So much interaction!

This week we did a lot with reaching out to parents and other teachers or students via the internet. We created event sign ups with the website SignUpGenius.com, and we used MS Publisher to create a fake newsletter to send out to parents. I really think Parent-Teacher interaction is incredibly important and completely imperative for a child's proper education (learning doesn't just take place in school!). These different tools we've been introduced too seem excellent to me, I'm 100% sure I would utilize them and/or tools like them with my future students and their parents. I think it's a very well organized and creative way to interact. We also discussed the app EduCreations, which is a sort of white-board video app which allows a teacher to record their voice and their drawing on the screen like a white board. This can be used by students outside of class to watch the videos and review or learn material as if they are right there with the teacher. And finally, even more interaction went on with our use of Dropbox to send each other our newsletters and comment on each other's work as well. I think these are all great ways to interact with our students, their parents, and our peers. I will definitely be utilizing them when I have my own classroom!

The Use of Social Stories

Social Stories are a short story that delivers social instruction. They "take complex skills and break them into smaller components that are more easily understandable" (More, 2008). As a teacher, I think this is a great tool to use to teach a specific lesson. It uses visuals, text, and audio so it hits almost ever base for the different spectrum of learners. One of the most important things that stuck out for me in the article we were to read, was that when making a social story you need to take the child's perspective into account. You need to be on their level with vocabulary and sentence structure and the topic at hand. This is great to use for behavior intervention, and because the stories are individualized, you can tailor the story at hand to find any student.

For my own social story, I kept it broad so it could fit most any student. I chose a simple idea: keeping calm and figuring out what to do when a you (a child/student) are mad. I've embedded it below. I felt like making a social story about keeping calm was a really good choice because, as a teacher aide in special education classrooms I feel like the things I'm saying constantly are 'use nice hands', 'we use our words', and 'do not hit your friends'. Many students, especially students with disabilities who may have trouble communicating their feelings and needs, get angry very easily. The idea of making my social story on staying calm was an instantaneous decision for me. As far as troubleshooting the program went, I wasn't very impressed with PhotoStory. It was primitive and lacked an easy flow. I think I would have been much better over simply using photo editing software and working it into a movie maker program (two things I am more familiar with anyway). Otherwise, making this social story was a great experience and I will definitely do it again in the future.