Notebook: 

The notebook assignment for this class is probably one of the best assignments I have ever done. This assignment allowed me to gather new and old resources to use in my future student teaching placement and career. This has allowed me to organize resources I have slowly collected throughout the past few years and gather new resources about the different subject areas and strategies we have learned about in the class.
In my binder I have a general tab that has the power points and handouts about instructional strategies in general. Then I have a tab for each subject area that we studied: reading, spelling, writing, math, science, social studies, behavior, transition, speech, technology, and assessment. Under each tab I have organized the power points and handouts given to us. Then I have added the teaching strategies I found for each and any additional resources that I collected.
This binder will be an amazing resource during my student teaching and later on in my career. I hope to continue an organized system like this to collect resources to use throughout my career.

What are three pointers you have learned in using instructional strategies?

Instructional strategies has taught me quite a lot throughout the semester. I feel like I am much more prepared to teach school age children now and I have a better understanding of curriculum materials across different age levels. Three main things that I am taking away from this class are that there are people that have tried to teach the same thing I am trying to teach so always research to help you get ideas and different strategies to teach it. It will give you a better starting point and help you be better prepared for your lessons in case they take a turn you weren't expecting. The second main thing is that we need to be aware of strategies used by the regular classroom teacher so that our strategies match and the student does not get confused. And lastly, I learned that it is important to have multiple strategies for one concept in your tool belt so that if you plan a lesson and plan to use one strategy and that strategy is difficult for the child to understand or the child is just not connecting with you need to have a back up way to teach the concept so that your lesson time is still effective. 

Has your view point of teaching changed after this course, how or how not? 

I think my view point of teaching has gotten more positive after taking this class. Not that it was not positive before, but I am loving the fact that all of these resources are out there for us. It makes me feel like I don't have to tackle it all by myself because there are other people out there sharing their ideas and resources that I can build of of and mold to use with my students. 

How can you prepare to address transition for students who are Deaf/HH?

I feel like you can do many things to prepare for transition. The first thing you want to do is educate your self on the process you must abide by according to the state. So knowing when the transition plan needs to be set, what you should have completed at different stages of the child's education, the assessments you need to administer, etc. The next thing is to talk to the student and their family about their dreams and expectations. After that it is our job to help the student gain exposure and experience to what they want to do after high school and gain any skills that will help them prepare for that job/school. There are a lot of transition resources our there to help the students understand how to go about applying for jobs, going to college, advocating for themselves, etc, that we should be exposing them to early on.


What do you think is important for students to learn as they prepare to graduate?

I think it is important to learn how to be independent and how to advocate for themselves. Once they get out into the real world they need to be able to do things for themselves because there won't be anyone checking to make sure they get their job done or make doctors appointments, etc. I also think it is important for them to know all of their options and that they can set high goals for themselves. Having a positive sense of identity is so very important when preparing any child to graduate and go out into the real world. They need to know that they can be successful they just have to work for it.

If they are going on to the work force they need to have a good financial knowledge foundation, know how to pay bills, go grocery shopping, etc. If they are going on to college they need to know how to ask for help, where to go to get services, how to study, how to grocery shop, and navigate around campus.

There are so many things all children need to know when facing the real world, how much, how little, and what types of things you share with them will be unique to their individual goals, desires, and situations.

Students who are deaf/hh often have difficulty socializing and making friends with their peers. How can you address this within your classroom? 

The teacher needs to pay attention to the social situations with these students to make sure that none of the kids are picking on the student for not hearing something or for misunderstanding. The teacher needs to encourage the children to work through miscommunications and be friendly to all students. The teacher should also encourage the students to give those who have a hearing loss more time to respond to them and if they are not responding to touch them on the shoulder to make sure they get the student's attention instead of assuming the child is ignoring them. It is also important to practice different scenarios with the student who has a hearing loss so they learn to ask to join a group or ask friends to join them with a task, say thank you, please, and I'm sorry and many other social norms that will help them make friends.

Communicating with parents is very important. What are some ways you can communicate with parents and is there a better way than the other?

