Student voice and evaluations

I have been fortunate to spend time at Panmure Bridge work with Robyn Anderson in her Year 7 & 8 class. She asked me to interview her students about their learning.
This was an amazing experience to hear these students describe their own learning, achievement and challenges. 
Some of the positive comments where :

• To hear students referring to specific strategies eg skimming, scanning, inferring etc
• Identifying specific skills they need to learn eg my times' table to help me solve problems faster.
• Recognise what they had just learnt or achieved eg adding decimals.

Please see Robyn's informative post here

Robyn gets her students to complete an evaluation and the end of every term, I have linked her blog post here.


At Sommerville, we have been working on our students understanding their learning goals and being able to recognise if they have achieved their goals

Our students need visual supports to help understand their learning goals.

What am I learning?

What do I need to do?

What do I think?

How well did I do?

Social scripts

Social Stories  Social scripts are a social learning tool that supports the safe and

meaningful exchange of information between adults and learners who need additional support.

Written to help students deal with and understand difficult or confusing situations. Stories can be written to prepare students for upcoming events or to explain why other people act they do or what the rules are.

Social stories are most common with students who are on the autistic spectrum; however I also use them with other students when I see they need additional support. They are simple stories that help remind students about appropriate social behavior. 

What are social stories for?

Social scripts/ stories can be used to:

•  develop self-care skills (eg how to clean teeth, wash hands or get dressed), social skills (eg sharing, asking for help, saying thank you, interrupting) and academic abilities
•  help someone to understand how others might behave or respond in a particular situation
•  help others understand the perspective of a person and why they may respond or behave in a particular way
•  help a person to cope with changes to routine and unexpected or distressing events (eg absence of teacher, moving house, thunderstorms)
•  provide positive feedback to a person about an area of strength or achievement in order to develop self-esteem
•  as a behavioural strategy (eg what to do when angry, how to cope with obsessions).

I begin by identifying the behaviour that I want to modify.  For example, inappropriate hallway behaviour.  One particular student was having difficulty walking in the hallway quietly and keeping her hands off the wall.  Now that I have the behaviour identified, I go to Google.  

Sometimes I have to walk in the hallway.

I need to keep my voice and feet quiet in the hallway.

My hands stay at my sides.

It makes my teachers happy when I walk quietly in the hallway. 

I like to search for social stories that are already written so that I might not have to reinvent the wheel. I then adapt and personlised as needed,
I also include pictures to go with the story. These can be computer images or photos I have taken.

How do social stories/ scripts help?

Social scripts/  stories present information in a literal, 'concrete' way, which may improve a person's understanding of a previously difficult or ambiguous situation or activity. The presentation and content can be adapted to meet different people's needs.

They can help with sequencing (what comes next in a series of activities) and 'executive functioning' (planning and organising).    

By providing information about what might happen in a particular situation, and some guidelines for behaviour, you can increase structure in a person's life and thereby reduce anxiety.

Creating or using a social story can help you to understand how the autistic person perceives different situations.

• Present the social story to the person at a time when everyone is feeling calm and relaxed, using a straightforward approach, eg I have written this story for you. It is about thunderstorms. Let's read it together now.
• If it is preparing for a special event/ experience  make sure you have read through a few times before the event/experience

Social stories^TM were created by Carol Gray in 1991. They are short descriptions of a particular situation, event or activity, which include specific information about what to expect in that situation and why.

The terms 'social story' and 'social stories' are trademarks originated and owned by Carol Gray.

Come along and learn about How Visuals can help our students

Come along and learn about  How Visuals can help our students Manage their own behaviour and access the curriculum.

Link to this doc https://goo.gl/TvV7rr
Book you attendance here.

Thursday 10 th May

Facilitator: Donna Ryan

Venue: Sommerville 80a Tripoli Rd

Using visuals to support learners with additional needs.

How to help our students access the curriculum using a variety
of visual strategies and supports.

Suitable for teachers working with all age groups.

Behaviour and learning

Student’s behaviour can create barriers to learning and inhibit wellbeing for both the student and for those around them.

This is a growing concern of the teachers I visit. 

Behaviour is defined as the way one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others. It is often a response to a particular situation or stimulus.

