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Week 1 11/4- 6/13

Weekly Reflections

This is my first week at Homewood Middle School. I was very excited to see the dynamic of special education in middle school and how it is different from elementary. I am in Ms. Stewarts self-contained classroom of 6th- 8th grade students. Every single student in her classroom is qualified under Intellectual Disabilities. A lot of her students have multiple disabilities as well. This is my first time in a classroom with students in a wheelchair. I am very curious as to how they have adaptions and modifications for them. The classroom is very different than anything I experienced. Even though it is self-contained, a lot of the students still attend general education classrooms. There are also eight aids within the classroom that work with the students. Ms. Stewart does not go to the different classrooms with the students yet she always stays in her classroom because children are often coming in and out throughout the day. I am very curious as to how this works and how she still maintains control and authority since she is not always with them. When talking to Ms. Stewart, I found out that she does all the scheduling for each one of her students. I think that would be the biggest difficulty scheduling where and what the children need at each time. I am also curious as to how the dynamic of teamwork is with the different aids and how Ms. Stewart collaborates with them. I am anxious and excited to see how this classroom runs with all the different components added in.

Week 2 11/11-13/13 This week I really got to see the dynamic of the classroom and how it works in full swing. I get to spend a lot of time with the different aids since I go to the general education classrooms everyday with the students. I was very interested to see how the students behave and adapt to what is going on within the classroom since there is such an academic gap for most of them. I really got to see this week the hard work of the aids and how they collaborate so much. Not only do they collaborate with Ms. Stewart but they collaborate with the classroom teachers. Each aid has a binder with the notes and activities that each student is doing. They are also given resources and materials along with the students. When in comes to taking notes, testing, and doing worksheets/activities the aids are responsible for that. They collaborate with what the general education classroom teacher is teacher and modify the tests, worksheets, and notes. This is done in several ways. They create study guides and shorten or modify specific worksheets for their student. Each aid has either one or two students. What I also saw which was very beneficial is the aids do not only collaborate with Ms. Stewart and the general education teachers but the other aids that have students within the same classroom. This helps create a consistency throughout the grade levels for the students. I never realized how much goes in to being a Para professional and all the work they have to do. They also collaborate with Ms. Stewart because most of their grades for special education are based on the worksheets and activities the aids have created. They work as a team because the interest of the student is their first priority. This is a

unique quality and style which helps make the classroom run smoothly and effectively. Week 3 11/18-20/13 This week I got to experience the class as a whole. The special education classroom is rarely ever all together so it was interesting to see the relationship and the way the class runs as a group. All of the students come together for life skills at one oclock everyday. In life skills class they address appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, recycling, gardening, and ways to better the community. When I first decided to teach the life skills class I thought it would be like teaching a normal special education lesson. I was wrong. The students all have different learning abilities and there is a huge range within the classroom. This is the first time I really got to experience differentiation and how it is crucial. I have always knew about differentiation and added it into my lesson plans but never had to implement it. Since there is such a huge range of learning abilities, I realized that giving the same assessment to all the students was not going to be beneficial. I still needed to teach them all of them the same concept which was inappropriate and appropriate behaviors for going to the store. I quickly learned that I had to incorporate different aspects and interests within my lesson to target every student. In order to engage them I learned that they loved technology so I knew this would engage them. I also had to put pictures along with words for the specific behaviors. This serves two different purposes. One being some students have difficultly reading and can look at the pictures to determine the behaviors while other students are extremely

interested in drawing. I learned while teaching my first lesson to a big group of different ranging learning styles how important differentiation is. It is the one thing that helps the lesson run smoothly while still being challenging. Week 4 12/2-4/13 This is my last week at Homewood Middle School. I am extremely saddened to leave. I have learned so much in this placement and really seen how a special education class can run smoothly and effectively. I have seen how working as a team can benefit the way a class is ran and how successful the students can become if everyone is working for their best interest. Coming into this placement, I was skeptical about special education. I have learned the importance of differentiation, teamwork, and Para professionals. I have seen how in order to succeed as a special education classroom you must collaborate with the general education teachers to increase the students learning. This week I taught my final lesson. It was a lesson for 8th grade science with two students. I decided to teach science because I saw how the teacher presented the material but the special education students did not fully grasp the concept. So I taught the lesson more in depth and hands on. I learned the importance of collaboration while teaching and preparing for that lesson. I learned that in order to have the student benefit is to teach on track and more in depth with what the general education teacher is teaching. I also learned the importance of visual aids for children with autism. They do not do well with abstract ideas or reasoning and benefit from concrete examples and instruction. I had a hands on activity that involved visuals and they seemed to grasp the concept

from the visuals given. I have had a glimpse of what it takes to be a special education teacher in a middle school, self-contained classroom and loved every bit of it.

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