02 Feb DQ1 Gifted and Talented

Unit 1 discussion

Exceptional Learner

When you first hear the term, “exceptional learner, what comes to mind? What do you remember from your childhood experiences from preschool through high school? Please use no names, but you can refer to particular classmates and share ways they were different. Did they stand out in the classroom – why? Were they accepted by the other children- how do you know? Did you play with all children equally? How were children who were different than you get treated by the other children and adults? Were they in your classroom all day, pulled out by another teacher part of the day, etc.? What did you wonder? Please be as specific as possible, yet remember not to betray any confidences.

Unit 2 discussion

DQ1 Community Resources

This is a multi-step discussion:

Provide a brief description of your community including basic demographics and basic background information.

Identify 10 resources (5 community and 5 educational) in your town or county that are available to support individuals with disabilities, with a special focus on those resources available for children birth to age 8.

List the agency/support group by name, address and phone number including a brief description of the services offered by each agency and how they support individuals with disabilities.

DQ2 Assessments

From the readings, you can see that parents are often intimidated when told their child will benefit from an assessment. Their worries include thoughts such as, what will the assessment be like? Will my child be scared? What happens if my child doesn’t do well? Will I look like I’m not a good parent?

Now think about assessments from the perspective of children, especially young children – through age 8 years. How do you think they might feel? They will most likely be approached by a stranger and invited to go with him/her to a strange location. This person will take out the materials needed for the assessment and start interacting with the child. Imagine what is going through their heads. How will their feelings affect the testing results? Please be specific.

Please share any personal stories about assessments and young children.

Unit 3 discussion

Inclusive Practices

Think about inclusive practices and students with a disability. Why might a general education classroom be the least restrictive environment for most of these students? What are some effective strategies that you might use? What information might you share with the families?

Unit 4 discussion

DQ1 Down Syndrome/Fragile X

For this discussion, the class will be divided into two groups:

If your first name begins with A-L, you will work on strategies to support children who have Down syndrome.

If your first name begins with M-Z, you will work on strategies to support children who have Fragile X.

Regardless of the group to which you are assigned, the assignment is the same. Due to the complexity of this discussion, you will receive full credit when you provide your response to the prompt and comment on two other posts, one on your topic, one on the second.

This week we have reviewed typical development and began our work about atypical development. This week’s focus was on Down syndrome and Fragile X. Now that you have read the lecture, several articles and viewed several videos for an overview of these two disabilities, it is time for you to put all of your reading to practice. Your task is to provide appropriate teaching strategies to support the development of a student in your classroom who has the assigned disorder/disability. With what you have learned about the disability, please describe at least one strategy to address each of the domains: social, emotional, cognitive and physical. You can refer to the information provided, use the sites you have reviewed or locate other sites/information on your own. Whatever you decide, remember to cite your sources. Hopefully by sharing the strategies and resources, you will begin to develop a “Strategy Bag” so that when a child with one of these disabilities enters your classroom, you will feel more confident in your ability to meet his/her needs. We acknowledge that children with these disabilities are individuals and not all of the children will exhibit the same concerns or characteristics. This is an opportunity to put theory into practice.

Please state one of the disability’s main characteristics that your strategy is meant to address and provide the strategy that will address that characteristic.

The recommendation is:

State the domain

State a characteristic of a child with the disability related to the targeted domain

Describe the teaching strategy you would use

Domain

Characteristic

Strategy

Social

Emotional

Cognitive

Physical

DQ2 Learning Disabilities

Please visit all (14) tabs related to learning disabilities on this PBS site about learning disabilities.

Respond to this prompt:

Think about inclusive practices and students with a learning disability. Why might a general education classroom be the least restrictive environment for most of these students? What are some effective strategies that you might use? What information might you share with the families?

NOTE: The prompts for the Unit 3 and Unit 4.2 discussion boards are the same. However, the Unit 4 content and PBS resources are new. For the U4.2 DB, you must:

Visit the PBS Parents website and review all 14 tabs; and

Respond to the prompt using information you learned from the PBS Parent resources.

Thus your original reaction and responses to classmates are based on the current Unit 4 resources and should not be the same as your Unit 3 postings.

As you develop your original reaction, you could take the perspective of parents/families/guardians and critique the PBS Parents website from their lenses. Share your thoughts on: “How informative and helpful is this website and its resources?”

Lastly, it would be interesting to compare the Unit 3 and Unit 4 Discussion Board reactions. This is not required. However, you may want to respond to the following question:

After reviewing the PBS website, have you gained new knowledge and new resources?

Remember to use APA FORMAT in your responses!

Unit 5 discussion

DQ1 ADD and ADHD

Using the readings and resources provided as well as your own research, identify four facts about ADD/ADHD. Discuss specific strategies to use with children with behavior challenges, attention issues and high energy levels in the classroom setting.

DQ2 Culture & Development

Consider the readings and our previous discussions about families and the influences of culture and other values.

How might these differences influence a child’s social, emotional and behavioral development? How might we, as teachers, support the beliefs of the families and our knowledge of best practices?

Unit 6 discussion

DQ1 Mobility Impairment

Discuss how you would have a child with a mobility impairment participate in gross motor activities during recess. Then explain how you would re-draw the floor plan for a classroom that has children who use walkers, crutches, wheelchairs, standing chairs and other adaptive equipment.

DQ2 Intellectual Disability

Read and review one article from the Disability Scoop, Intellectual Disability section found in Readings and Resources.

Why should we read this article?

What did you learn?

How has the article influenced your thinking in any way?

Unit 7 discussion

DQ1 Autism

Think of yourself as the teacher of an autistic child and reflect on your own feelings.

What do you believe about the education of children with autism?

What do you see as the role of the teacher? What about that of the parents?

What would you say to other parents and families?

Should children with autism be included in regular classrooms? If so, when and how?

Discuss how you can support this child’s progress.

DQ2 Visually Impaired

Are you a visual person? How would you feel about including a child with almost no usable vision in your classroom? What would you have to change in your classroom? What would you do during circle time and center time to be sure the student is participating to the maximum extent possible in the activity?

Please also discuss accommodations you might make to support a child with limited hearing. What would you have to change in your classroom and during circle and center times?

Visual Impairment Simulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9CawJSUy2c

Teaching Students with Visual Impairments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPC_–R-Ma0

Classroom Tools for the Visually Impaired https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi3dH_QnnWQBlindness and V

Visual Impairment Awareness Month: Visually Impaired Preschool Services

Child Vision Problem Awareness and Early Detection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB6ctyzDk04

Early Intervention: Helping Babies with Visual Impairments:

Unit 8 discussion

DQ1 Gifted and Talented

Defend a position on how well you feel gifted and talented children are planned for in the public school.

Reflect on what could be done to better meet their needs.

DQ2 Disabled Adults

Search the Internet and find a video related to a successful adult who has been challenged by a specific disability. You may not duplicate your peers either with the same person or the same video.

Post the link to the video and your reason for choosing it.

Please provide a brief description of the disability and how he or she overcame the challenges. What do you think could have been done or could still be done to better accommodate this person’s disability?