Veronica's Week 6 Post

As I read"Marcus:Gifted and Talented" from our course packet, one paragraph made me think about a student in my field placement. He is a student that is in special education, during Literacy, he will go to the resource room to receive additional help. Since he is gone for most of the morning that I am in placement for Literacy, I am able to work with him during Math. My field placement students are working with the regrouping of double digit numbers in subtraction. This student struggles with this concept, I believe he can begin to understand it, if he was able to use manipulative's such as Base-10 blocks. In this article, Marcus' mother mentions that it is important to "allow children to use hands-on activities." Just as Marcus was better off using hands-on activities, this second grade student at Lewton Elementary will also benefit from visualizing math concepts.

I found the whole article by Breitfelder very interesting because I have seen picture schedules be used in a classroom for autistic students. This classroom has students that are autistic from kindergarten through the third grade since they have different inclusion class schedules, they have different picture schedules as well. Their schedules are Velcroed to the top of their desk and it includes every picture imaginable to sequence their day. This also helps their teacher and 3 assistants follow a schedule. As a class, the students' behavior charts are posted in front of their classroom. Every student has a tree with 3 bugs posted on it, if they misbehave throughout the day or have a loud outburst a bug will be taken off. If a student has maintained all 3 bugs, they will receive a sticker for them to take home and a sticker that is placed on a calendar once they fill the calendar with stickers they are able to have lunch with their teacher at Mc Donald's.
This classroom has many picture sequencing, it can be found for their lunch menu, calendars that include seasons, weather, day of the week and directions for students to follow such as: color (first) cut pictures (second) paste (third).

Jami's Comment:
I think it is SO crutial for autistic learners to have a picture schedule to follow. I absolutely love the bug idea that you mentioned. It is such a good idea! In my classroom I have a child who seems to be autistic-yet has not been diagnosed as such. I think this would be a great thing for him to have because there are many times throughout the day where he will just have an outburst and get very upset over something very minor. I think the McDonald's lunch is a great way to help the students to stay on track-I mean who wouldn't want to eat out for lunch in elementary school. I have only heard and read about the picture sequencing schedules-and am a little unsure of how exactly teachers do this. I know this sounds strange but if there is any way that you could make a copy or take a picture of one of the students schedules, I would love to see how the teacher has this set up. If your not able to I totally understand.