Hello to my trill little creeps!
Here is a super easy-to-follow checklist that I created for my staff. Feel free to take it and use it with your Individualized Education Planning (IEP) team! If you feel like I left something out or could change one or two or five things, I'd love to get your feedback! I have one for each of our upcoming IEP meetings and we check in with each other so that things don't get done twice. Checklists make me feel so organized, calm, cool and monotone, as usual. I can literally do anything as long as I have a checklist. If you're good, I'll share my checklist for how to become a Kardashian..... ***IF*** you're good!
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In honor of Autism Awareness Month, I have decided to put together a list of short, sweet and easy-to-follow tips for interacting with friends, family members, co-workers and others who are affected by Autism.
***If you've read any of my other posts, you know that this site is not designed for Educators. I work hard to pick out what I feel is the most useful information for the everyday person wanting to know more about disability, Special Ed and Inclusion. That being said, these are the 5 general tips that I feel will help you to feel more comfortable building relationships, but it's also important to note that Autism can affect people in so many different ways. If you need more in-depth information but don't know where to start, you can totally contact me for help! Tip #1. Remember that people with Autism are PEOPLE! They are not victims and they are not a disease. Don't walk around feeling sorry for them because literally, that's, like, so shady! #GetYour___Together Tip #2. Always assume that the person can understand language at the same level as their same-age peers. If you notice that this person isn’t able to understand you easily, you can adjust the way you speak as the conversation and/or relationship moves forward. #Yass Tip #3. Even if you can’t use advanced language with a person, you should still speak with a tone and attitude that matches his or her chronological age. Basically, don’t speak to a 15 year old in baby talk just because they look or think differently than you! #WTH #ByeFelicia Tip #4. Some people process language at a different speed. You know when someone says something to you and then you’re like, “huh?”, but before they repeat themselves you’re like, “Sike! I heard you!” It’s like that. Give them time to hear what you said, process that information and think about how they will answer you. This might feel like awkward silence at first, but IT'S PRODUCTIVE SILENCE! Tip #5 People with Autism also may have a short attention span, so don’t ramble! #AintNobodyGotTime4That Instead, use short sentences that get straight to the main comment or question that you are trying to get at. ________________________________________________________________________________ Good luck! Your world will become so much bigger and brighter when you start using these tips to chill with friends who you never expected to bond with! If you need more info, please contact me. I can answer questions or guide you to some great websites. Feel free to take anything from my page to use at work, at school, with family, friends or whatevzzz! In the spirit of grading season, I have created a simple grading sheet that I use as an Inclusion Teacher to evaluate my students from a Special Educator's perspective. It's super easy to use and very straightforward! This is something that I fill out at the end of a grading period and go over with the General Education teacher to better inform his or her final grading decisions. This can be done for individual subjects or as a performance overview. (1) Give the student a score in each of the 4 areas on the sheet. (2) Provide comments to explain your reasoning. (3) Add the points from the individual sections to get a total-points value (4) Divide the two numbers and move the decimal two spaces to the right to get the percentage. Feel free to download the sheet and use it at your own school! I have FINALLY created a grading sheet that I thought was blog-worthy! My mentor, Ms. Sara Papagni, thought that it was amazing so my head got REAL big...REAL quick! And here I am....posting....during my prep time =)
I use this sheet when I create a modified assignment and I want to show how shares common objectives with the original, un-modified assignment, addresses IEP goals and how I graded the assignment. It's pretty straight forward. To use it, you just write the objectives 1 by 1, check the IEP goals that are being worked on and assign a point value to the different objectives. From there, you just do simple math to calculate a final grade. This will help others (such as General Education teachers) to understand your thought process and reasoning. If you like it, GREAT! USE IT! If you don't like it, then I don't like you. Okay, #BYE Okay, SO.... Once upon a time children with disabilities were EXCLUDED from the rest of the world.
That's literally SO annoying. Then one day in the 70's, MAINSTREAMING children in schools became a thing. Mainstreaming: Students with disabilities are members of a Special Education class and go to the same school with typically developing peers. They are members of a Special Ed classroom and interact with General Education students at different times throughout the day. Pero, basically, what had happened was.... People felt that it wasn't enough for these students to only be allowed into General Education classes during periods or activities that they were determined "ready" for. It seemed better to have them become true members of the regular classroom with their typically developing peers. This meant that they would also have access to grade-level curriculum, just like everyone else. Inclusion: Students with disabilities are MEMBERS of the General Education classroom only. While students with IEPs may receive services outside of the classroom or paraprofessional support inside of the classroom, they are not on any class roster other than the General Education roster. These days, we are working on better ways to make inclusion happen successfully. El fin >:) This is one of the first SUPER important things that I did during my first year teaching at Thomas Edison Charter Academy! After speaking with the mother of a boy named Mr. Christian (formerly known as Christian), I realized that there was a problem. When I described Mr. Christian, who later became my favorite (sue me!), and used the word "smart", his mother was absolutely confused. He was barely reading and barely writing in the 3rd grade, and mom wondered why I would ever use that word while talking about someone like him! Not only was mom surprised, but Mr. Christian was convinced that he was "dumb". I decided that day that I needed to create a special plan for him; one that was not purely academic, but more skill based. Christian and I sat down and I presented him with a list of school jobs that I could possibly offer him. He looked over the list, which included jobs such as "Mail Delivery Person", "Breakfast Helper", and "Office Assistant". He said, "Mr. Stephen, I want to be a teacher like you!" And this is where it all began! I went home and thought up ways to go about making this happen. The next day I explained to him that when you want a job, you need to understand what the requirements are and you need to go on a series of interviews. I contacted one of the Kindergarten teachers and asked her if Christian could come in once a week on Fridays to give a mini-lesson. As soon as she agreed to it I drafted this contract along with the evaluation form and self-evaluation form. Mr. Christian interviewed with the Kindergarten teacher as well as his 3rd grade teacher (who I LOVE). Once everything was settled, I explained to him that a contract is binding and he should not sign unless he agreed to the terms. He agreed and signed after spending a day practicing and perfecting his signature. The Results: Mr. Christian really took his position seriously and became so very well respected by his peers and, of course, his students! News spread very fast and within days I had kids coming up to me asking, "Is Christian really teaching?" He and I wrote lesson plans together that allowed him to go into the classroom and teach what he knew. Initially, he was nervous that his reading and writing would hinder him, but we were very strategic about utilizing his strengths. Mr. Christian read picture books (without words) that he wrote and rehearsed, he practiced writing, created fun projects and took goodie bags during holidays! For the rest of the year, not a single person looked at Mr. Christian as "dumb" or "the boy who couldn't read". He was tremendously popular, well liked and perfectly ABLE, despite an otherwise "obvious" disability. This is the kind of thing that I will continue to spend prep times and lunch times facilitating! |
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May 2020
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