Guest Student ECE Blogger: Casey

"As I move forward with my education and gain more experience working in classrooms with children at the early childhood level, I am learning about how to properly instruct and guide students with developmental delays and disabilities in an inclusive setting. This is something that I find to be difficult, but I don’t think that it’s supposed to be easy. There is a lot of thought and planning that needs to go into creating and implementing any type of lesson, and some of that thought needs to be focused on how students with developmental delays and disabilities will grow and learn from those lessons. I haven’t had a ton of experience working with students who happen to have developmental delays, but I have been working closely with a student who is at risk for having dyslexia. This 8 year-old student is wonderful; a hard worker who seems to genuinely want to participate in the classroom lessons and activities. I have been working with this student to help improve his reading skills, especially when it comes to comprehension. I enjoy not only getting to help improve this student’s reading level, but also my own abilities in helping students who are in need of some extra intervention in certain academic areas.  

DEC (2015)

Another student whom I have been working toward understanding and being patient with is a student who has an ADHD diagnosis. This student is also a wonderful 8 year-old, with a lot of energy and excitement about him, but there are times when this student can become easily distracted by his peers and lose focus on the lessons being taught. Sometimes, I will be asked to work with this student individually so that he can complete his work. These are the times where I try to find strategies that will help him to focus on the work in front of him, and while he always gets the task done, I am still struggling with figuring out how to keep this student focused and devoted to his school work.  

I will keep working to figure out ways to offer help for both of these students so that they can be successful inside and outside of the classroom. I will constantly be looking for academic and behavioral improvements throughout the rest of the semester, and hopefully these improvements are evident as the school year moves forward. One of my courses at the university is on authentic assessments, and how to create an environment where students can be authentically and fairly assessed in order for a teacher to obtain data on improvements or areas in which improvements can be made. One of my upcoming assignments is to create three different types of assessments to administer to my case study student, who happens to be the first student I mentioned earlier. These assessments are meant to provide me with information that will help me to figure out where the student is at, and how to plan for further instruction. After I administer these three different assessments, I should have some evidence as to what the student needs help with in terms of academics."