Dealing with the ODD kid :)

I am including some tips for dealing with an ODD student.  We have one that is really making us earn our pay checks each day.  We are at a standoff at this time, so I started digging around trying to come up with some tips for all the teachers that work with him.  Here is what I came up with.  If you have any tips please feel free to share them :)  This student is really making us pull some rabbits out of our hats. 

It is difficult for ODD students to comply with task demands. 

·        During classroom activities, provide student with the purpose for the task and to be completed

·        They have difficulty responding to corrective feedback and feedback in which they feel the adult is taking away their control

·        Instead of saying I like the way you followed the direction SAY: way to complete your work

·        Avoid I statements if possible

·        Give nonverbal feedback or even place a sticky note on his desk

·        Give constructive critiscm  in private and have him ask questions for what he doesn’t understand

·        Build in structured choice into his daily schedule

·        Predictable daily schedule that he can reference

·        Built in quiet time breaks within his schedule (no more than 10 minutes).  He can take his work to this location

·        Break students assignment down into smaller increments: worksheets cut in half, fourths, and presented one piece at a time

·        Student should have a signal that shows he is in distress

What does Co-Teaching really mean to me???

The district I work in has changed their way of thinking!!  I know shocker if you work in the school system.  We are moving from using the words collaboration to co-teaching.  For us co-teaching has a much more defined role for the special education teacher than did the collab teacher.  Read below as I have summarized what this means for us. 

Co-teaching: involves 2 or more certified teachers who share instructional responsibility and join accountability for a single group of diverse learners via partnership strategies in a general education setting

·         This is looked at to give the student the best opportunity to access the general education curriculum

·         It’s provided when there is a need for significant amounts of explicit ongoing SDI to be delivered in the general education setting and when there is an intensive level of teacher support is critical to provide the student access to the curriculum

Types of Co-Teaching that should be used

Whole group:

1.      Teaming: 2 teachers teaching content together at the same time

2.      One Teach, One Observe: (lead and support) one is leading instruction while the other collects data through observation (designated behavior is being examined)

3.      One Teach One Assist: (shadow teaching) one teacher teaches primarily all the content and the other circulates around the room providing assistance

Small Group:

1.      Station teaching: students rotate through stations

·         A student without disabilities cannot be removed by the special education teacher to a separate location on a routine basis for extended lengths of time (this creates a legal problem)

2.      Parallel Teaching: class is divided into 2 groups

3.      Alternative Teaching: one instructs large group and other works briefly with a temporary formed group on instructional skills

Request from the audience

I am trying to determine what everyone would like to see some samples of:
1.  Scoring of written expression probes
2. Sample IEP objectives with the new standards
3. You tell me what you would like from the areas of RTI and Special Education

IEP Writing with those new common core standards

Here we go again :)  The circle has come around again.  Those goals and objectives are going to be measurable and specific once again.  No more will improve in reading and 3 or 4 random things to go about meeting that goal.  I did my first training with my 2 new special ed teachers and other team members last week.  I will admit it is going to be much easier to change the way IEP's are written in my building because they have never written them any other way.  I am really going to like this way of writing objectives.  This was the way I wrote objectives when I first started teaching.  We haven't had our first meeting yet to see how to make the rubber hit the road, but I will keep you posted on how that goes.  I am working overtime this school year with all the changes we made to RTI and also with training and supporting 2 new teachers.  I spend last week helping work out schedules, choose programs, help teachers score their written expression screeners, develop some behavior intervention plans for some students we are already targeting, and then getting all my due process notebooks back in working order.  Let me know how crazy your start of the year has been :)

Writing Universal Screener

The past few weeks I have been working on my training for staff when we return to school.  I thought I could just have a refresher, but when I started looking at the changes I realized everyone would need to hear what I was saying.  So I tried to make an entertaining powerpoint presentation :)  Maybe that will keep them alert when they see all those pretty colored polka dots I added.  The next project I have been working on is the universal screener for writing.  We already have math and reading in place.  I pulled from many places and created a pretty teacher friendly Written Expression Curriculum Based Measure (CBM).  We will only be using this with first grade to fifth grade.  The areas we are going to focus on are total words written, correct spelling sequence, and correct writing sequence.  I think this will help us this year to narrow down our writing focus, which was kind of all over the place.  The other thing I had to research and pull together for this was the benchmarks so teachers would have an idea of what is grade level appropriate.  So as you can see I have been very busy.  I am also working on my back to school binders for the special education staff.  I am working on the common core content and writing an IEP.   What have you been working on?