Tasks Galore: Book Notes: Readiness Skills

Tasks Galore Book Notes
Laurie Eckenrode, Pat Fennell, Kathy Hearsey.  (C) 2003. USA.  ISBN: 978-1-934226-00-1

Page 14:
Readiness- Concepts to Think About:

• Matching Skills
• Sorting Skills

It asks teachers to "Record Your Own Task Ideas Here" and provides space.  If I come up with my own ideas, I will post comments to this post.

Page 15:  Readiness - Colour Concepts
Includes activities, such as:

• Simple colour sort
• Match coloured beads to pipe cleaners
• Match coloured clothespins to paper
• Coloured button sort
• Match coloured paper to large clips
• Sort coloured clothing 

Page 16:

• Place foam shapes onto coloured pegs
• Colour sort onto dowels
• Colour sort into cutouts
• Sort and stack by colour
• Sort coloured Duplos
• Colour sort dowels

Page 17:

• Sort coloured floppy disks
• Self-contained coloured cassette sort
• Sort coloured fuzzies
• Gingerbread man sort
• Match erasers and papers with coloured pegs
• Match by bowtie colour

Page 18:

• Colour sort into soap containers
• Package coloured fish
• Package coloured chips

Tasks Galore: Book Notes: Fine Motor Skills

Tasks Galore Book Notes
Laurie Eckenrode, Pat Fennell, Kathy Hearsey.  (C) 2003. USA.  ISBN: 978-1-934226-00-1

Page 8:
Fine Motor - Concepts to Think About:

• Reach, Grasp, Release
• Manipulation
• Bilateral Skills
• Pre-writing and Writing
• Computer Skills

It asks teachers to "Record Your Own Task Ideas Here" and provides space.  If I come up with my own ideas, I will post comments to this post.

Page 9:  Fine Motor - Put In
Includes activities, such as:

• Pull from Velcro and insert into bottle
• Pull and insert into cutout
• Push into slotted opening
• Drop chips into water
• Push through opening with pointer finger
• Lift from dowel and place into slot

Page 10:  Fine Motor - Assembly
Includes activities, such as:

• Slide beads off pipe cleaner
• Bead stringing sequence
• Interlocking people
• Coloured link assembly
• Tinker Toy assembly
• Match cassette and case

Page 11:  

• Two-piece nut and bolt
• Three-piece nut and bolt
• Plastic pipe assembly
• Snap hair rollers
• Flashlight assembly
• Put toothbrush into holder

Page 12:  Fine Motor - Writing
Includes activities, such as:

• Colour within boundary
• Trace highlighted word
• Trace colour-dotted words
• Lift for wrist support
• Copy words from dictionary
• Type from list

Page 13:  Fine Motor - Other
Includes activities, such as:

• Thread into cut out
• Pincer grasp
• Put into slot using wrist rotation
• Hammer into slot
• Pick up and place with tongs
• Lift rings from dowel and place into box

Tasks Galore: Book Notes: Introduction

Tasks Galore Book Notes
Laurie Eckenrode, Pat Fennell, Kathy Hearsey.  (C) 2003. USA.  ISBN: 978-1-934226-00-1

Introduction
Page 4:

• should keep in mind features of structure that have proven useful in classrooms and prgorams for students of all ages with learning challenges.
• organisation of physical space
• scheduling
• teaching methods
• KEY is INDIVIDUALISATION
• mission of books is to help design meaningful, individualised tasks with an emphasis on functional academics - presenting academic material in a hands-on approach.  Require movement of sensory input while processing and learning new information.
• children are either incapable of doing traditional task work or do not see meaning of it - e.g. pencil and paper tasks.
• receptive language of child may hinder their understanding of what is expected of them - directions for tasks must be organised and systematic for child to be successful - learning experiences that provide physical movement of some sort of motoric manipulation can displace inattention and distractability.
• Resistance to change and lack of motivation may be overcome by teaching to the child's strengths and interests.
• Teaching should take place at a student's level of understanding.
• Visual component important to each task - use visual structure to incorporate concrete visual clues into the task itself; capitalises on the aptitudes and strengths of visual learners. 

Page 5:

• Some students rely too heavily on verbal or physical prompts and may not become independent workers - require visual information to support them further and allow them to comprehend meaning; visual clues tell them what to do with the materials and therefore complete the task independently without intervention.
• completing a series of actions in a sequential manner is at the core of most tasks.
• it is often difficult for students with special needs to organise their thoughts in such a step-by-step manner; it is also hard for them to choose the relevant details needed to connect concepts (often students focus on irrelevant details and fail to grasp the relationship between the parts and how they connect to form the whole).
• once students become confident with visual instruction sequences, they will likely follow similar instructions in other settings
• PRIMARY GOAL - teach independence, teach how to generalise information learned from one environment to another - accomplished by teaching students to approach the environment and look for visual information.

