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.