Generation Gap

When he arrived in the morning, Bill seemed to be able to interact with the teacher appropriately in that he did respond when she greeted him.  However, he then went about his business of unpacking.  He is seated at the front of the class in a preferential seating arrangement.  There is only one other child seated at his table opposite of him.   He does interact with a girl in his class, which I found out later is also autistic and went to pre-school with him.  Apparently, they seem to have a sibling type relationship - at times they get along great with each other and other times they fight like sibilings.  However, if anyone contradicts her, he immediately stands up for her and insists that she is correct, whether she is or not.  I did not observe this but I did notice throughout the day that she was one of the few people that he actually had some back and forth conversation with.  However, most of the time, even with her, he would play along side other students, observe them, but did not tend to deliberately seek to interact with them.  If approached directly by another child, he occasionally responded; but, he primarily chose to ignore them and continue doing whatever he was doing.

            When the teacher calls on him specifically, Bill does for the most part respond and come to her.  However, if she tells the class to do something as a whole, such as, freeze and put away what they are currently doing, Bill tends to ignore her and continue whatever he was doing at the moment.  During meetings or lessons where the students are asked to come up and sit on the floor in a whole group, Bill will go and get a small kid size rocking chair and bring it to the outskirts of the group and sit in it.  During whole group sessions, he often will rock and pick at his lips.  Apparently, he had trouble sitting still during large group meetings and would constantly get up.  The rocking chair has Velcro on the bottom to provide a little resistance.  Together the chair and the Velcro provide Bill something to do while still remaining seated and listening.  Bill pays attention for the most part while rocking occasionally.  He does stare off into space quite a bit at times but will look back towards the front.  While he rarely answers questions, when he does he is usually correct.

            Bill was pulled out early in the morning along with another child in his class to go to the Special Education room to do the morning calendar and weather work routine, counting by 5s and tens, and some work with coins.  This small group consists of Bill, another child in his class, a third Kindergartener, and a 1^st grader.  There are three specialists in this room with the four students.   So the ratio of students to teacher is nearly one to one.  Within this small group context Bill does raise his hand and answer questions although there are times even then when he has to be prompted to answer.  In this setting he has no rocking chair to allow him to move and yet remain seated in his spot.  Consequently, he got up from his chair over and over again while doing his coin graph and the specialist has to redirect him back to his chair each time. 

I was able to observe several instances where Bill got hung up on a particular activity.  One of these instances happened during the coin sort and graphing activity.  His graphing chart only allowed for 10 of each coin to be graphed.  Unfortunately, his bag had 12 pennies and he wanted to graph all twelve.  He started to get very emotional and began to cry.  His specialist said not to worry just fill in the ten blocks and ignore the fact that he has two extra pennies.  If  the goal was to frustrate him and get him to use his calming strategies, it did not work.  The specialist ended up trying to placate him and distract him from those extra two pennies.  I wonder if it would have worked better in Bill’s case if we would have admitted that we had made a mistake and see if he would accept that explanation.  If not, perhaps we could have just drawn two more blocks above the 10 and let him color those in too.

When we returned to the classroom, the teacher was still meeting in a whole group on the floor modeling the elements of a story using something that had happened to her.  Bill returned to his rocking chair on the edge of the group and resumed listening while rocking and picking his lip.  When she was done modeling the steps to writing a story she asks for a volunteer to come up and help the class read it.  Bill raised his hand and she selected him.  He came up and used the pointer to point to the words.  While he did not read out loud with the class he did demonstrate one-to-one correspondence with the words.  Next when the teacher asked them if they knew what story they wanted to write about Bill wiggled his ears with all the students who said they did. 

