I have been working with a 17 year veteran special education teacher who works in an elementary ED room.
One of the amazing things I get to witness on a daily basis is little guys with emotional disturbance issues escalating in class to the point they need to be removed, they come to her classroom and within 10 minutes have de-escalated and can go back to their general education classroom. Here is how the scenario works: Student is frustrated in class, unable to self-regulate, yet Student begins to scream, throw themselves on the floor or cry loudly Para or ED teacher removes student to the ED resource room Student must follow their particular de-escalation plan One student's plan (must be in this order): 1. 5 sets of 10 jumps on a personal trampoline, between each set the student stops jumping and the teacher throws the ball to the student, student throws the ball back to the teacher, student does another set of jumps, cycle is repeated until all 5 sets are done. 2. Wall pushes, student pushes on the wall with all their might each time counting to 5, do this 5 times 3. Hulk Jumps, student jumps as high with both feet and stomps the ground 4. Sensory bin, student gets to choose a sensory bin of beans mixed with toys or sand with animals Student gets 3 minutes with the sensory bin. After the sensory bin I would say 98% of the time the student is ready to go back to class. How and why does this work??! First, all the activities go from big, active physical things to smaller more controlled, which is why the sensory bin cannot be first. Second, the teacher controls the students behavior from the get-go. The student jumps on the trampoline and the student must stop after 10 jumps, mandatory, student cannot do 11 or 12. The student must also throw the ball back to the teacher and this might seem easy but at the beginning a few students will sometimes side-arm throw the ball on purpose, not towards the teacher, the activity is repeated for the student to do it correctly. Lastly, by the time the student gets to the sensory bin they are tired, they got lots of energy out. Playing in the bin is a preferred activity for all the kids. Before they go back to the non-preferred activity of class they get the feeling of doing a preferred activity which really helps. If the student asks for one more minute at the sensory bins, the para or teacher will allow this to support the students control and politeness. After that, time is up and student is brought back to class. Each student has their own routine based on needs, but it must be written on a white board and followed by anyone who is administering this de-escalation process for the student. Do not deviate. Other students have other items incorporated into the de-escalation like a huge peanut ball with knobs. This can be rolled by the para or teacher on the student's back to compress and provide sensory input in a healthy way. A set number of times it will be used to compress is necessary. Another items is a body scooter. An older student is allowed to go up and down the hall a set number of times while on his stomach. He must use his hands and feet to push himself, no coasting, again a set number of times up and down.
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Summer is great, but what is even better is helping a student succeed in the summer.
I spent the last seven weeks with a struggling reader who was referred by her 2nd grade teacher. The initial assessment put her at below first grade, she will be entering 3rd grade in the fall. The reading clinic focuses on finding what the student leans on to decode or self-correct and strengthening the areas the student is weak in. In the past, I have seen more focus on correcting what a student's poor strategies. The reading clinic leaves that alone and goes for weak areas the student is not using. My particular student had a poor self-correction rate, 0% for pre-primer and 12% for first grade. The student would guess at words that make no sense to the story and keep going. The student also had poor graphophonic skills, replacing Rush for Ruth. The goals for this individual student were to increase self-correction using semantic cues. Does the word I just read make sense? If it does not, I need to go back and read it again. The second goal was to use graphophonic cues to decode. The last goal was to increase sight word knowledge. How did I carry this out? Using well known proven strategies. Stretchy Snake for graphophonic decoding and Skippy the Frog for semantic cueing. Here is a link to explain these strategies, www.penfield.edu/webpages/tbrasacchio/files/beanie%20baby%20poster%20~%20tips%20for%20parents%20for%20all%20strategies.pdf. Teachers Pay Teachers also has many colorful printable for these strategies. It is important