Entry # 1

When is a child considered to be educationally exceptional?

There are several ways to consider a child to be educationally exceptional. One way to tell is if a child differs from the average child in mental characteristics, children that are slower with processing information than the normal student. Another way to tell is if the child's sensory abilities are different, if the child is either deaf or blind.

Communication abilities are apart of determining weather or not a child is educationally exceptional. If a child has autism or has speech and language disabilities. Behavior and emotional development is another crucial way to diagnose a student. Behavioral differences include children who are emotioanlly disturbed. 

Another way is physical disabilities if the child was handicapped.

After reading this chapter I think if a child has an IQ higher than the national average then they should be considered to have intellectual differences. 

If the student continued to participate in the normal classroom things would being to get tedious for the student and could potentially make the student not enjoy school anymore.

How do parents and siblings respond to the presence of a child with disabilities in the family?
Parents and siblings with a child with disabilities tend to act in different ways. Most parents will do anything for their child, even if that means mothering them into their teen years. Some parents become so involved in protecting their child, they forget that the student needs to adapt to normal life as quickly and as well as they possibly can. 
Sometimes its different with siblings rather than parents. Siblings might feel embarresed, or confused to why their brother/sister can't comprehend as quickly as they can. 
At other times siblings might feel like they need to be over protected, which may cause the child with disabilities to feel helpless.
In my opinion, I feel like it's hard to be a parent or sibling dealing with a child with disabilities. I have never had to deal with a situation like that so it's hard to understand what it would be like.
I would try to be as helpful as I could in assisting my brother or sister, but try not to be too overprotective.

Opportunities Unlimited

I really enjoyed working with Jacob. He was very outgoing and had a lot of beneficial ideas to our movie shoot. I especially like Jacob because he was a big fan of the sabers, and I like them. haha. I noticed that some of the student's were a little shy, while other were very outgoing and had a lot to say. I think this was a great way to experience working with student's with special needs. I really enjoyed watching one of the students sing micheal jackson I was laughing so hard. I admire how majority of them embrace life and don't dwell on the mishaps in life.

Chapter 7 discussion board

Chapter 7 discusses students with speech impediments, language barriers and communication disabilities. Throughout the RTI (Response to Intervention), there have been many suggestions in helping students with these types of learning disabilities. Tier 2 says that a teacher should take action regardless of the student’s ability. Although it is in an inclusive classroom Tier 2 students with language disabilities and speech impediments have the opportunity to work individually with speech-language pathologists. Speech – language help a great deal with tier 2.

In Tier II speech-language pathologists can be very helpful for children with these certain disabilities. Speech-language pathologists use high skilled thinking to provide support for these students. They are truly a great help to students with these disabilities.

In Chapter 7, Linguistic diversity is defined - children who come from different backgrounds and grew up adapting to the language spoken in their house, and this is always different in each household.

It’s our job as teachers to pay attention and recognize if a student has come from a culturally diverse family. These struggles the student may have are not treated the same as a diagnosis would be.

Speech/language/communication disorder- diversity is an aspect that varies from home to home, and these issues should be taken care of by teaching versus therapy and aid

I think the main lesson I took from this chapter was to take the time with my students to go over proper pronunciation of words.

Learn N Serve#7

Learn N' Serve today was a lot better than most days. Once I walked into the classroom I was assigned to help a group of students with their reading and comprehension skills. Within the group of students there was quite a bit of difference in the student's reading levels. One kid was way ahead of the group with his reading skills, one student was average and could pronounce majority of the words, and another student had very poor reading skills. The student with poor reading skills would occasionally studder and the other students would tease the student.

I felt really bad for the student and I was kind of put on the spot to handle the situation. I told the student's doing the teasing to knock it off and to understand that everyone has different reading levels. They settled down for a bit with the teasing, but once again they started it up again. I felt like I could have handled that situation better, but it was very eye opening to me that teachers can't always prevent the student's from hurting other's feelings but you can make them aware that everyone has different levels of capabilities.

The picture above is a picture I took in the library that I thought was very neat. This section of the book case had books under the title, " Excel in the basic reading skills" this section was instructed to students who were having trouble grasping the basic reading skills and who needed more practice. I thought this was a good idea to help student's with difficulties reading catch up to their peers.

I think this refers to the text under speech disorders. The text says, a speech disorder may include problems with articulation and phonological processing, fluency, and/or voice.

This makes me think the student has a speech disorder because the student fits into all of those categories. Studdering while the student was reading as well as a very soft spoken voice because of low self esteem. The student also had to re read several words because their processing was a little slower than the students around.

Learn N Serve#6

Today Learn N' Serve was very pointless. I came around lunch time, so I sat with a group of students in my class and listened to them talk about this new video game that came out that they were all really excited to play. I thought it was really cute and reminded me of the old days when I was really into gameboys and nintendo and all that good stuff. haha.

After lunch, I helped grade papers. I graded math which had a lot of multiplication problems with no work turned in with the problems. That made me realize that once again the children were allowed to use their calculators. I disagree with the amount that the teacher allows the students to use their calculator. Students need to learn how to multiply by hand and to grasp the problem solving skills that they are going to need in their future.

I also watched the students attempt to do a multiplication sheet in three minutes and I noticed many students were struggling or rushing through and making mistakes.

The picture above is a multiplication sheet the teacher left for the substitute teacher with directions at the top. I remember being timed doing multiplication problems, and I always would struggle because I felt I was being rushed.

Learn N Serve #5

Today in Learn N' Serve was a little different for me because I was placed in a classroom i am normally not in. The classroom they put me in was in a fourth grade classroom that was next door to my normal class. The substitute teacher was having difficulties getting the students to stop acting out and to just do their work.

This sub was very quiet and not forceful what so ever. Students were all over the place screaming across the room, basically acting the opposite of how they would if their regular teacher was there. I pulled two of the students aside and explained to them that being a substitute teacher is hard enough and to stop misbehaving or I would separate the two of them. I also asked them how they would feel if they were the only new person in a classroom. Bo

th students agreed that they weren't acting very nice and they would stop. I never had to talk to the students again.

Even though some teacher's personalities are shy, and they don't want to make student's angry with them, I feel as though it is important to automatically have the powerful role in the classroom. If not, the students will walk all over the teacher.