Back at his seat he did seem to know what he wanted to write about because he got right to work drawing his picture to the story in his journal.   When the teacher stopped by to see how he was doing, she noticed that he covered the entire page with a giant rainbow.  Since the story is suppose to include him in some manner, she asked him where he was in the picture.  He looked at his paper and then drew himself on the bottom right hand side of the page.  When she asked him where he saw the rainbow, he decided he needed a new piece of paper to write his story on.  When she asked him what’s a good first sentence he tells her “I saw a rainbow.”  She then helps him with spacing as he uses invented spelling to write the sentence down.  From his writing it does appear that he has beginning and ending sounds, some vowel sounds, and the sight word the.    He adds a cloud to his picture and then tells his teacher that the “cloud is sunny.”  He then adds a sun peeking out from behind the cloud.  The teacher asks him if he is going to write “The sun is coming out?” and he responds with “yes.”  The teacher then says okay and pulls out his Words I Use When I Write booklet to help him look up words.  He chooses not to use it.  The teacher then asks him what should be his last sentence… What happens next?”  He responds with, “Rainbow went away.”  She points out the fact that he has already attempted to spell out rainbow in the first sentence so he can either copy it or try to sound it out again.  When he has completed his third sentence she write the correct spelling of everything above his words for future reference and then tells him he can read or color his picture some more.  From this exchange it is clear that Bill receives a great deal of one on one attention in the classroom.  While the teacher spent her time with Bill there was at least one Special Education specialist in the room the entire time assisting other students, sometimes a second one came in, and her Instructional Assistant.

When the teacher ends this story writing session, she rings a bell to let the students know its time to finish up.  Bill immediately stands up and stares off into space while putting his hands down the front and back of his pants.  The teacher notices and sends him off to wash his hands.  After he washes his hands, Bill uses a great deal of paper towels to dry his hands off.  Another student walks up to him to get his attention about a book but Bill is not interested and stomps off to the reading area and sits himself down in his rocking chair, turns his body away from the boy following him, and stares off into space.  The teacher notices and walks over to check things out and sends the other student back to their desk.   She then tells Bill that she notices he seems sad is anything wrong; but, he ignores her.  The Special Ed teacher returns to the room and joins Bill and his teacher, and then guides Bill back to his seat at the table and asks him what is wrong.  He doesn’t respond to her either; to, she offers to staple his story to his drawing.  This seems to satisfy him and distract him.

The teacher then calls for the whole group to gather around again and selects randomly three to share their stories.  Bill sits again in his rocking chair and listens well.  However, he does not participate in offering compliments or clapping at the end until the last child goes up.  All of a sudden he frowns and crosses his arms while she is sharing.  I can’t tell what the trigger is.  However, when the teacher asks for two compliments from the audience this time he lights up, raises his hands, and appears disappointed when he is no picked.  In the end he also claps for this student.

During language arts, Bill goes to the Picture Dictionary station, in which, he and his group must complete a worksheet.  They must find words in the Picture Dictionary that starts with the same letter as the blocks on the work sheet, write the word in, and then draw a picture to represent the word.   A Special Ed teacher sits next to him the entire task helping him stay on task while also providing some support to the other members in his group.  He does not finish the entire page; but, he seems to hum contently while working on this activity.   When I spoke to the specialist later, I asked her whether Bill will be required to finish the worksheet later.  She tells me no, that he made a genuine effort to complete the worksheet but did not have enough time to do so.  She felt that he had met the expectations of the worksheet and that it was not necessary to make him complete it.

When done with their center, the students are allowed to read or work with white boards and practice writing words.  Bill chose to use the white board but instead of writing a word he draws a picture of a curvy road heading into the horizon a small stick figure near the horizon and three circles at the horizon.  When asked what he drew he says no, we’re suppose to write words.”  He erases his picture and starts to write “P” but erases it and draws another curvy road into the horizon.  He seems to have a sense of perspective in his drawing which would make sense if he is a visual learner.  Then he uses his eraser to erase the picture while beeping.  Next he hums and writes Pllllpp and asks me what is spells?  I ask him if it spells plop and he tells me no that’s a p, so I sound out Pllllpp and it makes a funny sound.  He laughs.  Below it he traces his hand and says that the word spells hand.  Then he draws a sleeve to the hand and face on the hand with glasses and calls him Mr. Hand.  Then he draws a speech bubble with squiggles in it but when asked what it spells he says he doesn’t know.  His teacher asks him what he is doing and he says he doesn’t know.  She suggests that he practice his letters.  He looks disappointed and erases his picture and writes at the top ABCOM and then draws an apple.  He tells me happily that it is an apple.  Then he writes the letter A next to it then tells me apple starts with an A.