to know that reading strategies should only be taught one or two at a time. Two main strategies, Skippy and Stretchy, were the only ones we used all summer. To achieve teaching these strategies many different kinds of activities and games can be played. The student needs a significant amount of time to master and make the strategy their own. Activities we used for Stretchy the Snake: -A rubber band is held, for each sound in a word the band is stretched, when the word is complete the student lets it go back to normal shape while saying the word quickly. -Play-Doh is rolled into a snake shape, the student pulls apart pieces of the dough for each sound. The whole piece of dough must be used because it represents the word. When the word is segmented the student smooshes the dough back to one piece while saying the whole word quickly. -On a piece of paper, multiple boxes are connected by a line, picture a train. The student segments sounds into each box. Cat would be segmented into three boxes, c-a-t. Silent letters are attached inside a box, but are written small, such as s-igh-t. Skippy the Frog -The student is given a popsicle stick with a small frog on the end. When the student comes to a word they do not know they can place the frog on the word and skip it, finish the sentence and see if they know a word that makes sense in the sentence. The student needs to be taught to pay attention to the first letter or sound of the skipped word to make an informed choice. An example, Dad sits on the ch___ to eat dinner. The student skips chair but keeps in mind the ch sound, finishes the sentences and might say to herself, sits...eats dinner...probably chair! -After my student used the popsicle stick she graduated to just mentally skipping. Throughout the summer we trained using Skippy. I would cut sticky notes into small pieces that covered words. This forced her to perform Skippy. After she had success doing this she said it was too easy. I upped the difficulty by placing the small sticky note on the whole word, not allowing her to see the beginning sound. She would at times have two words she thought it might be when it was difficult. She would peel the note back to reveal the first letter/sound, then she knew which word to choose. To integrate semantic and graphophonic cueing systems we did fun things like scavenger hunts. I would make up 6-7 clues and place them around the 2nd floor where our classroom was located. She loved this and asked for more difficult clues. Once a week we also had "Reading for a Purpose". This consisted of a 20 min hands-on activity that requires the student to read directions. One day we sewed a tiny sleeping bag for her LOL doll. Other activities we engaged in were science experiments, July 4th star painted shirts, microwave cake and tacos. The goal of course is reading, to that end, we engaged in guided reading each meeting. Along with library books we accessed the subscribed site, www.readinga-z.com/ and printed leveled books. So, how much did she improve? We just completed the final assessment yesterday. She gained one grade level. She is now an independent reader at the first grade level. She is still behind for for entering 3rd grade, but with daily 6-hour a day opportunities to practice her strategies, I believe she will gain even more ground as school starts. Her self-correction rate went from 0% and 12% went to 50%. Now, when she comes to a word that does not make sense, as in she guessed and read a word incorrectly, she will know it sounds funny and will go back to find the correct word. This was a great way to spend the summer. I hope she will look back fondly at this time we spent together. She told me yesterday she now sees herself as a good reader. What more could a teacher ask for? The 2020 Council for Exceptional Children Convention is going to be in Portland, OR. The dates are February 5-8th.
Most states also have a regional chapter and then also on a local level. If you are a member, the prices to attend are lower. Registering before November 30th also provides better rates. There is an option to reduce the price of registration by volunteering during the convention. Here are some of the workshops available (3 or 6 hours) : Developing Legally Defensible IEPs (I took this full day workshop and it was great.) Trauma Responsive Practices across the Tiers Are You Using Paraeducators Appropriately? the ABCs of Autism in the Classroom College Transition There are 23 workshops in total. During General Sessions Dr. Randy Sprick will speak. The research project I was involved with this past year will be presenting on Thursday of the convention. Maybe I can meet some of you there. The link to register: cecconvention.org/ I want to declare first that I am not a doctor, nurse or nutritionist.
