To better understand Writing challenges go to this link.
To better understand Math challenges to to this link.
To better understand Attention challenges go to this link.
To better understand Reading challenges go to this link.
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Complete ONE of the Learning Challenges Links (Reading, Writing, Math and Attention). Choose a few videos to watch and reflect on your experience. What new ideas do you have about inclusion in schools, communities, and learning? As a new teacher, how do these experience help you become a better teacher? What take aways would you consider bringing to your classroom? Your initial post should be 400+ words with 2 comments to other participants. This site is a companion to the PBS special Misunderstood Minds, and profiles a variety of learning problems and expert opinions. It is designed to give parents and teachers a better understanding of learning processes, insights into difficulties, and strategies for responding. Use this information in the area that you have chosen to better understand: To better understand Writing challenges go to this link. To better understand Math challenges to to this link. To better understand Attention challenges go to this link. To better understand Reading challenges go to this link.
23 Comments
Joé DeRiso
2/23/2018 08:33:07 pm
This blog post really opened my eyes to challenges that my students may be facing that I need to become more aware of. First, I decided to focus on attention for my learning challenge article since most if not all of my students in the classroom have some trouble with keeping there attention or focusing on the things that are being taught or need to get done in the classroom. I am always looking for ways to support them in these challenges they may be facing. I chose to do the visual activity called Reading with Distractions inside of the attention learning challenges article. For the activity, there was a passage that I had to read and answer questions about, but while trying to read the passage, there were things going on the screen behind the passage that caused for your focus to be taken away. The screen flashed from black to white with a picture of a sun mirrored onto a window, to an image of a soccer net, to the picture of the soccer net coming to life and having players start playing soccer, and then the screen going to blank white and the passage going away. You were then forced to answer the questions without anything. I only got one question right, because it was the first one and I was able to see it and look into the passage at the same time without scrolling down away from the passage. Answering just this first question though took me the entire time and, since the passage did end up going away, I was forced to guess on the last two questions. Thinking about this activity, how am I supposed to expect my students to answer questions and focus on a passage when they are feeling very distracted, when I couldn't even answer three simple questions while things were going on behind something that I needed to focus and read to answer these questions. It really made me think and feel for how my kids may feel every day in the classroom. They really do want to answer the questions and be able to learn, but they are facing all of these distractions that are either in there head, things that there other classmates are doing or things that they are doing without even noticing. They must feel as frustrated as me when I was taking this three question quiz. This is really something that makes me want to help these kids and look for ways online or even going to teachers in the building, not just my teacher that I am with in the classroom, to learn new ways to support these students. Moving onto the videos, I watched two of them. One of them was about changing the way you think about things along with the video talking all about people that learn with different types of minds. These two videos really helped me understand the kids in my classroom more and see different ways that my students may be learning, and how I need to be much more aware that my students are going to learn in different ways that I am not aware of. I need to be thinking like this, and hopefully with this idea in the back of my head, I will be able to be more conscious of what my students may be going through, and what I can to do help them feel valued in the classroom, feel like they are on the right track, all while making sure they are taking in the information that is necessary to learn what is being taught to them. Overall, as someone who is a new teacher and will at some point again be faced with having to find ways to support these kids so they can get as much out of this education experience as other kids who don't have challenges they have to face, I now know that I must find ways to help these kids succeed, this means that I will be going to the more specialized teachers in the school, so the behavior aid, or another special educator in the school and use them to bounce ideas off of along with just asking for advice whenever I need it so that I am teaching in a way that these kids are understanding but also able to retain the information. Also, if I am a new teacher that is a special educator, I will be looking to the other special educators in the school and see what they can tell me about the kids they are working with and what I can take from that to work with the kids I will have, or tweak these ideas and fix them so that they will fit the students that I am working with that may have similar challenges but have different ways of expressing their frustration or kids that just have different ways of doing things but have the same overarching challenge as other kids.
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Austin Rindfuss
3/21/2018 06:54:52 pm
Joé, that activity sounds awesome! I love how it put you into the perspective of students who struggle paying attention.
