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!