However, I have been wanting to share about numerous peer reviewed journal articles that say up to 75% of children with autism are deficient in Vitamin D. Who cares you say, I'm a teacher not a pediatrician, right? Well, due to this new connection many studies are now conducting interventions by providing children with ASD 5,000IUs daily to see if there is a decrease in autism symptoms. Every peer reviewed study that I have read (I will include some below) reported a decrease in symptoms. A few quotes from one extensive study: Mazahery et al., (2019) states that “two months of high dose vitamin D3 supplementation (150,000 IU per month administered intramuscularly plus 400 IU per day orally) improved autistic core symptoms”. Children under 3 years of age showed the best response to vitamin intervention. Why am I interested in this, or how did I find these studies? No one we visit for pediatric care for our son, who has autism, has ever suggested he take vitamin D. My son's symptoms dramatically reduced after removing gluten and dairy from his diet. He would spin in circles and flap his hands. He also exhibited depression, anger, poor handwriting and difficulty with math. Most of these issues were relieved by removing gluten and dairy. What remained was anxiety and a short-tempered disposition. After he began 5,000IUs daily of Vitamin D the anxiety lessened and he was no longer in a state of irritability. I want to stress he still has high functioning autism. It is not a miracle removal of autism. He still has social deficits, takes things literally, is black and white and loves making detailed lists. It does however put him on a different level of happiness that is obvious in our home. If he misses a week of taking vitamin D he is irritable again. I decided to share this now because autism research has put effort more recently into the connection of vitamin D and autism. The studies do not mention the specific administration of vitamin D but in case someone you care about wants to try this non-invasive intervention it would be a good idea see their doctor to get a baseline of Vitamin D to see if they are deficient and to understand that this particular vitamin must be taken with food, particularly fats. Once again I am not a doctor but this information may take years to filter out to the local pediatrician. Below are some of the articles you can read. NIH also has an easy database available and "autism vitamin D" will turn up some of these. The study below states that "children with vitamin D deficiency have a 3.5 times higher risk of having ASD compared to children with normal vitamin levels" Chtourou, M., Naifar, M., Grayaa, S., Hajkacem, I., Touhemi, D. B., Ayadi, F., & Moalla, Y. (2019). Vitamin d status in TUNISIAN children with autism spectrum disorders. Clinica Chimica Acta, 493, S619–S620. The article below has numerous citations from other studies (helpful!), including those conducted in other countries. Mazahery, H., Conlon, C. A., Beck, K. L., Mugridge, O., Kruger, M. C., Stonehouse, W., … von Hurst, P. R. (2019). A Randomised-Controlled Trial of Vitamin D and Omega-3 Long Chain Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in the Treatment of Core Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 49(5), 1778–1794. SCORE IT is an app that provides students with a simple way to self-monitor their behaviors. A study was done recently, in 2016, that trained both a general education teacher and three 11 year old students with either a diagnosis of ADHD or labeled at-risk by the school, to increase academic engagement. Students were prompted by the app every 10 minutes to respond via the iPad to specific questions of on-task behaviors such as, am I being respectful? The students had the choice of rating themselves from 0-4. At the end of each class students and the teacher reviewed their scores for immediate feedback. All three students had a baseline of academic engagement (on-task) between 20-40% on average. During the intervention all three students were successfully engaged 80-100% of each class hour. The students had become aware of how they were spending their time during class and greatly improved their on-task behavior. After the intervention was complete both girls were able to discontinue use of the app and still achieve high academic engagement. The male student kept using the app to achieve successful academic engagement. It is important to note that the male student had the lowest baseline and at some point might be able to discontinue use of the app. The implications for use of this app is practicality, nearly every school in America has an iPad or access to one, adding the app is simple. Questions within the app for self-monitoring can be changed to use for specific behaviors. The students were also not yet on an IEP, this is a great intervention to teach students skills before they need to be put on an IEP. This saves the Sped teacher time and paperwork to devote to other students. Lastly, the students involved in this study were only 11. They responded well to this intervention and the teacher reported that use of the app during class did not disrupt or distract her class even though that was a fear before the study began. The article: Vogelgesang, K. L., Bruhn, A. L., Coghill-Behrends, W. L., Kern, A. M., & Troughton, L. C. W. (2016). A Single-Subject Study of a Technology-Based Self-Monitoring Intervention. Journal of Behavioral Education, 25(4), 478–497. I will include a slideshow with the same information presented visually.