Three key elements to VISUAL STRUCTURE:

1. visual instructions
2. visual organisation
3. visual clarity

1. Visual Instruction (page 5) - provide means for students to understand what is expected of them, will vary considerably depending on functional level of child.  GOAL is for student to be able to complete the task independently.  Instructions of include materials defining the task itself: - cut out jigs, visual outlining, colour-coded written directions, written directions, colour-coded self-correcting sorts, picture jigs, left-to-right sequences, top-to-bottom instruction jigs, product samples.

2.  Visual Organisation (page 6) - organising the sensory environment (materials and space) helps to modulate the sensory input to the child and helps them to complete the task.  E.g. container organisation (seperate containers, pencil bags, backpacks, etc)  To allow the student to see all the necessary components of the task as a unit a self-contained task is the most structured way to organise materials.

3.  Visual Clarity (page 6) - helps students to discriminate among details relevant to the completion of the task.  Common techniques - highlighting important information/relevant concepts, using colour-coding, using labeling.  At a basic level, visual clarity is achieved by LIMITING the materials to only the information needed to complete the task successfully.

Page 6:
Some questions to ask when setting up a work area:

• what visual information does the student already understand?
• what visual information can the student understand through teaching?
• is the student given enough information to complete the task independently?
• do the physical setting and organisation of materials help convey directions to the student?
• are materials presented in an organised manner?
• are there too many materials presented at a given time?

Children learn best by watching, handling, and manipulating materials. It is important for children to participate in a wide variety of learning experiences to bring about success in the development of the "whole child".

Tasks Galore looks at developing tasks that address skills across curriculum areas, within the following categories:  Fine Motor Skills, Readiness, Language Arts, Math, Reasoning, and Play.  Creating a fun, satisfying, and meaningful collection of tasks that can be used to help students reach their full educational potential, based on their strengths, interests, and IEP goals.

Volunteer Training Sessions for ICG

I am not sure if this count towards my CPD or not, but I thought I would include it as I got some ideas and useful information from the 4 Volunteer Training workshops for the ICG I attended on Monday night. 

The first workshop was about "The Handbook", basically code of conduct, rules and responsibilities, etc.  The neat thing that I got from this workshop was related to the workshops main activity, where we were split into 6 groups of about four or five people.  The basic idea was to Group-Pair-Share; there were three discussion topics that circulated.  The topics consisted of:

• What would you like to get from the ICG?
• What is expected of us?
• What is expected of you?

I thought a bit more about this and how I could use this in my teaching.  I thought this would be a good idea to use when you first meet your new class(es) in September, for example:

• What would you like to get from this English class? Math class? etc?
• What you expect of me, the teacher?
• What I expect of you, the students?

I remember that when my teachers presented their expectations (i.e. don't be late, come prepared for class and ready to work, etc), I respected them a lot more for the respect that they showed their students as they then allowed us to come up with some rules for them, for example don't be late, give helpful feed back in a timely fashion, etc.  The above sort of activity would be a good way for the class to come up with classroom rules and expectations for the students, teacher and what we would all like to take from the class.

The second workshop was in regards to child protection and safeguarding.  They introduced briefly Scotland's "Getting it Right for Every Child" Programme (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/Young-People/childrensservices/girfec) and the 13 Expectations from "The Charter for Children and Young People" (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/1181/0008817.pdf).  Below, is a copy of the page containing the 13 expectations.

As a teacher, it is important to keep these expectations in mind, as it is "about what is important to [the students we teach] and how we go about helping to protect them".
The key points discussed in the workshop are: that if we are concerned that a child is in need of protection, it is important to speak to someone.  We were informed that: It is better to have a concern investigated and dismissed than not investigated and have something happen to the child.  Times when you should speak to someone consist of:

• when a child discloses information to you
• when you witness an incident
• when you notice unusual/suspicious bruising and/or marks
• when you suspect abuse, harm, and/or neglect

What you should do if a child is disclosing information to you:

• remain calm.
• listen and hear carefully what the child is really saying, not what you think they are trying to say
• allow them the chance to speak, free from interruption.
• be honest with them - you MUST NEVER tell them that you won`t disclose the information that they share with you, you MUST tell them that you will need to speak with others to seek advice about the situation and what they disclose.  Do not gossip or discuss the situation widely.
• take their concerns seriously, do not ignore the allegations, exagerate them or trivialise them.
• seek advice, DO NOT INVESTIGATE the situation on your own, let someone who is trained to do so carry out the investigation.
• record information as soon as possible (try not to write while speaking to the child, but do try to recall verbatim what is disclosed to you).

