Week 6 Post

1.) Several approaches and suggestions were mentioned by the authors, however challenges continue to impact educating students who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing. In thinking of your classroom, what components of reading and writing do you feel are important to teach and how will you teach them?

-In thinking of my future classroom I believe I will use a variety of reading and writing strategies with my students to keep the students motivated and observe what works best with my d/Deaf and hard of hearing students. I believe that all students should be exposed to all components of reading and writing to fully grasp these content areas. The components of literacy include: phonemic awareness/phonic strategies, alphabetics, vocabulary, text comprehension, fluency, and motivation (keeping the students engaged).The two reading strategies I decided to begin with were using graphic/ semantic organizers and pair and share. Graphic organizers including; cause and effect charts, storyboards, chain of events, and Venn-diagrams. These organizers allow the students to organize their thoughts on paper as they read. These organizers help students to understand relationships and concepts in the story. d/Deaf and hard of hearing students would benefit from this strategy because it is very visual and breaks down main ideas so that they can better understand the story. Pair and share allows students to pair up with a classmate and discuss reading comprehension questions provided by the classroom teacher. As we have discussed in several of our previous classes d/Deaf and hard of hearing students tend to struggle being social with their hearing peers. This would challenge them to discuss their thoughts and opinions and compare and contrast with their classmates by socializing whether that be using voice or sign and the interpreter. I’m interested to see what other strategies I will find beneficial when working with d/Deaf and hard of hearing students in my future classroom.
 

Week 5 Post

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

-In teaching a lesson with d/Deaf and hard of hearing students I think it’s important to incorporate cues when you have given the student an opportunity to think about the question for a few minutes and realize that he/she is still struggling to come up with an answer.

-I think that it’s important to ask questions throughout instruction of all lesson to keep the students on their toes and make sure they are understanding the content being taught. Critical thinking questions will challenge our students while they work in the classroom.

-Advanced organizers are such a good way for students to understand a big concept that may need to be broken down into smaller ideas. As we have discussed in several of our classes d/Deaf and hard of hearing students need lots of visuals.

What adaptations might these need in working with students who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing?

-Some adaptations d/Deaf and hard of hearing students may need while working on assignments are extra assistance from the deaf educator or interpreter, extended time to work on an assignment before turning it in, and an assignment that is broken down into pieces to make sure the student understands each part. Using many visuals and manipulatives with d/Deaf and hard of hearing students will also keep our learners motivated and intrigued in an activity.

What are your thoughts on homework?

- I believe that homework is important to give your students in making sure that they are grasping the content that you are instructing during class time. Homework doesn’t have to be something to make your students’ lives miserable. Just a small clue to the teacher to know that the student is competent on certain skills.

Will you assign homework?

-After shadowing a handful of deaf educators I believe it is our responsibility to make sure our students understand the material that is being covered in their mainstream classes. Therefore I believe that assigning extra homework would be unnecessary when they are already receiving that from their classroom teacher. However, if I were to become a deaf educator in a residential school and was the main classroom teacher I think assigning a small amount of homework would be acceptable.

How often do you think students should have homework?

-Ideally I think it’s important for students to have a small amount of homework each night to make sure they understand the content covered in class each day. This will give the classroom teacher a good idea if he/she needs to spend more time lecturing on a topic that students were struggling with in class and showed difficulty with when attempting the homework assignment.

Do you agree with the authors of the CITW or disagree?

I agree with the book in that homework should depend on the age level of the students and the amount given to them. We want to make sure students are not overloaded with homework this could turn school into something negative and lose the students interest. 

Week 4 Reflection Questions

1.) When looking at stages of development VS Common Core Standards VS Curriculum Scope and Sequence VS hierarchy of skills which do you think is important when teaching students with a hearing loss?

When looking at each of these important components I don’t think there is necessarily one that is more important than the other. I think each of these components play an important role in teaching curriculum to students with a hearing loss. It’s important that as the deaf educator you are knowledgeable on each of these components to ensure that the d/Deaf or hard of hearing students in your classroom succeeds during the school year. As we have learned in many of our previous classes each hearing loss is unique. With that being said each of our students with a hearing loss will be at different levels with the competencies that they have already met previously, what they are able to meet currently and what long-term competencies they are working towards meeting. The components listed above will provide you with helpful information that will inform you on the competencies that the student should achieve by the end of the school year in order to be successful in the next grade level. It’s important for the classroom teacher and the deaf educator to collaborate on how they will teach these competencies over the school year to prepare their students for the following grade. Looking at each of these documents in class was helpful to see how teachers use each of these to build a curriculum for their students.