Acronyms that focus on helping students and teachers achieve success in and out of the classroom. SWPBS - school-wide positive behavior supports It is very possible this will look different at each school within a single school district. Some schools use simple statements such as "Live by the Golden Rule" treat others how you want to be treated or as complex as acrostic of obey, respect, help, etc. If students are found to be exhibiting these character traits they might receive tickets to redeem prizes. The classroom teacher manages his/her room daily with rules they have decided work for them. Anyone in the school can reward students with the school-wide positive behavior support and students in every grade are taught and understand the school's model. PUBS- positive unified behavior supports This is similar yet different to SWPBS. It is similar in that there is a school-wide model and expectation for correct behavior and ways to earn and be recognized for achieving targeted behavior. The way it differs from SWPBS is the "unified" part. This requires direct teaching and learning for all staff. Staff, from the principal to the recess attendant are taught specific expectations of students and when expectations are not met staff are to provide specific responses to violations. It gets even more specific, delivery is unified, with warm tone voices. It would go like this: John starts yelling answers out inappropriately to the teacher's question. Teacher responds by calmly stating school-wide rules for speaking out of turn, "John you spoke without raising your hand, you must wait until I call on you". The teacher uses a warm calm tone to reply to the student. Students are taught specific classroom rules provided by behavior management development team from kindergarten on. The benefits to this unified approach are: each year as a student moves to a new teacher the rules are the same rules are enforced the same, with the same verbal response staff are not left to make up their own rules emotions are taken out of the equation because staff are provided responses there is accountability through data collection and observation for compliance Teachers at schools who use PUBS report a calm in the entire school they have not experienced before. Students feel a sense of consistency and fairness. The negative: 100% compliance is required from all staff New staff members may question the need for extreme unity Essentially, SWPBS are great, PUBS goes a few steps farther to provide consistency in expectations from both teachers and students. Below is a video of schools that use PUBS. When students are off-task some teachers might have a natural inclination to take away recess from a particular student or the whole class. Is this a best practice, an okay practice or a poor practice? This is still currently being used in schools in my district. Inside city limits recess stops after 5th grade and PE is the only physical activity students are provided for 6th grade and beyond during school hours. Rural schools in my area tend to provide recess at least through 6th grade.
The question is, does withholding recess help or hinder behavior issues in class? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) provides a sharp answer. If you would like to skip my summary you can find the AAP's position about recess here: pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/1/183 Basically, the AAP goes through the social-emotional, physical and cognitive benefits of recess. They also state, interestingly, that the idea of "Recess Before Lunch" is advantageous and reduces food waste vs. kids who have recess after lunch. Essentially, having recess first makes kids hungry and when lunch time comes they are quite hungry, eat their whole lunch, and food is not thrown away. Back to withholding recess... The AAP states, "On the basis of an abundance of scientific studies, withholding recess for punitive or academic reasons would seem to be counterproductive to the intended outcomes and may have unintended consequences in relation to a child’s acquisition of important life skills". Per edutopia.org, Missouri, Florida, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Connecticut and Virgina all require a recess anywhere from at minimum of 20 minutes to 50 minutes. (https://www.edutopia.org/article/time-play-more-state-laws-require-recess) My particular state does not mandate recess, but our district sends emails out to parents stating that children will be sent outside for recess until -15 degrees and they are serious about this. If the AAP's beliefs are not enough to back the idea that recess is necessary, there are other studies out there such as: Campbell, A. E. (2012, January 1). A Case Study of Teachers’ Recess Practices Related to Students with Exceptional Learning Needs. ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. that again express withholding recess is not beneficial as a form of punishment for children with behavior problems. How important is recess? An NFL future Hall of Famer, Peyton Manning said, "I didn't play organized football until I was in seventh grade. Up until that point, I only played at recess and in the backyard" (brainyquote.com). Ultimately, taking away recess is only hurting the teacher. He/she does not get that 20-30 minute refresher they probably truly need. In that 20-30 minutes a positive behavior support ( www.pbis.org ) can be found to replace the idea of withholding recess and it's a win-win for both the teacher and the student. Some supervisors have great relationships with their paras and value them. Other paras are never asked to attend an IEP meeting, are not given any new training, and feel undervalued. Recently I was in a small elementary school and the general education teacher suggested I follow a little girl to her reading group to see if I could figure out why she was having difficulty. After watching her for a full hour, seeing her squint and put her face close to the page on numerous occasions I suggested to her teacher that she may need to have her eyes checked. Little did I know that the para who works with the little girl had suggested this a while back. After I said something the teacher felt horrible and went to talk to the para. She apologized for not listening. This student's reading issue made it to the RTI process without anyone checking her eyes.