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Emily Marchisio
3/20/2018 05:20:13 pm
For this assignment I chose to better understand math challenges. I chose this because math is where I work with a small group of students who all have a learning disability. As I looked through the Misunderstood Minds website, I took a look at each activity they had provided for the users. I chose to complete the arithmetic activity which gave you a set of problems using addition and multiplication along with addition and multiplication charts at the top. The problem with this activity is that the addition and multiplication charts were not helpful in finding the answers to the problems as they were base six multiplication and addition charts and not base ten. This activity did in fact get me a little frustrated because the instructions lead me to answer the problems using the charts but when I got to the next page the charts were everything but helpful. This genuinely did open my eyes to such a small struggle out of the many struggles my students face in math. This activity helped me become more aware as to how annoying and agitating answering problems that they don't understand may be. All of the students in my small group still do not have any number sense and still struggle with simple addition in subtraction in the fifth grade. Due to that problem, all the students are able to use a multiplication chart and addition chart whenever they please. This activity made me realize how upsetting it must be for them to be presented with problems and have a sheet in front of them that they are able to use when they still don't have a full understanding on how fact sheets work and why they work the way they do. Most of the time all of the students just go exactly to the sheet to find a specific number when looking for an answer to a multiplication problem. They are not paying attention to the strategy or numbers included in the problem, they just want to find the answer. It is important that I can be aware of that and make math more enjoyable and simple for them by helping them gain the strengths they need when it comes to simple math problems so they can succeed when they become more complex. As in the Ted Talk “The World Needs All Kinds Of Minds” the speaker states that, “a lot of schools have taken out the hands on classes.” This activity and assignment opened my eyes to how my students may really benefit from hands on math activities when talking about simple addition and subtraction. I now have a better idea of what is going on in their heads which will make my future lesson planing a bit easier and less stressful for them.
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Austin Rindfuss
3/21/2018 06:53:46 pm
Emily, great response! I think the math activity you did sounds very frustrating but useful from a teaching standpoint. It is so common to see young students agitated by their math work and to be opened into that mindset is a great experience.
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Keeghan Hughes
3/22/2018 01:10:20 pm
Emily,
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Dunia
3/23/2018 11:19:03 am
That math activity sounds really frustrating, and I think that I will go through and explore it (I did the reading challenges). It definitely helps identify one of the many struggles that students deal with in math classes: 'smaller' struggles often get lost among the larger, more noticeable ones and then start building up until they become a larger problem.
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Austin Rindfuss
3/21/2018 06:51:38 pm
I really enjoyed this blog. I cannot wait to go back and watch the rest of the videos! The choices I made in this blog were to do the Composition Writing Activity on Misunderstood Minds. I also watched Lizzie Velasquez, and Claire Wineland's videos.
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Keeghan Hughes
3/22/2018 01:13:05 pm
Austin,
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Emily Marchisio
3/22/2018 03:01:04 pm
Austin,
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Joé DeRiso
3/22/2018 03:09:20 pm
Austin, since I didn't focus on writing learning challenges, it was interesting to see what you had written and learned about. I like that, just like my learning challenge, there was an activity that we were able to do to see what it was like facing these challenges. These little activities really opened my eyes to being able to see what it would be like facing this subject with challenges. It really allowed for me to put myself in these child's shoes.
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Keeghan Hughes
3/22/2018 01:06:31 pm
For this assignment I chose to look at attention learning challenges. I chose this challenge because I feel that girls often go unnoticed when they have challenges such as ADHD or other attention deficit disorders. This was a struggle for me growing up and I now see it in my experiences in a classroom. After reading and watching a few of the videos I reflected on some of my own experiences.
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Emily Marchisio
3/22/2018 03:03:56 pm
Keeghan,
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Joé DeRiso
3/22/2018 03:04:27 pm
Keeghan, I also chose looking at attention learning challenges and brought it back to my practicum site. I really did enjoy you're take on attention deficit disorders with girls because, like you did bring up, girls really to get forgotten about when focusing on these type of disorders. It is something that we need to do better in our schools and allow for us to be more conscious about catching when girls in our classroom may be struggling with these disorders especially in the younger grades. This will allow for our students to be able to have the problem they are facing addressed and then lead to them getting the help they need and being able to have the same experiences in the classroom that there other peers are getting, just with a bit more help.
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Dunia
3/23/2018 11:21:43 am
I really like how you mentioned that girls' attention issues are often unnoticed or are not given enough emphasis. What Laura Bain had to say particularly stuck with me because each person is so unique and every feature presented by a person can be fueled by any number of triggers or stimuli.
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Eleanor Patz
3/23/2018 01:17:35 pm
Keeghan,
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Ashley Simonet
3/22/2018 01:45:55 pm
For this assignment I chose to better understand attention challenges. I chose this because most of the kids I work with while subbing have really bad attention problems and can never listen or follow anything going in the class and I want to support them in any way possible. I found the exercises in this blog to very eye opening to how kids with attention challenges feel. One of the activities that I completed was the listening to directions, in this activity the class was listening to the teacher’s instructions about how to match shapes and colors on a grid to make a secret picture. The video starts off with us being able to hear the directions very clearly and then as it goes on more, the directions start to become background noise and all we can hear is classmates talking. With trying really hard to focus on what the teacher was saying I could not complete the assignment. I found that to be very eye opening and it made me relate back to the students I have worked with in the past. It’s not that they don’t want to complete the work it’s just that they can’t because all of the distractions around them. A way to fix this could be by separating the students into smaller groups so there will be less distractions for each individual.
