IEP

I chose the IEP (Individualized Education Program) as my field artifact for multiple reasons. First, I had never seen an IEP before entering the special education class I am observing. I think it is an important document that all education majors should be familiar with, even if they are not going into special education because there will be children with special needs in almost all classes. Also, I did not realize how long IEPs are and how much information they contain. Therefore, I scanned a copy of one of the student's IEP in my classroom. The document is an initial IEP and 14 pages long.

This is the first page of the IEP. It contains general information on the student and parents of the student.

The second page of the document contains the following sections: Future Planning, Special Instructional Factors, and Profile. The Future Planning is determined by the parent and indicates what the parent would like to see in the next year. In this instance, the parent wants to see her child show the maturity of a regular third grader (the student is in second grade now, but does not show the maturity of a regular second grader). Special Instructional Factors may include limited English proficiency, behavior problems that affect the child's learning, assistive technology devices that are needed, etc. In this instance, the student does not have any Special Instructional Factors. The Profile simply gives a brief summary of the child and what she/he struggles with.

This page includes Postsecondary Transition and Postsecondary Transition Services. This page is only filled out if the student is 14 years and older.

This page contains Measurable Annual Goals. Each child has a different number of Measurable Annual Goals, depending on this/her trouble areas. This student has four Measurable Annual Goals: Reading, Reading Comprehension, Written Language, and Math. This page focuses on Reading. It explains the student's weaknesses and strengths in reading, what percent of first and second grade sight words she was able to recognize, and methods to help her achieve her annual goal.

This page focuses on the Measurable Annual Goals for Reading Comprehension.

This page focuses on the Measurable Annual Goals for Written Language.This page focuses on the Measurable Annual Goals for Math.
This page contains Descriptions of Specially Designed Services. It explains what the special education teacher will do to help the student and for what amount of time each day. For instance, the special education teacher will provide direct instruction in math in the small group instruction opportunities for 30 minutes each day.
This page focuses on Transportation as a Related Service and Nonacademic and Extracurricular Activities. Transportation as a Related Service asks if the child has a disability that requires special transportation. The state is concerned that students with IEPs do not have the same opportunities as students without special needs. Therefore, they require the school to identify the ways in which the child has the opportunity to participate in nonacademic/extracurricular activities with his/her nondisabled peers. In this instance, the child is notified through announcements and fliers. I was very shocked that the state requires this kind of information in an academic IEP. However, I think it is a good thing for the students with IEPs.
This page focuses on General Factors and Least Restrictive Environment. The General Factors include strengths of the child and concerns of the parents. The Least Restrictive Environment asks questions such as "Does this child attend the school he/she would attend if not disabled?" and "Does this child receive all special education services with nondisabled peers?"
This pages focuses on the Statewide and Districtwide Testing. It includes the accommodations the child will receive when taking statewide or districtwide assessments. Accommodations include small group, extended time, read aloud, breaks during tests, and taking the tests in the resource room.
This page focuses on Meeting Participants (whether the IEP meeting was face-to-face, video conference, or telephone conference). The IEP meeting participants must sign the document.
This page indicates whether it is an Initial IEP or Annual Review.

Students in the Classroom

I work with all of the special education students in kindergarten, first, and second grade at the elementary school in which I am observing. The students in the classroom are each very unique in personality, interests, ability, strengths, weaknesses, talents, home life, and ways in which they learn best.

The class is male dominated. There are only three girls in the class. However, the girls do not seem to mind the girl to boy ratio.

The students are afraid of raising their hands and getting the answer wrong. Therefore, the students do not raise their hand in class. If they have a question, they usually go up to the teacher and whisper the question into her ear. In class discussions, the teacher usually asks questions that have multiple responses with no right or wrong answer. However, the students still do not raise their hands. Therefore, she calls on the students who do not look like they are paying attention first. Then, she goes through and asks the rest of the students so that everyone has a chance to give their response.

The majority of the students do not have a long attention span. They get distracted and off track very easily. I have noticed that it takes some of the students double the time to complete an activity because they look around at all of the posters and everything happening in the room.

There are only two kindergarteners in the class and they are encouraged to work together. They complete activities together and help each other out. A few of these activities that I have observed include rhyme and sound puzzles. The kindergarteners do not rely on the teacher as much the first and second graders. The first and second graders mostly work independently on assignments. They usually do make up work for their regular teachers. Therefore, not all of the first graders have the same assignments and not all of the second graders have the same assignments.