To be continued …

This Kindergarten class has a total of 19 students, 9 of which are girls and 10 are boys.  Forty-two percent of the class is not Caucasian: 5 students are of Asian descent, a mix of Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese; one student is African American; one is of Hispanic Caucasian descent; and one is Middle Eastern.  The remaining 11 are Caucasian.    In addition, there are three students who have been diagnosed as autistic of which one has speech issues as well.  There is a fourth child that is undergoing evaluation for autism.  There are also two children diagnosed as having ADHD; although, the teacher suspects that several others might qualify as well.  However, as they are only Kindergarteners and young ones at that, she feels that it could also be simply a matter of maturity.

         According to his last IEP, Bill’s area of eligibility is autism.   His teacher explained that Bill had a traumatic event a while back, which may have been the cause of his autism.  He was found blue at the bottom of a pool and had to be resuscitated.  His areas of need include social skills, social problem solving, working in large groups in a classroom/work setting, and social awareness.  His social emotional development is delayed which makes it difficult for him to participate appropriately in the classroom setting.  His goal is to handle stressful situations in the classroom using positive behavior strategies such as using social stories to focus on what he can and cannot do when he is upset or using a rocking chair reserved for him in a reserved quiet area of the room to calm himself down with less and less adult intervention.  He also needs to be able to initiate and complete assignments whether they are ones he likes or not.  His goal is to do so with no more than two reminders from his teacher.   
Next, while he is able to participate in small group settings, he needs to be able to maintain a conversation with his peers and adults that include back and forth exchanges and demonstrate behavior that is appropriate for the situation. 

Modifications allowed by his IEP include working in small groups, extended time to complete assignments, frequent breaks allowed, minimized distractions, and simplified/clarified directions.  Based on his current IEP, Bill will qualify for the Virginia Grade Level Alternate (VGLA) Assessment but not for the Virginia Alternate Assessment Program (VAAP).  Finally, Bill received 9.75 hours of services in a special education setting per week while in preschool.  This year he receives a total of 15 hours of special education services of which 7 hours are in a special services setting (pull out).   Additional accommodations include the permission to use marker to do his work.  He has some fine motor issues and had a tendency towards getting hung up and frustrated with his writing when it was not to his satisfaction.    He would endlessly write, erase and rewrite letters written with a pencil.  The markers, not being erasable, work better for him.  They tend to glide over the paper more easily and not get caught in the paper to tear it up.  Furthermore, the colors appeal to his visual nature.  The teacher reported that he responds well to visual strategies and to social stories.

The student I observed for this differentiation project is a 6 year old Kindergarten boy (Bill), who has been diagnosed with autism.  He has brown hair, blue eyes, and is of average height.   His home language is English although his father is Hispanic and does speak Spanish on occasion at home.  He lives with his mother, father, and a fraternal twin.   His mother is a stay at home mom.  His brother is in another class and has some significant learning disabilities but is not considered to be autistic.

I have been working long hours putting together a photostory using PhotoStory3, Audacity, and YouTube.  However, I have run into a snag.  I want to be able to highlight, or make larger,  individual words within a photo’s title.  My goal is to highlight the new site words or vocabulary words I want the students to focus on.  Does anyone know how to do this?  I’ve tried everything I could think of including checking the Help file.  If I try to make a single word within a title a larger font, it simply changes all the words in the title to the larger font.  Is this a limitation to PhotoStory3?  Or, is it an operator error?  Any help anyone can provide me would be appreciated.

I thought we could use this blog to comment on the challenges those of us have on the far side of the Generation Gap with regards to technology. In my case, I’m not afraid of technology, I just need a little extra explanation to wrap my head around the latest new thing. And, a little extra practice also helps. However, to me technology is just another tool. Until you need it, or know about it, you have little use for it. Now that I have a need for blogging, twittering, etc., I’ll be happy to join the rest of you and twitter away.