It is very important to communicate with the parents of our students. I think the best way to do this is by the preference of the parent. I know some teachers text parents or email if they prefer it that way. Some like phone calls weekly or sometimes daily depending on the situation and your schedule. I like the idea of sending notes home weekly to keep the parents in the loop of what is being taught and how the week is going. I think no matter how you do it, it needs to be effective and respectable fot he parent's time and yours as the teacher.

If you have a student who is having trouble paying attention in his regular education class. What are some strategies you can use to help the student attend?
I think if the student has trouble attending to the regular education class I think there needs to be some evaluation of the issue. I think you need to step back and see what it is that is causing them to struggle. If it is simply motivation I would suggest more visuals, connect more with the child's interest, start a behavior program, possibly a visual schedule also to help the student see what has to be done in order to get to a reward. If it is a matter of language or background noise or whatever else then more one on one time is going to be needed with the deaf educator.


Positive Behavior Supports or PBS is a program some districts or schools implement. Compete a mini-research regarding this program. Do you think this is a beneficial program? Why or Why not?
After researching PBS and finding out that it is a general behavior theory that can be implemented district or school wide and focuses on what the student is getting or avoiding with the behavior and how to control the environment in a way that will eliminate the behavior. It is data driven and seems to be a good way to focus on behavior. It seems pretty simple which makes me wary of it, but having no experience I can't really make that call. I think it is beneficial because it really focuses on what is causing the behavior and why the behavior is happening instead of blaming the child or chalking it up to bad behavior that can't be helped. I think the data driven aspect of it makes it very strong and beneficial to the teachers and students. It is also very important to me that it is a program built on promoting positive behavior. I think that is one of the most important things when dealing with behavior.

Science and Social Studies

Science and Social Studies:

What are some ways you can teach the vocabulary presented within science and social studies: 
For the text books you can conduct a chapter tour. Which is not only a great opportunity to explore the vocabulary for the unit but it is also fantastic to highlight and pre-teach the main subject areas and activities throughout the chapter. Interlanguage is another strategy to help build the language and vocabulary for the unit. With this you have the children explain what it is they are doing or the process you are talking about, and then you discuss it with them and model the correct language and terms for them. You can work on this verbally and in writing. Additionally you can work on vocabulary with true false cards, agree and disagree cards, etc.

How can you prepare to teach both of these subject areas:
I think the most important things you can do involve prepping with the classroom teacher ahead of time to gather materials and understand the concepts being taught. Next I think it is important to make any modifications needed for the student and think of additional strategies to use in the event that the student struggles to grasp the concept.

When addressing similarities and differences we often stay at the basic or simplistic Lebel of this strategy. How will you plan to move students beyond identifying simple same/differences to creating metaphors and creating analogies?
To do this I think it is important to build on the language needed to move on to metaphors and analogies. I think you need to explore the things that you are comparing. Like in an analogy for instance you are saying one thing is connected to another just like something else is connected to something else. The child needs to have the language and understanding of all parts. Using a lot of visuals and making it meaningful for the child is very important also. Lastly, practice and repetition. Those are always the keys when working with our students. Once they understand the function of the task at hand, practice practice practice.

The authors noted the lag in development of mathematics concepts is due to delays in language development, lack of exposure to life based problem solving and inadequate preservice teacher preparation in the area of mathematics. Do you agree?

I agree with the authors. Much of what we do is centered around language delay because children with hearing loss have missed out on language and incidental learning in the time before they receive amplification. You really need to have a good language base before you can start into more complex things like math. You also have to really pay attention to the language you use when you are teaching math. Specific phrases and vocabulary need to be learned and used so the concept being taught can be understood. I know from previous experience that if you switch up phrases between math operations the students can get confused. You have to be very clear and very careful about the language that you use especially with something as complex as math. As we have discussed in class math is something that goes from concrete to very abstract. That makes the language use all the more important.

I can't say much about teacher preparation programs. I feel as though our program prepares us pretty well, but I don't know about any other programs. I would like to have more instruction on strategies across subject areas but I feel like our program does well to prepare us!