Week 12

Describe your notebook or file box?  Do you think this will be helpful in student teaching?  Why or why not?

I created a binder for this assignment.  It opened to sections with our lessons and instructional strategies (separated by subject).  Next was "behavior management" and several other resources.  The resources were put into plastic sheet protectors to make them easier to maneuver and find.  Some of the categories of resources were "transition", "academics", "classroom", "auditory", and "speech".

I think this binder will be incredibly helpful.  First of all, most of my instructional strategies and lessons were pretty vague, which will (hopefully) make them easy for me to modify for my lessons, regardless of the theme.  The template for the instructional strategies that I created also will make it easy for me to find the strategy that I want to use.  I am particularly excited about my additional resources.  I think it will be a great place for me to find info for improving specific aspects of my teaching (be it academic, classroom setup, etc.).  I wasn't excited to create the binder while I was doing the work, but now I am thrilled to I have it.  That should definitely stay a part of the course.  I actually intend to continue to keep resource binders when I teach--that will be so beneficial!  ...Of course, I may end up with an entire room of binders : ) 

Week 11

How can you prepare to address transition for students who are Deaf/HH?    Even after talking about transition in class, I feel a little bit overwhelmed when I think about it.  I think I feel this way because transition is such a huge adjustment for a student and I want to be sure to provide my student with everything I can to best prepare him or her.  I know that I would use the resources we discussed in class, particularly the PARC checklist and iTransition.  I would also like to focus my lessons on things that will be beneficial for my student in the future.  For example, if my student intends to go to college, I want to have lessons about college (such as setting up an online account for the university, student loan info, living arrangements, student organizations, student resources, etc.). What are 3 pointers you have learned in using instructional strategies?  Has your viewpoint of teaching changed after taking this course?  How or how not? 1.  I was given a huge amount of resources for instructional strategies.  I guess that "pointer" would be to use all available resources--ones that the school has, as well as sharing with other districts and finding awesome ideas online (I was entirely unaware that Pinterest had so many beneficial things on it!!!).   2.  Use a variety of strategies for my students--example, all of the reading materials that were brought to class.  Some had book reading, videos, manipulatives, etc.--i.e. a lot of different strategies could be used. 3.  Think through the lesson before teaching it--clearly, this sounds common sense, but I mean to think it through more than just on the surface.  For example, in a math lesson, the order the student needs to learn should be thought about.  If the student isn't grasping a lesson, the teacher might need to step back to the skills that the current lesson is built on and re-teach those so the student has a solid foundation.  Basically, be incredibly prepared.   I don't know if my viewpoint has changed or not... but I do know that, now, I think about instructional strategies in teaching which I didn't before.  The idea of teaching, while still intimidating, is now less so.  I think that is partly because of the variety of resources we were provided with in this course, the discussions on instructional strategies, as well as "on the spot" teaching of our classmates.  I think that was a fun and beneficial activity.