Two of the students consume a lot of the teacher’s time. One student has severe behavioral issues and I believe she acts out for attention. She likes when someone sits next to her and helps her all of the time, but when there is not someone there, she acts out. The other student asks many questions and will not sit down to work until all of the questions are answered.

Behavior Problems

Students with behavior problems are sent to my cooperating teacher’s room. They have to sit in the corner with their head down. They are not allowed to do anything, not even schoolwork. Part of their punishment is that they will have to do schoolwork at home instead of in the classroom with the other students.

On one of my observing days, a student sat in the corner the entire time I was there. At first I thought he was a shy new student, but I was definitely wrong. On top of sitting in an unfamiliar room and not being able to do anything, he had to eat lunch in the office, and his mother was called. Since this student had previous offenses, the mom was required to come into the office for a talk with her son and the principal; it was more serious then a phone call home. He pushed students who did not want to play with him and previously, he hit another student and felt no remorse at all. Obviously the calls home did not work so intervention was needed.

I do not like that all of the students with behavior problems are sent to my cooperating teacher's room. She has enough to worry about with her own students. Her students have learning and behavior problems and she does not have time to take on additional students. I do not think it is fair for her to have to do that. I think the students with behavior problems should be taken out of the classroom and into the office.

Same Assignment, Different Grade Levels

Since I am in a special education classroom and there are three grade levels in the class, it is difficult to plan lessons that every student can participate in. However, I really liked the idea that my cooperating teacher developed. She first read a story to the entire class. Although the story was too difficult for the kindergarten and first graders to read themselves, my cooperating teacher reviewed details that were important and possibly confusing for them so they could understand the story. After she finished reading the story, she assigned each grade level a different assignment based on their capability. The kindergarteners had to draw a picture showing what happened in the story. The first graders had to draw a picture of the story and write at least a sentence about what they drew from the book. The second graders were not allowed to draw; they had to write a paragraph about the story. All of the students had to show their comprehension of the story whether it was written, drawn, or a combination. I really liked this assignment because it enabled all of the students to work on the same thing at the same time. If the teacher had assigned all of the students to draw a picture, then it would have been efficient for the kindergartners but too easy for the first and second graders. At the same time, writing a paragraph is a good assignment for the second graders, but too difficult for the kindergarteners and first graders. I like the way my cooperating teacher was able to take one story and make assignments that each grade level is capable of completing. This teaching tool can even be used in an inclusion setting; the teacher can assign work based on learning ability (high, medium, and low) that correlates with each other. I believe this teaching tool is effective and will be a good thing to remember for my classroom.

Differences Between Inclusion First Grade and Special Education

I have had the opportunity to help in both an inclusion first grade class and a special education class. I can see huge differences in these two types of classes. First, the special education class that I am working in has kindergarten, first, and second graders. The wide range of grades makes it difficult for the teacher to teach. While in the special education class, the students do homework and class work that they did not have time to finish in their regular classroom. Every student works on something different. For instance, the kindergarteners might be on the carpet working on a puzzle that focuses on the alphabet, the first graders might be working on handwriting, and the second graders might be working on vocabulary. After the students are done with their assignments, they can read a book, draw a picture, or play educational games on the computer. Therefore, the entire classroom is utilized because each student is doing something different in a different part of the room. In my opinion, the special education class is more of a catch-up class then actual learning. The special education classroom is more hectic then the first grade classroom. Students continuously come and go. They start in their regular classrooms then go to the special education classroom for an hour. Next, they go to other specialties such as Speech and return to the special education classroom an hour later. Each student has a different schedule based on his/her needs. It is difficult to keep track of all of the students and know exactly where they are at all times.

Effective Spelling Tool

Over Spring Break, I visited the first grade teacher that I helped during my senior year of high school. I was excited to visit her and meet the students. During journal time, I helped the students spell out words. Each student had a spelling book, which provided about twenty commonly used words for each letter of the alphabet. This book was designed for first graders. Therefore, it had words such as family, friends, there, and their. On each page, there were additional lines to write other words that start with that particular letter. Whenever a child asked for a word that wasn’t in the spelling book, he/she had to turn to the page/alphabet letter in which the word started. Then, the teacher writes the word on that page. I really like this concept that the students have a list of words that they should know, but they can also add to their vocabulary and have the word spelled correctly the next time they need it. I could tell that the students who used the spelling book the most were able to write their journals fast and correctly. On the other hand, the students who did not have additional words written in their spelling book had a more difficult time writing the journal. I think the spelling book is an effective tool.