Do not:

• say or do anything inappropriate or suggestive to the child.
• bully or harm the child, or allow them to be bullied or harmed.
• hitting, grabbing, pushing, etc.
• become overly familiar with a child.

The workshop's main message:  Safeguarding is everyone`s responsibility.  If in doubt, check it out.

Workshop number 3 was about effective communication.  It began with us being asked what our jobs were and how do we do them effectively? To which we were told "Your job is to communicate" and how we do that effectively was the purpose of the presentation.  With something like 80 different countries being represented at the ICG, communication is key.  All the children may not speak English, but the idea is that there are other ways in which we communicate; it is not always just about the words we use.  The hierarchy that was shared with us stated:

Finally, the last workshop was the Police speaking about Counter Terrorism.  This was interesting as it is not something that often is spoken about to teachers or the public especially not in regards to a children's event.  However, because the ICG are an international event, it did have to be touched upon as it is always a possibility.

CALM Theory

On the 22nd of September, 2011 from 12:45 to 2:30, I attended inservice which covered CALM theory, which examines management of challenging behaviour. 

CALM is all about the key themes, systems that are already in place, in schools to manage challenging behaviour.  CALM training, if implemented properly, minimises the chances of evver having to use the hands on system.  It is about organisational skills and learning from what happens.  When we have systems in place, whether they are fire alarms or otherwise, it is important to know how they work and what they sound like so that we recognise them and know how to respond. 

There are 3 stages to managing challenging behaviour: 

What systems are in place to help you deal with challenging behaviour:

Primary

• Effective communication
• Interacting with child's entire team (parents, professionals, the child, etc.)
• Getting to know the child that you are working with
• Read IEPs, ASPs, CarePlans, Profiles, Positive Behaviour Plans, etc
• Risk assessments of environment, behaviour of individual children, triggers (ABC chart), who is at risk and how they are at risk, physical interventions, staff and their capabilities
• Team work
• Consistency
• Constant Evaluation
• Reinforcement of good/wanted behaviour

Secondary

• De-escalation techniques
• Awareness of child's likes/dislikes, tone of voice, confidence levels
• Knowing what to do
• Training - build confidence and self-esteem
• Practice

(Buzzers, Ensure Environment Safe, Effective Communication, etc)

Tertiary

• Recording
• Update Risk Assessments
• Incident Reports
• Update Profiles/Behaviour Plans
• Debriefing - construtive discussion
• the Who, What, Where, When, & Why
• What modifications/changes might need to be made to avoid a repeat situation
• Looking for triggers
• Debriefing is not optional
• No legislation, but is part of health and wefare
• "Time Out" - may collapse afterwards from stress, so remove self
• Evaluation (in a non-blame culture) to be reflective
• ask everyone present for behaviour, must be present at debrief
• as what you thing and what actually happened may differ; better to get input from all sources
• Accountability - being responsible for your actions

(Tertiary feeds back into the Primary Stage to inform it)

Pick 1 or 2 behaviours, but fo not try to focus on all.  See how often behaviour happens and using the ABC chart, a pattern may emerge.  This is a method of functional assessment.

*Between phases C and E on the Assault Cycle any little thing can raise the anger again and can send you back to the Crisis phase, this is what is referred to as additional assaults.  During this time, it may not be a good thing to write the incident report as your anger/feelings will effect your responses.

Professional persona - each of us has our own tolerance levels and therefore our there may not be consistency over behaviour.  An agreement must be made on a wider level of what behaviour is acceptable and what is not going to be tolerated. 

The purpose of CALM training to be able to move from Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence when dealing with challenging behaviour.  The key is to practice, practice, practice so that your reaction to challenging behaviour becomes natural and that you learn to recognise indicators that challenging behaviour may be surfacing, and use tactics to avoid it before it begins.

*Sometimes we may not know the trigger of challenging behaviour.  Occassionally, it may be that an individual person sparks a memory or feeling in the child that triggers their challenging behaviour, so do not take it personally.

New Staff Orientation: Health & Safety and Fire Prevention

At the New Staff Orientation (12th Sept. 2011), we discussed that Health & Safety is everyone's responsibility and we all have duties. 

