5/7/2019
Topic:
Students with Disabilities
Luis Rivera
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This year I did not have any students with disabilities as our unit at my school is quite small and I received none this year. However, last year I had a student who was wheel-chair bound, and I then discovered she had Muscular Distrophy in certain parts of her body, sppecifically her hands. In my classroom there is a lot of clapping to rythms and walking to rythms, therefore I had to think of ways to adapt the lesson to be fully incclusive to this student.
Thankfully we were able to build our choir environment immediately to be loving and inclusive, so this task was much easier than I thought. The students were always jumping to help this student with any learning we were doing as I did assign her a choir partner. Her choir partner would help tap rythms on her shoulder for her to feel a sense of beat. I would also show the music on the board to make sure she did not feel "out of place" because she could not hold her music properly like everyone else. This way everyone could see the music and be in a welcoming environment where they all could learn the same thing. |
5/13/2019
Topic:
Assessment of Learning
Luis Rivera
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When I began my first year teaching, I had a student who had severe anxiety around others. She was the sweetest kid, but could not perform or even be around others normally as she was completely incapable of communicating social or musically with others. In my classroom we sight read constantly with Hal Leonard's note cards. As the year goes by, eventually we sing individually and I have the kids do a round where I show each student a card and we go down the line and keep a steady beat and each one reads a card after the other. As we kept going down, my special needs student immediately shut down and began crying and eventually leading into an anxiety attack. What I eventually did to accommodate the student was, I turned off the lights and made the student face away from the class (the other students were still in the room listening). When we finally go to her, she let out a small sound but it was in rhythm and accurately performed. The class burst into claps and cheers and this student was a step closer to musical proficiency with a disability. As a side note, what we attempted in the classroom with her was not in her success plan, so we ended up adding it because of the success in our class. We continued to do this and the other students were incredibly patient and supportive, eventually the student was able to perform with the lights turned on and in front of others with minimal incidents. |
5/13/2019
Topic:
Tools and Strategies
Luis Rivera
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Last year I was my first year in my new High School and classroom. My roster came in and I saw I had one student who was hard of hearing, and I immediately began to think of ways that my teaching will affect her positively and negatively. I teach really fast and one lesson after the other in choir to keep the momentum going in the classroom, so naturally I felt that this might pose some difficulty. When she came into my classroom, we began to talk about the vocal tract and I found a great youtube video that shows the entire tract and the way it works through an MRI and I was able to write on the board what we were discussing. The video was demonstrated as I taught the class and went with my dialogue on the big screened white board. The other students also found it helpful and my special needs student was accommodated successfully. |