The Classroom

My cooperating teacher’s classroom is different from all of the other classrooms I have ever seen. I am not sure whether the differences are due to the teacher’s style or that it is a special education classroom and this is my first experience in a special education classroom.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the classroom was that the calendar was still on the month of January even though it was halfway through February. As a student, I know this would have bothered me because I would not know the date. I think this would be especially confusing to the special education students.

Since the school was afforded additional funding, they were able to hire two additional special education teachers. However, they had a classroom shortage. Therefore, approximately 1/4 of my cooperating teacher’s classroom was taken for one of the new teachers. The other side of the classroom contains the only chalkboard in the room. Therefore, my cooperating teacher does not even have a chalkboard. I believe chalkboards are critical for a teacher to properly teach the students. Without a chalkboard, a teacher cannot visually teach something to the entire class. She has to rely on other resources. In lieu of a chalkboard, my cooperating teacher has a small mobile white board where she writes the words of the week.

I believe technology is important in the classroom. Equipment such as overheads, SmartBoards, and document cameras allow an entire class to visualize and grasp material. Although none of these technological features are available in the classroom I am observing, I do not think they would be used effectively in a special education classroom. My cooperating teacher generally teaches only one student at a time. Therefore, she can show each student individually what she needs to show him or her instead of distracting the rest of the class with an overhead projection. On the other hand, there are three Apple computers in the classroom, which are used by the students to play reading and math games. The computers are used for a reward, but they also help the students with reading and math skills.

Given that there is less room in the classroom, I feel like everything is shoved together. In my opinion, the room is not organized because there are stakes of papers lying all over the room. Also, most of the books are in boxes instead of on bookshelves. There is not sufficient storage in the classroom.

There is not a direct access to the outside, but I think that is a good thing. There are a few of the students I can see running outside to either get away from the teachers or simply play outside.

Overall, I believe there are features in the classroom that are an asset, but there are also things in the classroom that I do not like and would not have in my own classroom. My cooperating teacher had an entire classroom to herself in past years then she had to consolidate into 3/4 of the space, which could have contributed to the lack of organization and adequate space.

Word Cards

These are the word cards that I talked about in my last post. As a refresher, a word card is a flash card with a single word on it that is used to help the students.

Every child in the class has his/her own set of word cards. The words in each student’s stack are different based on his/her reading ability and grade level. Since I am working in a special education classroom, the students are not reading at grade level. Therefore, their words are either a year or two behind their actual grade level. For instance, a second grader is most likely learning the words a first grader should know.

The teacher took the time to make unique sets of word cards for each student, but I think they are a great investment of time. The word cards can be used as a testing method like I did the other day or they can be used by the student to spell words correctly. Instead of asking the teacher how to spell a word, the student can look in the word cards. Also, the student can test himself/herself.

I think this is a great idea because the students each have a list of words that they should know, be familiar with, and know how to use, sitting in front of them while they are doing work. This is a useful tool that I will consider using in my future classroom.

Working with Word Cards

Today I worked individually with kindergarten students in the hallway on word cards. A word card is a flash card with a single word on it. The student must read the word correctly before I can turn to the next card.

The first student I worked with said that every word was “have” except for the colors. However, once we got to the word “have”, he had trouble recognizing it. He was guessing and became very frustrated because his guesses were not correct. It was a challenge to find different ways to help him read the word cards. I used a combination of techniques. First, I asked him to say all of the letters in the word and the sounds associated with each letter. That is where I realized that he does not know all of his letters or sounds. Therefore, we did a quick review of letters and sounds, but he continued to say each word was “have” even if there were no similar letters. Consequently, I took the “have” flash card out of the pile. Every time he said the word was “have” I showed him the “have” card. Then I asked, does this look like the word have? That seemed to work the best because once he realized the word wasn’t “have”, we sounded out the word together and he was able to identify it.

The other student I worked with mixed up his b’s and d’s. When I asked him to sound out the words, he had difficulty. However, once I asked him to sound out the words out loud to me, he was able to identify the words. This confirmed my theory that a person understands what he/she is reading when he/she reads it out loud.