2.) What will be your focus as the student expands and progresses in skill?

As my future students expand and progress with certain skills I think my focus will be to first praise them for their accomplishments but then continue to keep challenging them with more advanced skills. We always talk about pushing our d/Deaf and hard of hearing students to be independent learners and treat them with the same expectations of their hearing peers. We want our students to be strong independent learners as they progress through their educational career to ensure the best success. 

Week 3 Post

1.) 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?

When planning for assessment with one of your students who has a hearing loss it’s important to keep in mind why you are assessing this particular student, how you will complete the assessment, will there be any modifications made to the assessment including a description of the environment that the assessment was done in and how that affected the child, background noise in the room, how test questions were presented, and the students behavior and response to the assessment. These are all important factors to take into consideration when administering an assessment with a student who is d/Deaf or hard of hearing. In class we discussed that it is important to have a variety of assessments available to give a particular student in your classroom as future Deaf Educators. You want to have informal and formal assessments as well as assessments specified to children with a hearing loss and assessments that are meant for typically developing students. Having a variety of assessments will give you the best results on where a particular d/Deaf or hard of hearing student in your classroom is functioning in relation to his hearing classroom peers. There could be a scenario when the child you are assessing is having a bad day and doesn’t perform well on the assessment so re-assessing and giving a variety of assessments over a period of time would be helpful to get the most accurate results.

2.) 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?

As we have discussed in several of our previous classes, we have learned that as future Deaf Educators we will be working as a team with many other professionals in the field to ensure the best success for our d/Deaf and hard of hearing students. Therefore being able to communicate effectively with regular classroom teachers, other staff members, interpreters, and other professionals in the field is very important. In class we discussed that an equal variety of face-to-face communication and email will probably be the most successful. I think it will depend on the discussion that you need to have with this particular person and how much time you have to discuss things with them. That will help you decide if face-to-face or email is more appropriate.  We also discussed in class how it’s important to sit down with your team at the beginning of the year and exchange contact information and discuss the best way to reach each other and the expectations you have for one another as professionals before the year begins. I plan to use this process with my co-workers in my future career as a Deaf Educator and hope it proves to be effective. As we have heard many times before, “ communication is key.” 

CSD 764 - Week 2 Post

Educational Placement: 

1.) 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?
2.) What are your thoughts about push in and pull out?

Educational placement can be one of the most difficult decisions a parent of a d/Deaf or hard of hearing child may have to face. There are so many factors that play an important role in the placement of the child such as the degree of the hearing loss, amplification if any that the child uses, and modes of communication that the child uses. These factors could help parents answer the big question on deciding if the child would succeed better in a mainstream classroom or a centralized program or school. I think it would also be helpful to the parents to talk with the child's past educators and other professionals that have spent time with the child to get an idea of their opinions as well as visiting several schools and observing their environments to see how teacher and student interaction is in each school environment. I think the parents then would have a better idea and be more confident in determining where they want their child to be placed to get the best educational experience. Ideally it would be best for the child to be in a setting where they are pushed to succeed with their typically developing peers. If the child needs additional focus on certain subjects there is always the option of mainstreaming the child and providing them the push in and pull out method. The child would then be pushed in for classroom instruction with the child's classroom peers and then pulled out to spend more time focusing on that subject with the deaf educator at his/her school. Although I'm not completely knowledgable on this topic yet, I think it would be very beneficial to the student and provide them a time of independence with their peers, but allow them to focus on the topic in a smaller setting as well, allowing them to ask questions and receive more focused instruction. The school I will be placed at for practicum this semester uses this method and I'm excited to get to become more familiar and observe how the push in pull out method works and observe the results of the student.



Attention Span & Problem Solving:

3.) What are your thoughts on attention span/problem solving? What if you're doing push in, in a regular education classroom, how do you approach student if he/she is struggling?