She had arrived mid-year after the hearing and vision tests had taken place at the school, but the para saw it. The para did not complain to me but definitely let me know that she felt like no one was listening to her. The teacher met with her privately and apologized, it ended up being a really great scenario and hopefully forged a better relationship between them both. Although paras most likely do not have a teaching degree they are in many cases with students more than anyone else at school. They should be asked to come to the IEP meeting. A fluid communication system should be in place for paras to express concerns about students or ask questions. The para research study we are conducting shows that paras only real training in our district is Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) training and some outdated paper modules, all the while a greater percentage of students needing a para are coming to school with trauma. Why are paras not being provided training to meet this need? If the para cannot get the student out of the corner of the room there is no learning. In short, paras are indispensable and we should treat them that way, say thank you often and provide them with more training to help them do their job even better than they do. I feel this quote is so true and I hope that every para feels this way because they have a great supervisor: A person who feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected I have permission to share this story.
A friend of mine has 3 biological children and is also a foster mother. She began to offer respite foster care to a little boy starting at 8 weeks old. His primary foster family was a very experienced older couple. The only difference was that this older experienced foster family always fostered children, not babies. This new little baby boy had been born to a mom addicted to methamphetamines. The foster family was unprepared to see signs of the baby's lack of meeting milestones. As my friend began to notice warning signs, because she raised her own three children from infancy, she insisted that he see specialists and have care to help his development. She ended up adopting him. Each child born addicted to drugs can have different symptoms. Her new son at 6 months could not hold his head up or roll over. She began to advocate for him and he began to receive physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy through feeding sessions. An underlying issue was that her son had low muscle tone. The biggest difference in his progression was removing him from daycare. My friend, his mother, is very proactive and implemented all the therapies he was receiving into their daily activities. At three years old the main concern is his speech articulation. People outside his family only understand about 50% of what he is saying. By age 3, 75% of a child speaks should be understood by those outside the family. During my own observations with him for assignments I have noticed that his fine motor skills are behind. He is unable to use child scissors without assistance, when asked to draw a face he is at a loss for what to put on it. His strengths are gross motor skills. He loves to kick, jump and run. He currently attends a public preschool , 5 days a week, for children at risk. He receives speech therapy in individual and group sessions at school. A new revelation was learned recently at the dentist, a small cleft palate was discovered in his mouth which the dentist said is mostly likely causing his poor speech articulation. They believe it will close by itself eventually. The dentist also said that he sees this type of cleft palate frequently in children born to drug addicted mothers. His adopted mother has also been warned that her son may be show signs of Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) and was encouraged to join support groups to navigate his upcoming years. This story does not end with adoption #1. This little boy has 3 cousins who have been taken into state custody, ages 3,2 and 1. Two of the cousins have varying levels of traumatic brain injury due to being shaken by their father. Because my friend fostered them at different times during their lives she was the person asked first if she wanted to adopt them. She said yes. She is near the end of the adoption process. The two children with TBIs will also need special education services and she does not know the long-term prognosis of their TBIs. While this second adoption group was being processed she was called and informed that her adopted son's mother is pregnant again and in jail. She is still on drugs. This new baby will also be taken away from her. The new baby will also test positive for methamphetamines. Drugs are not just ruining our current neighbors, friends and family members, they are ruining future neighbors, friends, and family members. Our future society will have numerous children and future adults with seen and unseen disabilities due to parental drug use. A quote by Russell Brand about his drug addiction: “The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help, they have no hope.” A new trend is emerging in special education. Some districts see that special education teachers are being bogged down in paperwork, not able to spend time in the classroom, so they are dividing and conquering. In a group of teachers there might be one that has skill or desire to do more of the paperwork and others desperately want to work closer with the kids. The standard of having each teacher do paperwork and be with students can be very frustrating for some that do not have a natural bent for detailed paperwork. We're all aware paperwork is a part of the job, but most special education teachers go into this profession to be with students.
A rural school near me is succeeding using this new model of dividing duties. A seasoned special education teacher now has all the paperwork responsibilities for IEPs, the other special education teacher is with students all day. This was an amicable agreement for them both. They couldn't be happier to be focused on their work. Other school districts across the nation are also using this new model and finding it frees up teachers to actually be in the classroom while one or two teachers who are talented at IEPs do a great job serving students in that capacity. Does your school do this? Why not? |
AuthorSpecial Education major in a university teaching program. Substitute teacher, previous homeschool mom, wife. Archives
September 2019
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