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! 

CAEBER

The Center for ASL/English Bilingual Education and Research is a fantastic program that hosts four courses over a summer session for two teachers, one hearing and one Deaf, to come and train to be, "on-site ASL/English Bilingual Professional Development (AEBPD) mentors at their respective schools/programs serving students who are deaf or hard of hearing, including students with cochlear implants."

I feel like this is an amazing program that really shows an effort to help teachers who work with students who are Deaf or hard of hearing in their language. Just yesterday I had my midterm evaluation at my practicum site and that is one of the things that I was told to work on. I need to make sure that my signing is truly, conceptually accurate. And that is something that I really appreciate coming from my supervisors because the language is one of the main reasons I was so attracted to this field so I am very glad that they are continuing to push me in that area of my teaching.

These techniques can be incorporated in almost any classroom. And really it should not just stop at the deaf educator and the deaf ed. classroom, the people that participate in the CAEBER program train to be able to help other professionals in the school to use both ASL and English effectively and I think that should be spread district wide. I think something that we could do to help our districts work on this is have a professional development session focused on the two languages and how to use them, as well as attend any workshops on the subject as possible.

As far as my classroom specifically I fell that it is very important for students who use sign language to have a basic understanding of both languages. Those who are strong ASL users will benefit from using English for reading and writing, and those who are very English focused will benefit from ASL for the visual component as well as the cultural ties to the language.

Overall I am really excited to hear that there are programs like this out there! Sometimes I fear that my sign skills will dwindle over time but it is fantastic to hear there are programs out there helping us to keep at it!

When thinking of your classroom, what components of reading and writing do you feel are important to teach and how will you teach them? 

I feel like anything you can teach about reading and writing should be taught in  your classroom. I don't feel like there are any more important parts than others. I definitely want to assess where the child is on their reading level and make a plan for how to help them build their reading skills no matter where they are. You need to make sure that you are able to teach phonemic awareness, phonics, the alphabet, vocabulary and comprehension. All of these need to be worked on in a direct teaching way for children who have hearing loss so that they can effectively read on their grade level. I will use things like visual phonics, running records, re-reading,  leveled reading programs, and then all kinds of activities to help them build skills in comprehension, fluency, etc. You can also use reading to work on all kinds of other academic areas such as auditory memory/comprehension, speech, writing, note taking, and many many other things. Reading and writing are very intertwined just as we discussed in class. They are hard to separate and they are both so very important. They are also areas where our children with hearing loss often need extra instruction and practice so they are areas that we as deaf educators really need to work on. They are also very concrete academic areas that allow you to succeed in other academic areas and they are basic life skills that the children need to have for not only the progressive school grades but for transitioning into college, training programs and jobs. 

In teaching a lesson, when should you use cues, questions and advanced organizers? 

Cues I feel are going to be utilized more intentionally in the instruction and the guided practice because you want to help them build their knowledge but not do all of the work for them. The questions can be utilized throughout the entire lesson, but I feel they will be more useful in the independent practice and the introduction. Questions of all levels get things rolling, start getting them thinking, and allow you to find out what they know and what conclusions they can draw by themselves. Advanced organizers can be used throughout any lesson depending on what you are teaching and what the organizer is that you are using.

What adaptations might these need in working with students who have hearing loss?

Adaptations that may need to be made when working with children who have a hearing loss would be maybe the type or level of question, the level of difficulty or how busy an advanced organizer is, how strong or obvious your cues are etc. The main thing to keep in mind when working with children who have a hearing loss is that they have to learn everything directly. They don't hear things and learn and work through them like people with typical hearing can. So whatever you use or whatever you ask or hint toward, you need to make sure you are working on that child's level of functioning!

Homework:

My thoughts on homework are mixed. I feel like homework is a really great thing because it is the true independent practice. However, unless I have a classroom of my own or there is something specific we are working on that I want them to carry over to home or to practice at home I don't see myself adding to my student's workload. That doesn't really make sense because they are getting a lot of homework in other classes already.

