Orthopedically Impaired in the Classroom

     At some point in the career of a teacher, he or she will more than likely be assigned a student with special needs in their classroom. In some schools, students with special needs are placed in classrooms separate from that of the general student population. This separation is often because the tools they need and the help they need do not exist in the regular population. Today however, teachers are learning more ways to accommodate these students within their classrooms. With modern day technology, learning beside their general education classmates, has become possible for students with special needs. Assistive technology is working wonders for students with special needs and is allowing them to be included in the regular classrooms.

     In the school year 2003-2004, the U.S. Department of Education reported that of the 5,971,495 students receiving special education services, 1.1% (or 68,188 students) received special education services based on a classification of orthopedic impairments. According to IDEA or, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, the category of orthopedic impairments covers a wide variety of disorders; the most prevalent is cerebral palsy (Project IDEAL).
 
    With that said, teachers who do end up with a student with an orthopedic impairment, need to look at their lesson plans and think of ways that their lessons can be modified to ensure that that student is included in the educational experience. The teacher has to take into account, (1) the things that the student can do, (2) their limits, (3) if they have any medication that must be ready at all times and what time they should be taken, (4) how their assistive technologies work, and last but most importantly (5) any provisions made by their IEP, Individualized Educational Plan.

     Without getting into all the technicalities of the laws of Special Education and the specifications of an IEP, there are simple accommodations teachers can make during their lessons (504 Resources).

1. provide extra time to get to class
2. provide a bathroom assistance/bathroom buddy
3. ensure that their desk and any part of the classroom that is being used for activities has enough space for their mobility as many students with an orthopedic impairment use a wheelchair

     With observations I have done for one of my special education classes I have experienced one class in which there was a student that was orthopedically impaired. The student participated in the teacher's question and answer portion of class and the dancing activity. When it came to the dancing activity, fellow students knew that they had to understand and include him; they took turns offering to push his wheelchair to the designated area on the floor. The teacher told the student that he can still dance by simply doing the hand movements while a student volunteer moved the wheelchair side to side. 

     Personally, I do not have any friends or family members with an orthopedic impairment. My mother however, has Asthma. She has mild intermittent asthma and always has to have her inhaler with her. When our family has any events we make sure that family members who smoke are not near her and that we do not have her do any rigorous tasks because those things can trigger her Asthma, or worse, trigger an Asthma attack. 

     As a future educator, I will make it a point not to be ignorant about the existence of students with special needs and think to myself that I will never end up with one. As a future educator, I want to continue to educate myself as to how I can best communicate what I am teaching to my special needs students and learn about new ways I can incorporate them into my lesson activities. I do believe that these students can learn. I do believe that and when I become a teacher, they will. 

References

504 Resources. (n.d.). South Lane School District. Retrieved October 17, 2014, from http://www.slane.k12.or.us/departments/special-services/504-resources

Jamaica Gleaner. (2014, May 18). Johnathan Francis, quite the exception [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtLmYMHTPhE 

Orthopedic Impairments - Project IDEAL. (n.d.). Project IDEAL. Retrieved October 16, 2014, from http://www.projectidealonline.org/v/orthopedic-impairments/

The Importance of Letter Recognition

     Learning to read is a very crucial part to a person’s education, trickling towards successes later on in their life. The ability to read springs forth early on in a child’s kindergarten years. At age 3-5 students are brought to school and are taught a series of concepts beginning with letter recognition, phonemic awareness, and simple sentence building.

     Focusing however, on letter/alphabet recognition, teachers are tasked with young students who are eager to learn how to read. Today’s teachers have to keep up with the trends that are aesthetically pleasing to young children and trends that simply make them fall asleep. At such an early age, attention is a do-or-die type of thing. From all of the experiences I have had with teaching practicums in elementary schools I have come to realize that if the subject is not amusing from the get-go, students are going to let information go through one ear and out the other.

     Technological incorporation to the curriculum is the best way to take advantage of a young student’s attention (or curiosity), maintain it, and teach it. In this age of iPads, iPhones, MacBooks, and other electronic products that children are beginning to learn how to use and stay hooked on, teachers and parents are given an opportunity to use those things as educational tools. In the classroom teachers can use these technological devices as reinforcement to their lesson plans. The internet provides websites that contain games that are children friendly.

     As a project, a few colleagues and I had to search online for an educational game appropriate to the grade level we planned to teach as future educators. A game was to be played and assessed with young children in mind. The game my group discovered was called “Alpha Pig’s Alpha Bricks.” In this game there is an indirect reference to the children’s story of the “Three Little Pigs.” The game had a little pig pleading with the player to help him find the right alphabet brick to patch up the hole in his home’s wall before the big bad wolf comes. The game offered three levels of play: easy, medium and hard. In the easy level, the little pig asks “Can you find the letter a, g, i, etc.” When the letters have all been found the alphabet is displayed in the correct order on the wall. When the player chooses the medium level, the little pig asks for capitalized letters. When the player chooses the hard level, the little pig asks for a combination of lower and uppercase letters.

     This game serves as a tool to reinforce the learning of the alphabet and the recognition of its letters. Suited for it’s targeted age of 3-5, this game not only provided an aesthetically pleasing experience for children but also a curriculum aligned topic for teachers. When evaluating the game, however, the group found certain ways that it could have been tailored to be better in the educational setting.

     Researching on the standards of Guam and the Common Core we found that yes, the needs prescribed by the Common Core were successfully achieved but not that of Guam’s. In the Guam standards for the Kindergarten and 1^st grade, students need to have already some idea of the letters of the alphabet and should have the preparation to learning how to sound words out and read simple sentences for simple stories.

     This ability to read, as previously stated, is crucial to a person’s education and future successes. When a child reads frequently their reading skills are more strongly developed. “Having kids read a lot is one of the crucial components of becoming a good reader. Young readers need to become practiced at recognizing letters and sounds. The only way to get good at it is to practice (Gutlloff, 1999).” Further research shows that, if a child does not learn how to read by the 3^rd grade, he or she is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 (Sparks, 2011). In addition to that same research referenced to the studies of the American Educational Research Association, that same student at 3^rd grade, if poverty was added to the mix, he or she is 13 times less likely to graduate on time in comparison to his wealthier peer. The blog goes on to emphasize the importance by a very clear warning,

“3^rd grade is a kind of pivot point… we teach reading for the first three grades and then after that children are not so much learning to read but using their reading skills to learn other topics. In that sense, if you haven’t succeeded by 3^rd grade it is more difficult to remediate (et al.).”

As serious as these claims seem to be, they are very important circumstances to think about. If educational online games are not enough to get through to teaching what young children need to know by a certain age, a teacher should not give up. There are many other online resources that can be used like YouTube, animation generators, online books, etc. The pre-Kindergarten and the early elementary school years are very important years in a child’s life and if there is any subject that should be given attention to, it’s reading. Reading spans an individuals lifespan. Like any other habit, a good habit like this one must be started early and nurtured throughout time.

References

Gutloff, Karen. (1999). Reading research ready to go. Washington, DC: National Education Association. 

Sparks, Sarah D. (2011, April 08). Study: Third grade reading predicts later high school graduation [web log message]. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2011/04/the_disquieting_side_effect_of.html