. We played a few games and she seemed to have understood what it meant. She had been learning the meaning of under for a few days before I went and from my understanding she was not doing a good job with the worksheets. It is somet

imes difficult to tell whether or not she understands. I feel like she is making good progress but it seemed to me that doing worksheets are still too difficult for her to do. Most of time she can not understand anything on the worksheet and we have to show her a few examples before she has any clue as to what to do with the worksheet.

After leaving learn and serve I felt so good because for the first time I saw my student show us that she understands something and comprehends what we were telling her to do! We played a game where we told her to take a picture and put it under an object in the classroom. After she placed all the pictures under the objects we ask her to go back around, find the pictures and tell us what the picture is of and where she found it. For example, if she found the picture of a pumpkin under the red chair she has to say, "the pumpkin is under the red chair."