We sometimes struggle to discover ways to meaningfully include
students with special needs into
regular education lessons. Animated Step-by-Steps™ strive to address this challenge
by providing an engaging central focus.
The fact that they use animations that can be triggered remotely using a switch,
can at the very least, provide a participatory
role to heighten engagement not just for the child with special needs, but
for everyone in the group.
The engagement piece
is crucial. If a student is not engaged in the lesson, it is unlikely that
he/she will be learning much from that lesson. It is also highly likely
that the disinterested child will be disrupting that 30-40 minute lesson, if
he/she is not engaged in a meaningful way.
When conducting a science lesson such as the Bean Experiment, Egg-Cola Experiment, Mealworm
Life Cycle, Dry-Wet Mealworm Experiment, you can use the Animated
Step-by-Step™ (AsbyS) PowerPoint on the interactive whiteboard to pace the class through a group project
… OR … you can use the ASbyS to provide an overview
of the actual project that will be conducted individually, or in pairs at
student tables, or at an activity center that students rotate through over the
course of the morning.
When using the ASbyS as an upfront lesson, it is important to ‘hook’ everyone into the lesson
in a meaningful way, whatever their level of functioning. For most children the
ASbyS are engaging, in and of themselves. For some children, however, the presence
of multiple animations per page and the ability to activate those animations
using a remote switch might not be enough to ‘hook’ them into an ongoing
science lesson. The interactive whiteboard may be physically too far removed for some
children.
In a previous post we discussed the options for bringing the
content ‘closer’ to the child by using Splashtop
Classroom (which presents the interactive whiteboard content on the
student’s iPad; http://bit.ly/1ka0RMM) or using the Microsoft
PowerPoint app (which presents the exact same PowerPoint file on the
student’s iPad; http://bit.ly/1L3LR97). Having the content ‘up close’ within their immediate visual
field may be just the right strategy for ‘ramping up’ the engagement piece for
that particular child.
For others, however,
even the ‘parallel universe’ of using an iPad to present identical content
may not be sufficient for engagement. With some children, I have found the
simple strategy of introducing and using the props paired with their
Dual=Representation symbols to be a powerful way to keep them ‘hooked’ into
that lesson. When conducting the Dry-Wet
Mealworm Experiment, for example, the props (paper plate, paper towel,
water, marker to denote half and the center of the plate, a cutout of a
mealworm) would be quietly introduced to the child by the classroom assistant/speech-language
pathologist as the lesson unfolds and would be used to concretely act out the
steps being discussed.
A velcro receptive multipurpose fabric easel (available
from Mayer-Johnson/Dynavox/Tobii) can be used to present the Dual=Representation
Symbols paired with the props. http://www.mayer-johnson.com/multipurpose-fabric-easel
As they say in those lottery commercials …
“You have to be
in it … to win it”.
Fingers crossed that this might be just the strategy you’ve
been looking for … the strategy that positions that challenging child for more
meaningful learning during a group lesson.
…’til the next post (new posts every Monday)
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©2015 Carol Goossens’, Ph.D.
Augmentative Communication Consultant
Speech-Language Pathologist
Special Educator
