Meeting with Jayne

As part of my grad school work, I along with other Shakopee Saint Mary's students, recently met with Jayne to aks questions about curriculum and how it works in our district. It was interesting to hear how everything with our curriculum came to be. She discussed the curriculum process and what is done at the various levels. Jayne wears many hats in our district, and is amazing at what she does!!

End of the Year

I always try to stay ahead as the end of the year approaches, but am finding this very difficult to do! I have finished DRA's, put the scores in, and am currently working on report cards, but am still feeling a little overwhelmed!! I suppose I get this feeling at the end of every year, but I want to make sure I get done everything earlier, so I can relax a little at the end! It is a busy May!!

Asperger's Syndrome

At the Autism Conference, I had the opportunity to see a documentary called, "Today's Man: Striving Toward Independence". It was a documentary written by a woman whose brother has Asperger's Syndrome. She chronicled his life from birth until the present time. She followed the family's journey through diagnosis until now, when he is 32 years old and still living at home. Then, after the film, the sister and brother came out and answered questions and gave a talk. The boy, Nikky, was hilarious and very open and honest. The bottom line of the talk was that there are not that many options for people with Asperger's after the age of 21. There are not group homes for people who are teetering on the edge of having to live with someone but possibly could be independent with support. The are so many challenges for these individuals. Nikky mentioned that he goes to social skills groups that are led by individuals whose children have autism. He mentioned that he has a hard time holding a job due to the schedules he needs to keep and his rigidity. He does not read social cues very well and some of these situations were displayed in the film. It was the most endearing talk that I have ever been to and it made me so happy that I have chosen to work in the field of special education!

2011 Minnesota Autism Conference

I attended the Annual Minnesota Autism Conference last week. I heard the keynote speaker presentation that was led by Dr. James Coplan. He was an amazing speaker who introduced a three-dimensional model of ASD that looks at the level each student is at; their IQ and their age. He explained that the combination of these three areas is what drives how people should treat autism. He had so many visuals that helped parents and educators understand the significance of what he was saying.

One thing that he mentioned that was interesting was that he believes that there has not been an explosion of diagnoses of autism over the past few years. Through studies that have been done on adults, there are just as many adults who have autism as children. However, the adults were not diagnosed until later in life. Educators and doctors just did not know how to diagnosis autism many years ago.

I sat next to a couple who are special education teachers and who have a son with autism who is 13. They both mentioned that the information presented that night was so helpful and comforting to parents of children with autism. I asked them if it was difficult to teach special needs children all day and then go home to their son who has many needs. Their answer surprised me. They said that their training has been extremely helpful in how to deal with their son's behaviors; how to communicate with the school system; and how to find the necessary resources to help them.

May Post

It is that time of year when I am reviewing my professional goal. This year I was focused on taking purposeful and useful anecdotal records for reading/writing. I feel that I used many resources this year, including people in the building, to help me find the most efficient and useful resources for documents and how I take my notes. I found two very useful forms- individual student record keeping and a strategy group form that worked very well for me, especially when I wanted to go back and look at my notes. I do feel that there are things I will do next year to adjust and make my anecdotal records even more useful.

Belated April Post

This time of year, I am reviewing many of the reading strategies/comprehension skills we focused on throughout the year. I am amazed when I try to summarize and pick areas where I know we need more review or re-teaching, all that we cover and teach our students in one year. It is rewarding to see when students are beginning to really apply those skills and be successful.

April Book Study

Beth and I recently met to disccuss a couple chapter in the book, Research Based Methods of reading Instruction. Much of the material in the book was consisent with what we already do in kindergarten, however, I found some great ideas for learning centers. For example, they had some great ideas for segmenting which you could do with letter tiles and sound boxes.