Stages of development v. Common Core Standards v. Curriculum Scope and Sequence v. Hierarchy of skills: Which do you think is important when teaching students with hearing loss? What will be your focus as the student expands and progresses in skill?

I think all of those are important when teaching any student whether they have a hearing loss or not. I know what you follow with some students may not be on grade level but you still need all of those to know what the child is supposed to be doing or learning and what you as the teacher is supposed to teach. The stages of development charts are great to get a general idea of what children of a specific age can do overall or should be able to do. The Common Core Standards are established as what teachers are supposed to teach the children and they should be able to do it by the end of the year. I know there is a lot of debate over that currently, but hey you have to give it to them for at least trying! I don't know what all is pointing at it failing, but I feel like the idea should not be thrown away. I guess we will see what happens! The other two I feel are more specific to what your district is teaching and those are of course always important. I feel that you should dip into all of these to teach and not just follow one or the other.
As a student expands and progresses in skill I feel that it is our job to move up with them. If they are mastering a skill for their present grade level then you start shooting for skills above their grade level.

Assessment and Communication

When planning for assessment of a student with hearing loss, what considerations should you keep in mind? Should you use only tests designed for this population? Why or Why not? 

You should keep in mind a number of things when assessing a student with hearing loss. First you need to make sure that the test is age appropriate or appropriate for the student's level of functioning. You need to make sure that they have the language to understand what is being asked of them. (Are they strict American Sign Language users or do they understand the written language used in the assessment?) Then you need to look at what is being asked of them and decide if they will require any accommodations in order to access the information the same way as their typically hearing peers. Maybe there is a audio recording that you read aloud instead of play. Or maybe the child will need to have the test questions read to them or signed to them. There are so many things you need to think of so that the child has a fair opportunity to succeed on the test as their peers will.

I don't think you should only use tests designed for students with hearing loss. First of all it is good to see where they are compared to their hearing peers. That is the goal. Second, there are not many tests that are normed for deaf or hard of hearing kids.

Communicating with teachers and staff is a vital part of Deaf Education. Do you think face-to-face is better or email? Why and how do you plan to communicate with staff? 

I think face-to-face is better personally. I feel that there needs to be a working relationship between the deaf educator and other staff and teachers so that everyone is focused on doing the best for the students. Face to face allows for a more personable relationship, though you don't want to be in their room and in their face all of the time. If you have a quick question or something that can be completed through a quick email then that is fine. But if you are talking about how the child is doing, or what the lessons will be for the week, etc an email would not be the best way. I plan on communicating regularly with the other staff that work with my students through email and face to face communication. We will be doing push in and push out type lessons throughout and all of this requires cooperation from all teachers and staff working with the child. It is also important to keep communication open on a regular basis so that the skills being worked on and the behavior techniques are consistent across all settings for the child.

Educational placement for students with hearing loss has been a long debate. What are your thoughts about educating students within the "mainstream" versus in a centralized program/school?

I feel as though the push for mainstreaming is a really great thing. I think it can definitely help culturally as it shows the education system is making an effort to create equality here. Instead of pulling them out because of their hearing loss all of the time, we are pushing the students to excel along side their peers and that of course is a very great thing. However, there are some students that will benefit more and be more successful in a more centralized program. For me it really boils down to, where is the student going to be the most successful and have the best educational experience possible? The same goes for the debate between "push in" and "pull out" within the school the child is attending. I say if the child can successfully work alongside their peers then let them get that experience and build those skills. However, if pulling the student out for more individualized instruction will be more successful for them, then that is what needs to happen.

What are your thoughts on addressing attention span and problem solving? If a child is pushed in and is choosing not to attend to the lesson or has an interpreter and is refusing to watch them, what do you do? 

