Final Blog-Mentorship

The mentorship experience was a great experience for me. I was able to gain a lot of knowlege and in sight into special education. I learned about some new programs that I will be able to use within my programming. I learned about some new quick and effective assessments that I will be able to use with my students. On top of the new progrmming and assessments I have gained a valuable on-going resource with my mentor. I really enjoyed this experience!

Mentorship reflective journal #2

The second session I had with my mentor was just as great of a learning session as the first one. I was able to observe her working with students in an in-class session and look through resouces. I also had the opportunity to ask more questions. I had a wonderful experience and enjoyed working with my mentor. We will continue to bounce ideas and resources off each other in the future.

Mentorship reflective journal #1

I had my first mentorship meeting on Tuesday March 16. I met with my mentor from 10-noon. For the first hour we had a discussion around my goals for this project, and I asked her the mentorship questions. We also just discussed any other questions that I had. I found this part of our meeting very informative. She provided a lot of information around special education and answered all of my questions with very thoughtful, informative answers. For the second hour I observed her working with a couple of small pull-out groups working on early language arts skills. I found out about a program that I am going to implement with some of my students. I also was able to view some of her informal assessment for these students and observe how she uses that assessment to create their programming.

For our next meeting I am going to observe her working in the classroom, co-teaching with a classroom teacher. We are then going to meet and discuss any further questions I may have. I am really looking forward to our next meeting because I gain a lot of information and ideas from our first meeting.

Peer Tutoring

There were many advantages to my peer tutoring experience. I think the most important advantage was student success. I was able to observe student growth in the areas of academics and socially. Their marks improved and to be able to observe the bonds that were created between the two students was amazing. Another advantage from my peer tutoring experience was because it was a success I will be able to go into my next experience with a wealth of knowledge so that it too came be successful. A disadvantages that I experienced from my peer tutoring project was time. We could have used more time to properly prepare for the epxerience. As well we could have used more time to properly train the tutee. All in all I really enjoyed this experience and I look forward to my next peer tutoring experience.

Co-Teaching

I am currently on maturnity leave, so I used a co-teaching experience that I had already participated in. It was a really interesting to look back on my co-teaching experience and compare it to how it would have 'looked' had I followed the assignment guidelines. I had a successful co-teaching experience, but I am excited to go back to work and take part in a new co-teaching experience and implement the new strategies and resources that I have learned from this assignment. I feel that it will save more time and stress if I follow the same guidelines presented in this course to a new experience! It will also allow me to make sure the work load is shared, that I can try a variety of different teaching styles and include students in the co-teaching process. I have learned a lot about the co-teaching process and look forward to my next experience!

Current tutoring practices

Currently I work with students using the one-to-one tutoring model, the assignment-assistance model and the strategic tutoring model. I feel like the strategic tutoring model has been the most effective strategy for me and my students. This model allows me to work with a group of students who are struggling with certain skills and make the skills relevant by teaching it to them through classroom assignments. They are able to learn and practice the skills and stay caught up with their classroom work instead of fallingbehind, or missing assignments. I find that using this model the students are able to transfer the skills learned easlier to other assignments/work, than when I teach the skills in isolation.

DIfferentiated Instruction

One experience I have had with differentiated instruction was with a grade two math class. We were working on addition and I had some students who were still working on adding sums to 10 and then some of the class was working on adding sums to 18 and then there was another group that was working on adding two digit numbers without re-grouping. I created ability alike groups and then created materials for each group at their level. I would work with one group and the EA would work with another group and one group would work independently, this would switch daily. I found that even though I was differentiating the content with the class I was still differentiating instruction within each group. So within the group I would also use a variety of instructional strategies to meet the student's learning needs. This was a very time comsuming task when I first started, but as the year went on it became less time comsuming and very enjoyable! The bonus to me was seeing how much success the students were experiencing.

Insructional Strategies

One instructional strategy that I find helpful in my special education classroom is instructional grouping. At first I thought it would be more useful in the large classroom and I didn't use it with my smaller groups. Last year I had a group of 5 students who had very similar needs in some areas of reading, but were also in very different places in other areas when it came to reading. So I had the students work together when it came to comprehension and decoding skills, but when we were working on phonemic awareness I broke them into 2 groups of two and an individual. I taught a skill to one group/individual while the other group/individual practiced the skill area that they needed support with. I also supported their different level of needs the same way when it came to building fluency. This strategy allowed me to support the groups needs while working within the same time period, which is important when there are some many needs in our school and so little time!

Benefits and Challenges of Co-Teaching

I think there are many benefits to co-teaching. The teachers are able to share ideas, resources and materials. It is nice to get a different point of view on something. I am finding that working with the other teacher I am always saying "Oh I never thought of trying that," or "What a good idea". I am able to provide some resources to the other teacher that will help her provide support to the students who are struggling. To me it is a win, win situation.
The biggest challenge we are finding as co-teachers is finding time to meet and plan. I think this is an especially big challenge for us because right now I am at home on maternity leave and the school is an hour away from me.
This is my first co-teaching experience and I am excited to see what the finished product will look like!!

What I need to learn more about in the spec ed world

I feel that I need to learn more about the resources out there to support/assess students to allow myself to become more confident as a spec ed practitioner. I have been receiving ideas and suggestions from my fellow classmates, but there is just so much out there. I know that I rely on programs that I know work really well for some students, but what about the othernstudents that maybe need something different to experience success. I also need to have more confidence in my abilities that I am planming the proper programming for my students. I need to remind myself that all students learn at a different pace, and just because they are not experiencing as much success right away as others, they are still learning and gaining the resources they need.

Most important aspect of my post-degree experience

I think the most important aspect of my experience with the post-degree cerificate so far has been networking with the other people enrolled in the class, as well as the instructors. It has been really valuable to learn of other resources that work for other spec. ed teachers. It has also been helpful to discuss with others about situations that are happening with my students and use any feedback that they may provide. There as so many resources and ideas to try, but it is nice to know which ones that worked, or were teacher friendly.