March 21

Not a noteworthy day on the homefront. New haircut for me. Kids are wild and the weather is COLD. 24 degrees right now. That stinks. It's supposed to be spring!

I'm getting ready to do teacher trainings for my school. I've never been responsible for a training on this scale before. This will involve our whole staff and will be part of our county professional development plan. BIG deal stuff. Makes me a little nervous.

I've been brainstorming a list of topics for the training. Our main focus will be working with students with delays and disabilities in a regular education classroom setting. I got to thinking today that some of the topics that I'm planning would also be applicable to parent trainings. I'm going to share my ideas here so that I can reflect and get comments on them.

Today's topic: Getting to Yes
The ability to use language skills to relate information about classroom activities, stories, and life events is a skill that develops through the early years of a child's education. Asking questions, answering questions and making statements about information that is being presented can be a challenge to students with language and cognitive delays. Thousands of times a day, good teachers ask questions about the informaiton they are presenting.

Helping students recall and verbalize the correct answer often requires support beyond the initial question presented. When a student struggles to answer a question, a natural response may be to give more "wait time" or move to another student to have a question answered. To help all students process and retain information being presented, it is important that every student be able to find the correct answer.

Several strategies employed during instruction and during questioning can greatly increase the chance that a student will be able to recall information when questioned.

During Instruction
1. Segment information into smaller sections. Don't wait until the end of a concept, end of a book, end of a visual presentation to ask a question. Do frequent checks for understanding throughout your presentation. The younger the student, the more frequent checks for understanding should be.
2. Make use of choral response. Have students restate or reread key sections of information. Having all students read/recite increases attention to task and is a more multisensory approach (hear it and say it!)
3. Use visuals. While many students can "follow along" using a large graphic on the board (or pictures in a story book), some students may benefit from supplemental visuals that organize information for them individually. An example of this would be cards depicting stages of a butterfly life cycle that can be presented individually while the whole class looks at a life cycle chart.

When Questioning:
1. Have all students repeat the question.
2. When one student gives the correct answer, have other individuals [or the whole group] repeat the answer given. Or have one person tell another the right answer "i.e. Steven did you hear what Ellen said? Ellen, tell Steven that great answer!" Then have Steven repeat what Ellen tells him.
3. Give clues! If you are looking at the life cycle of the chicken and your target answer is chick (i.e. What hatches from an egg?) you might give clues like "a baby chicken comes out. the baby chicken is called a ______" or "it's something small and fuzzy and yellow" Try riddle format. Try fill in the blank format.
4. It is o.k. to tell the answer to a student before moving on. That moment, when you have the child's attention, is the right time to supply the information. Always repeat the question when giving an answer. Then have the child repeat what you said.
5. Be creative! Try any method that builds positive esteem and gets the correct answer said aloud multiple times. The more times it is said and heard, the greater chance of that information being retained.

OK, that's a draft of topic one.