Attention span and problem solving are both really great topics for discussion. Attention span is something that I think you will experience in different ways with different ages. And problem solving is a skill that all students need to learn, hearing loss or no hearing loss. With attention span I only have experience with little ones. This makes it easy because as the teacher you push to make your lessons and materials fun and motivating. If you are still having trouble then you implement some kind of reward system for paying attention and then slowly fade it out. I have no experience with a push in setting so it is difficult to wrap my mind around how to handle that. I would say that if I had an elementary student who is not watching a lesson or an interpreter because they cannot comprehend what is being said then I would meet with the teacher before hand if possible to get the vocabulary and concepts to pre-teach for the child so they will not have trouble attending in class. If it is more of a behavior issue then I would have a discussion with them about the importance of paying attention and what to do if they don't understand or didn't hear something. This way you are helping to teach self advocacy skills. Then if there is still an issue I would maybe try to find a time where the student can explain to me what they understood from the lesson and they could make a list of questions to ask the teacher to help them understand. (This would be more of an upper elementary task but would also work on asking questions and if they didn't want to go back to ask questions then they will probably work on their attention span in class more.) Lastly, I might implement a reward system. If they really focused for so many days they would get a reward of some kind.

Instructional Strategies- What is it? & Why?

What have you learned in this class? 

So far in this class I have learned that instructional strategies are the ways that teachers go about teaching a lesson or a specific skill to a student. There are five different categories: direct, indirect, experiential, independent, and interactive. With these five categories it is common to use more than one or maybe a strategy cannot be classified under just one of the categories. Honestly, I think it would be wrong to focus on only one strategy. I see those five categories as different ways of learning that all children should experience in different ways through their education. We have also touched base on the learning environment we want to create for our students, ways to go about setting objectives, providing feedback and what cooperative learning is. The learning environment is always important to make sure that the children can be as successful as possible in the area where they are learning. Feedback needs to be immediate and consistent to be effective. And lastly, cooperative learning is having the children work through tasks together. I feel that this is good for any age and helps them not only to work together to learn but they are working on socialization skills also. 

What would you like to learn during this class? 

I feel like we have a good grasp on how children with hearing loss learn better in different environments and with different circumstances, I am very interested to learn about how to apply what I have already learned to different subject areas. I feel like each child is like a puzzle and it is our job to figure out what strategies of teaching the skills and subjects they need will be the most successful for them. I also enjoy taking skills, finding a way to teach it, and then finding a way to push the child's skills to the next level. I am also interested in strategies for older children. I have a good understanding of preschool, I think. But the thought of upper elementary, middle, and high school totally loses me. 

Research has shown that children with a hearing loss often times do not achieve higher than a 3rd grade reading level. What are you thoughts about this and how do you plan to face this? 

Overall, I believe that speech and language are strongly tied to reading. And we know that speech and language are areas that are greatly effected by a hearing loss. Therefore, reading is effected later down the road. Then on down meta-cognition has shown to be different sometimes in how children with a hearing loss learn to think on a higher level and really comprehend what they are reading. Not that their intelligence is any different than a typically developing child, but speech and language difficulties can present further difficulties with reading comprehension. I plan on facing this with patience and consistency. No matter the age of the student, I would assess them to figure out what it is they are having trouble with and then go back to the basics to help them get a good base of reading skills. If the child is having trouble spelling they will obviously struggle with reading. If the child is having trouble with letter-sound identification then we will work on that and I would introduce or continue visual phonics. I would also be educating myself on any new strategies that have come about to see if I can find anything new that hasn't been tried with the student. 

What are some ways you can provide feedback, do you plan to use tangible, verbal or both? 

There are many ways you can provide feedback. The basics of feedback are verbal feedback and tangible feedback. There are also different forms such as feedback from the teacher, feedback from a peer, and feedback from the student themselves. Feedback can be as simple as stickers or prizes paired with an explanation for the little kiddos, or feedback on a paper or art project for the older children in the form of a grade, reward, or suggestions. I plan on using both tangible and verbal feedback together as much as possible. As we have learned, children who have a hearing loss work very will with many visuals. Having something tangible to connect to the task that they did well or need more work on will help them comprehend what it is they did or need to do. Having a verbal conversation with the teacher about what they did well or what they need to work on is important to provide them with that language to help them understand.