Week of Learning and Teaching

This week was full of learning and teaching. Monday we talked about UDL (universal design for learning) and Differentiation. Wednesday we learned about intellectual disabilities and Friday we used UDL and differentiation to teach a new skill.

Differentiation and UDL are important for every classroom. When you have a diverse classroom, which is always, then each child has specific needs and making a lesson plan that fits the entire class is important to start out. Differentiation helps a teacher to focus on one child and make sure they are understanding. Assessing is an important part of all of this, so that the teacher understands what they need to do to help the child. When the student analysis is done then it's important to see if they are high then you may want to try to challenge them so they will not get bored. If a student doesn't understand then they may need extra help or they could stop trying all together.

Intellectual disabilities used to be called mental retardation. This is not what it is anymore and we try to avoid using those derogatory terms. There are varying degrees of intellectual disabilities. To show this we played telephone to show this. The first person did fine, but by the time it got to the end then there was a more extreme disability.
I never knew a psychologist had to be the one to diagnose the disability. The child has to have a low IQ and GPA. There are many causes like genetics, prenatal problems, child illness, and environmental causes.
We did another simulation to show how someone with intellectual disabilities feels when they are given directions. We were given a long list on detailed instructions to do in order. I could only get to the third instruction before I just gave up because I couldn't remember everything. This is how they feel. They may just want to give up because it didn't make sense and maybe it was at too high of a level for them. When working with someone with an intellectual disability it is important to help them understand and slow down for them.

Finally, Friday! We were split up into groups to teach the other people in the class a new skill. The trick was three of the students were given specific disabilities and everyone was naturally at a different level. Our group taught how to set up a solitaire game. We had people who play solitaire all the time for fun and people who had never played it. Someone was blind, another had one hand, and one person was mute. This presented a challenge, but we had enough teachers that each disability had an aid with them. This was the biggest help.
Another group taught us how to make a paper crane. This was a difficult task for me. Those with disabilities were surpassing my abilities and it was frustrating, but I had to remember they had one person to help them specifically. Teaching to an entire class of completely different levels is very difficult, but not impossible.

This week I learned how important UDL and differentiation are in every classroom. Whether there is a disability or not every child has a different level of needs and learns differently. Every child is important and the teacher can use UDL and differentiation to meet every child's needs.