We went over the school's policies and procedures, including:

• that we may or may not have warning about fire tests
• it is important to ensure that everything it unplugged at the end of the day
• DO NOT panic - children will feel what you feel, so keep calm and implement the fire procedures to get everyone out quickly and safely
• Fire procedures are on green paper - to match exit signs - and state such things as:
• ideal fire escape route and alternative routes
• regular fire testing information
• location of Safe Rooms - where you do nothingright away, just be ready to move if necessary
• Emergency Classroom Buzzers - to attract attention from School Nurse or HT/DHT
• special equipment - including Space Blankets, Picnic Mat for standing outside with bare feet, etc.
• and things to be aware of, including things like inside doors will automatically close when fire alarm goes off (normally held open by magnets), and that outdoor gate for interior court yard will automatically open (so check after fire alarm test, to ensure it is closed again).
• Fire information is available in each room and on the "All Staff" drive on the computer intranet.

Staff Meeting: Learning Intentions and Success Criteria within the context of the Good Lesson

On Thursday, after school, I attended a staff meeting at the school that I am currently at; it was entitled "Learning Intentions and Success Criteria within the context of the Good Lesson".  The following are notes from that presentation:

5 Components of a Good Lesson:

1. Connect the learning
2. Learning Outcomes and Success Criteria
3. Active Learning
4. Demonstrate Understanding
5. Review and Recall

This pyramid shows how we learn best

Students need to understand the context of their learning, why it is relevant.  (Why it is important to learn and how it is significant).  Students must see how important learning is across the curriculum, and how skills can be applied in a variety of subjects.

The teacher needs to believe in the learning intentions and success criteria.

Often times success criteria can be confused with the learning intentions. 

The learning intentions are the What and the Why?  It is what you want students to know and what they should be able to do as a result of the learning.  It is focused on the learning itself and not on whatever activity is used to support or demonstrate the learning.  It should also be shared right at the beginning of the lesson.  We need to decontextualise so that learning can cross contexts and be made a transferrable skill.  Can use the following template for expressing Learning Intentions:  "We are learning to.... This is because....".  These intentions should be expressed in pupil friendly language, and should be revisited/reiterated throughout the lesson and activity.  Learning intentions should be open-ended, not too specific, for example: write a set of instructions, create a poster, collect and organise data, persuasive writing, etc. 

***I realised that, as a supply teacher, I too need to prepare a laminated template for learning intentions, using the "We are learning to.... This is because...." format, that I can bring with me into classrooms and use for each lesson that I am teaching, as it is important to communicate these ideas with the students at the beginning of each lesson.  I often will say the learning intention during my lesson, but posting it up for students to be able to refer back to throughout the lesson enables them to take some responsibility for their own learning and stay focused.

The success criteria is what is used to assess what has been learned; "steps required to achieve the learning intentions and to what standard" (GOGLASGOW, 2010).  The success criteria must be linked to the learning intentions, and must be specific to the activity.  They should be discussed, understood, and agreed upon by the pupils prior to doing the activity.  Provides a scaffolding and focus for students while engaged in the activity, and as a basis for effective feedback and peer/self-assessment after the activity and lesson.

Semantics and overthinking can complicate success criteria.  You do not want to look for too many success criteria for each  activity and lesson, keep it focused on a limited few. 

***I found this a very good thing to cover, as the line between learning intention and success criteria have always been a little fuzzy for me, and it was handy to do an exercise taking a learning intention and coming up with examples of success criteria, and vice versa.  I have a better sense of how to move from one ot the other, and what the difference is between them.  It was also good for me as I usually am too specific and overthink what I am looking for as success criteria; I am really going to try now not to complicate it and keep it simple and clear.

The plenary is a recap of what has been learned during the lesson and activity, it is meant to summarise the lesson and underline what has been accomplished.  It can be as quick as a one minute activity or last upto 15 minutes.  For the children, it should focus on what was really important learning during the lesson and activity as opposed to what was the most recent point that may have been learned.  For the teacher, the plenary will provide some instant feedback and enables you to be able to make adjustments to forward plans (what areas need more attention and what the students already know and what skills they already possess). 

During the presentation, we were given a handout containing the powerpoint slides as well as a handout containing plenary examples. 

***I was made aware of some very useful resources on the Glasgow Intranet for Glasgow City Employees, now I just need to figure out how to access these resources when I am not at a Glasgow school so I can further familiarise myself with things I have available to me to use in the classrooms and keep up-to-date with things that are happening within the council that may affect me as a supply teacher.