What are some of the ways you have promoted the growth of self-control in the pupils you have worked with?
By encouraging students to establish their own realistic goals, we can help them feel proud of themselves when they achieve them.
by urging students to continue observing their own actions to determine whether they have participated in wanted activities. For instance, did I pack my backpack with my assignments before I left school?
by promoting positive self-talk among the students to aid in helping them concentrate and take action when confronted with challenges, thereby reinforcing positive behavior. By encouraging self-reinforcement among students where they are encouraged to choose and award themselves with motivating rewards upon achieving a particular milestone.
By encouraging purposeful learning among students where they are motivated to take the leading role in ensuring they keep learning.
Comments: Self regulation is one of the steps students in a special education classroom can adopt to take charge of their own learning while monitoring behavior and progress along the way. The five examples above point out several examples of self-regulation strategies.
What are some of the ways you have been multi-culturally sensitive to the students with whom you have worked?
By ensuring that the curriculum is culturally varied and relevant thereby enabling students from different cultures to associate with their peers.
By maintaining high awareness regarding bias towards different cultures thereby enabling the embracing of different cultured students.
By making sure gender dynamics in classroom discussions do not favor or marginalize a particular gender or culture e.g. female.
By encouraging all students to participate in classroom discussions without fear of being shunned or turned down due to cultural background.
By creating a classroom climate that encourages students to question and critique different aspects of the curriculum.
Comments: While having students from different cultural backgrounds helps create a diverse learning environment, it is important for the facilitator to maintain high sensitivity to the cultural diversity when working with students. The steps above illustrate the same.
In what ways have you been able to integrate computers and related technology in your work with students with disabilities?
By adopting the use of special education apps that help students in their spelling and writing work.
By encouraging the use of special technology tools that help in speech translation to aid in classroom discussions e.g. tablets in attempt to alleviate any difficulties in communication.
By introducing animated lessons through computers to aid in enabling students to easily grasp different concepts.
Comments: Technology and the use of computers is significant in enabling special education students to enhance their learning capabilities. As a result, the above examples illustrate how technology and computers can be used to aid this.
In what ways have you learned to integrate literacy, reading, and language instruction across content areas?
By encouraging classroom discussions thereby enhancing their conversation skills when processing new content and concepts.
By encouraging writing sessions across different content areas to break the monotony of listening. Further, adding more informal writing sessions enables students to develop their writing capacity.
By adopting pre, during and after strategies that aid reading such as previewing text, making connections and using graphic organizers to encourage flow of thought.
Comments: Integrating literacy, reading and language instruction requires facilitators to embrace reading, writing and speaking activities to enable them enhance them across different content areas.
What kinds of hands-on work have you learned to use with students in the areas of science and technology instruction?
Simulation of abstract concepts through computing technology.
Modelling of different mathematical concepts to aid in understanding.
Undertaking different experiments that facilitate apprehension of different concepts.
Comments: While science and technology are significant for special education students, the traditional approach that considers reading and memorizing from rote memory is insufficient in aiding understanding. The examples above show different hands-on work employable in instruction of science and technology.
We read much these days on teaching mathematics through problem-solving approaches. How have you used opportunities for problem-solving in mathematics instruction?
By encouraging interaction among students in solving problems.
By providing just enough information to enable students to grasp the background of the problem thereby constructing the problem.
By allowing students to make their own way in evaluating different problems without teacher intervention.
Comments: Teaching mathematics through problem solving approaches enables students to take a leading role in understanding the different concepts presented. By employing the technique to enable group discussions, evaluation of problems without teacher intervention, and providing students with only sufficient information for problems, the technique is enhanced.
What are some ways you have learned to develop a caring, respectful way of relating to students?
By getting to know the lives students lead – their personal stories and backgrounds.
By actively listening to students regardless of their different abilities thereby illustrating dignity.
By asking students to give feedback on a range of different topics not limited to formal education.
Comments: When dealing with special needs students, it is important to develop a caring and respectful attitude when relating with them as illustrated by the examples above.
What are examples of data-supported (or data-driven) instruction which you have observed in your Practicum? How might you use data-supported instruction in your future teaching?
Data driven instruction available in the practicum include:
Excel mastery tracker
Use of data-supported instruction in future teaching:
To assess the development of core skills such as reading, writing and speech by evaluating scores over time.
To assess whether various instructional tools are effective in helping students learn in the classroom setup.
Comments: Data driven instruction refers to the use of student information by teachers to guide and improve teaching. With the method, teachers gather data about their students and upon analysis of the data, discover meaningful information from it. Examples of such DDI programs are listed and uses they may be put into provided.