In class we discussed that a child that is d/Deaf or hard of hearing has to focus on the teacher, the interpreter, and their handout/notes simultaneously during classroom instruction which can be exhausting. Therefore it may be hard to keep their attention for a long period of time. I think it's important for the educators to have their " bag of tricks" when they notice that their students are beginning to lose interest. From past observations I have seen teachers incorporate a "Wiggle Time" when they play a Just Dance YouTube video allowing their students to get up out of their chairs and dance along with the video to allow them to stretch and give their minds a rest. I think it's important for educators to have a strong relationship with his/her students and incorporate topics of interest into the curriculum as well as using positive reinforcement to reward them on "A Job Well Done."( but be sparingly with this system) I think that students have more respect for their teachers when they trust them and feel like they could talk to them about anything. Getting to know your students is key!

When it comes to problem solving I think that it's important to push our students to use critical thinking to try and figure out the problem independently first before asking for help. If the child is still struggling to find the solution to the problem I think it is then okay for the educator to step in and act as a model to help the student solve the problem. In many of our previous classes we have discussed how important it is to push our future d/Deaf and hard of hearing students to be independent. I think this will best encourage them to be successful in their studies and educational experiences and eventually become successful adults in the future!

Week 1 Reflection Questions

Week 1 Reflection Questions:

1.) What have you learned about instructional strategies?
   
     -So far I have learned that instructional strategies are the key to implementing successful lessons to
    our students in the classroom. I have learned that there isn't necessarily a correct or incorrect  
    instructional strategy because each teacher may find different strategies of implementation to be more  
    successful than another teacher depending on many factors in his/her classroom. However, there are
    many instructional strategies that I have learned about to be more successful than others in the field of
    Deaf Education and working with d/Deaf and hard of hearing students. Yesterday in class we
    learned that there are 5 categories of instructional strategies including; direct instruction, indirect
    instruction, experimental learning, independent study, and interactive instruction. These 5 categories
    further break down the amount of interaction the student and teacher have during lessons, the
    environment of the lesson, and how information is given to the student during implementation of the
    lesson. Some examples of instructional strategies we talked about in class and have previously used
    during practicum in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Preschool have been; flashcards, manipulatives,  
    books, visual maps, SmartBoard, pictures, and videos.

     What would you like to learn during this class?

     -By the end of the semester I would like to have a better idea of what to expect during student
     teaching and hopefully gain some tips and pointers on how to have a smooth transition into our last
     semester before graduating the program. I would like to hear personal stories from professionals in
     the field of Deaf and Hard of Hearing and their experiences while working with this population  
     along with what to expect in the classroom setting as we prepare for student teaching and any advice
     they may have to give to ensure we are fully prepared for what is to come in the Spring. Although  
     we have covered some of these topics in previous classes, I believe it would be helpful to go over
     assessments that are good to use with d/Deaf and hard of hearing students as well as behavioral  
     strategies to use in the classroom.

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

-Finding out that students with hearing loss often times do not achieve higher than a 3rd grade reading level by the time they graduate high school was quite surprising to me when I first heard this statistic and can be quite scary to think about as a future teacher for the d/Deaf and hard of hearing. Reading has been proven to be a very challenging subject for d/Deaf and hard of hearing students because it requires a lot of speech and language that most people with a hearing loss struggle with. However, I am willing to accept this challenge and work as hard as I can to make a difference in my future students to help them beat this statistic. During Aural Habilitation sessions this past year, we were able to use critical thinking to come up with fun strategies to help improve reading, language, and speech skills with a d/Deaf and hard of hearing student such as flashcards, videos, simple games, and books. I think it's important to incorporate these strategies into our future reading lessons as we go on to student teaching and later in our own classrooms.

3.) In looking at the first 3 chapters of CITW, what are some ways you can provide feedback and reinforce effort? Do you plan to use verbal, tangible, or both?

-After reading the first 3 chapters of CITW I learned some ways you can provide feedback and reinforce effort to your students are by stating learning objectives in simple language and in terms of knowledge rather than learning activities, relate the learning objectives to things that are personally relevant to students, modeling for students how to set their own learning objectives and provide feedback on the learning objectives they set, periodically checking students' understanding of their learning objectives by asking them to write in their journals or on a notecard, provide students with information about what good performance or high quality work looks like before giving them an assessment, and consider using technology to increase the rate of feedback and help with organization.

-I plan to use both verbal and tangible feedback when working with students in the future. I feel that providing both of these methods to d/Deaf and hard of hearing students is important and most helpful to make sure they have a strong understanding of topics being discussed.