5/9/2018
Topic:
Assessment of Learning
Dave Thomas
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- Option 2: Think of a student with a disability you have now (or have had in the past). Identify their disability. Review the Alternative Assessment Checklist and select two or more options that could potentially benefit this student in assessing his or her learning. Share your response in the threaded discussion.
I began teaching about 18 years ago. In my first two years, I came across a student in my English IV class that had stopped speaking. He did not begin high school this way. He lived with a grandmother and dressed the same each day. She would not accept clothes in donation. I have often wondered if there should have been more of an intervention with social work - even though I was assured by other teachers that this route had been addressed in the past. His disability has considered emotional, as the lack of speaking seemed to be motivated by the loss of family members in his life and apparent fear of becoming close to someone and losing that person, too. Small group instruction might have been an option to get him more involved with those that were more sensitive to his needs to help him overcome these barriers to social interaction. Diversified instruction where he was able to respond through another student - peer partnering - where he wrote responses and had another speak his response was a way that I recall using so that he could participate in class when discussions occurred. Over the course of the year, I discovered an artistic interest and encouraged engagement through pictorial response with his written response to engage through more means of expression. By the end of the year, he began to say a few words to me and another teacher when we worked together without others being present. I have heard that he began to socialize again once he graduated high school to some extent. |
5/29/2018
Topic:
Tools And Strategies
Dave Thomas
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1. Describe how two of the strategies discussed could potentially be implemented in your classroom. Be sure to identify the two strategies by name, and describe how they could be used to address the student's disability.
A. Learning contracts: In a theatre classroom where students are working on analyzing a scene or a short play for the technical needs required previous to design decisions, the play or selection could be individually selected for groups of students based on their skills at the moment. Then, the ideas and understanding required could also be diversified for the student groups. In the timeline portion, students could then determine how much time they would like to spend on each area (from a set of design categories - perhaps choosing a few categories from a list of multiple possibilities...for instance, a student may pick costume requirements from a choice of three: costumes, properties, or set demands.) Once the student selects how they wish to convey his/her knowledge of the scene, a parental agreement might come into the contract, too.
B. Cubing: I could see simple cubing by asking: who, what, where, when, how, and why after reading a scene from a play. Who was involved in the scene, what where they doing, where did the scene take place, when did it occur, how did they accomplish the events of the scene, and why did they act the way that they did, for instance.
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5/29/2018
Topic:
Students With Disabilities
Dave Thomas
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- Describe an example of adapted assessment you have successfully used in the fine arts classroom for students with disabilities: With a student that had a Specific Learning Disability, it was necessary to reduce the rate of instruction, the time on assessment, and the amount required to be successful. For this student, a 12 term section might be limited to 6 to 8 terms that were the most important, definitions might be provided or simplified on slightly more difficult terms, extra examples might be provided of the terms, and then on quizzes, a word bank might be given where other students did not have one. Instead of having the student write out two-column notes about all the terms, a worksheet with a few missing words for the student to supply from the textbook was also given in the process of learning the terms. As these accommodations were made, the student scored well enough on the vocabulary throughout the quarter to pass on the student's own merits.
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5/29/2018
Topic:
Tools And Strategies
Dave Thomas
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Option 2: Describe at least one way you have used technology to meet the needs of a student with a disability in your classroom. Be sure to identify or describe the specific technology and the student's disability. Share your response in the threaded discussion.
I taught a student that suffered from a partial paralysis in the hands and also had a speech impairment. At times, this student wanted to try to write, but sometimes it was too much for him. He had a device with him to allow for work to be typed and then printed later; but sometimes he wanted to engage in real-time interaction with class activities without feeling overly-assisted. I allowed him access to a laptop or even his cell phone to text simple answers directly to me. In this way, he was able to engage in orally-given quiz practice sessions with real-time feedback about correct or incorrect response, where his other devises would not have allowed for the work to be assessed in the moment. It also allowed him the freedom to sit away from me and not feel that he was hovered over during class. He expressed that he felt more independent in my class than he had in others. |