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Eleanor Patz
3/23/2018 01:15:06 pm
Ashley,
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Dominique Rousseau
3/23/2018 02:04:03 pm
Hello Ashley, I really enjoyed your post.
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Dunia
3/23/2018 11:15:46 am
For this assignment I chose to look at reading challenges. I chose this because I have ADHD and another LD that makes math challenging, so I wanted to explore a difficulty I was less familiar with. The first exercise was about decoding phonemes: it really opened my eyes to how much I take reading for granted. Based on that exercise, I plan to make sure emphasize phonemes, specifically the easily confused ones and help make clear distinctions for my students. The next challenge was set up similarly to an MCAS or other standardized, comprehension exam. It was really stressful when the passage disappeared and I felt like I did in high school when I had to take the MCAS. I think that I will make an effort to consistently review reading comprehension skills, like taking notes and such. The last challenge was about remember what was read to a person. Providing material in only one way (auditory) is doing a disservice to so many students, especially those with learning challenges. All material should be accessible to all types of learners. Following UDL guidelines for lesson planning will essential when I am teaching.
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Dominique Rousseau
3/23/2018 02:06:55 pm
Hello Dunia!
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Eleanor Patz
3/23/2018 01:14:02 pm
For this blog I opted to do the attention challenges. I was drawn to do this, because a primary worry that I have for being a teacher is maintaining the attention of my students and keeping them focused. The activities were very eye opening. It was very hard to focus during each of the activities. Even though all of my attention was technically on the test, the non related stimulations within it were very hard to not focus on. It allowed me to better realize that even if a student has every intention to focus, the other stimuli that they must not divert their attention to, is incredibly hard to tune out. In doing this activity, I think it better allowed me to understand the patience that is needed for students who have attention related disorders.
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Dominique Rousseau
3/23/2018 02:00:25 pm
For this assignment I chose to focus on attention. I chose attention because as someone who does not have ADHD or any problem out of the ordinary with attention, it is hard to fully grasp what my students with ADHD are struggling with. Therefore I wanted to focus on this subject in order to gain a better understanding of the minds of my students, past, present, and future. Overall this assignment really brought me back to my first practicum in an inclusion classroom where there was such a variety of learners. During my time I really connected with a young boy with pretty severe ADHD, who was often on and off medication. My supervising teacher really understood that he sometimes needed to be where he wanted to be in classroom, so when we were all on the rug sometimes this student was in the back of the classroom flipping through a book. While it looked like he was listening he always was. I was always surprised when he would raise his hand in the back of the classroom and give the correct answer. There was just so much going on in his mind that it was difficult for him to process with all that went on in the classroom. For the virtual activity I chose to do the visual activity of reading with distractions. This activity was created to give the participant a sense of what it is like to read in a classroom for a student with an attention disorder. The activity gave the participant a short paragraph to read but as you started reading it flashed to different images such as a window and a soccer field making it impossible to read. Eventually the reading passage just went white and the participant could no longer look at it. Therefore I was only able to make it a sentence or two into the passage and then just skimmed to the middle and end for words, because I knew there was going to be questions asked after. This activity really put in prospective just how difficult it can be for some with an attention disorder to focus on reading while there is other things going on in the classroom. It makes one question how fair it is that a majority of tests ask students to read a passage quietly then answer question, but for someone with ADHD seemingly simple task is basically impossible. Through the video I watched I was able to connect others thoughts and perspectives to attention. For example in Jacob Barnett’s Ted Talk he described how everyone had their own unique perspective and learns in a different way. He explain how he is able to learn math using an uncommon method, but it works for him. This is important for me as a future teacher to remember because while it would be easy to teach a class something in one way and expect everyone to do it that way because it works for me, it may not work for them. As an autism minor, we often highlight in autism classes the way in which autism is such a spectrum and therefore everyone with autism is unique and different and therefore one therapy may work for one person but it may not work for someone else. This is something that should be carried out in all classrooms for children with or without disabilities. One method of teaching may work for one student but not the other, and that is because everyone is different.
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Pauline November
4/20/2018 03:23:11 pm
For this assignment I focused on reading challenges and also watched several of the videos. I watched "How do You Define Yourself?" with Lizzie Velasquez, and "Th World Needs All Kinds of Minds" by Temple Grandin.
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