Totally agree with this :

"If students are learning successfully, if they are feeling connected, if they know that people care, they are less likely to behave in ways that jeopardise their opportunities to be part of that".

Ngaire Ashmore, Principal, Tangaroa College

Check out the TKI site for supporting guidelines

Over the next few weeks I will be adding some strategies to help support our students to access their learning while managing themselves.

Often our students do not know what is 'good behaviour " we need to show them what we want.

Visual aids to enhance learning.

As part of my inquiry I have been researching my belief that Visuals aids help students to learn and retain information.

I found this interesting article.
Impact of Visual Aids in Enhancing the Learning Process CaseResearch: District Dera Ghazi Khan

It states:
Visual aids are the devices that help the teacher to clarify, establish, and correlate and co-ordinate precise conceptions, understandings and appreciations and support him to make learning more actual, active, motivating, encouraging, significant and glowing.

 Research tells us:
Every individual has the tendency to forget. 
Proper use of visual aids helps to retain more concept permanently.

Students can study well when they are inspired properly through different visual aids. 

Visual aids grow the accurate image when the students see and hear properly. 

Visual aids provide complete example for conceptual thinking. 

Visual aids create the environment of interest for the students. 

Visual aids helps to increase the vocabulary of the students. 

Visual aids helps the teacher to get sometime and make learning permanent. 

Visual aids provide direct experience to the students. 


Learning can be reinforced with different teaching/learning resources because they stimulate, motivate as well as focus learners’ attention for a while during the instructional process. Visual aids arouse the interest of learners and help the teachers to explain the concepts easily. Visual aids are those instructional aids which are used in the classroom to encourage teaching learning process.

 As Singh (2005) defines: “Any device which by sight and sound increase the individual s' practice, outside that attained through read labeled as an audio visual aids”. Visual aids are those instructional devices which are used in the classroom to encourage learning and make it easier and motivating. The material like models, charts, film strip, projectors, radio, television, maps etc called instructional aids. (Rather, 2004).
Visual aids are effective tool that “invest the past with an air of actuality.” Visual aids distribute the learners with true knowledge, which detention their devotion and help in the understanding of the ancient marvels. They demand to the mind through the visual auditory senses. When we use visual aids as teaching aid, it is one of the aspects which root participation of students in the lesson because when students look at visual model or aid, it is measured as a kind of contribution.


 CONCLUSIONS
From this research following conclusions have been drawn;
 1- The research concluded that using visuals aids as a teaching method stimulates thinking and improves learning environment in a classroom.
2- Effective use of visual aids substitutes monotonous learning environments.
3- Students develop and increase personal understanding of the areas of learning when they experience a successful and pleasant learning in the classroom.
 4- Students find visual aids sessions useful and relevant when it has some direct relation to the course content. 


So what visual aides are you using to enhance student learning ?

This research also showed links between improved vocabulary and the use of Visual aides - which is a major focus for Manaiakalani schools.

Visual learning and autism spectrum disorder

Visual learning and autism spectrum disorder

Visual thinking can be a strength for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

These good visual skills might be because children with ASD tend to focus on details, rather than the whole – for example, specific details in a picture, rather than the whole picture.

Also, children with ASD can be visual learners. This might be because visual information lasts longer and is more concrete than spoken and heard information. This might help children with ASD – who often need longer than typically developing children – to process information and choose what they’re going to say.

Creating classroom Rules

 Establishing classroom rules and routines are very important at the beginning of the year.
We need to make sure our student understands the concepts of the rules and the language used.
The language concepts of DON'T is a challenging one for many of our students.
It is a negative language concept. Refer to the chart below to the see the language concepts student need to understand

Give our students rules and routines that show them what you want them to do.

Visual strategies for learning

What skills do our students need to be capable confident members of society?

Sometimes I think we get so tied up in student achievement and measuring their progress we run out of time for some very important skills and learning opportunities.

As a successful learner we need skills to relate or others and manage our own behaviours - The Key Competencies are a vital part of our NZ Curriculum. They should be incorporated into every aspect of our class programme.

Working Noise levels

Recently I have been asked about how to help students understand about appropriate  working noise levels in the classroom.

Some of these visual charts may be helpful when teaching your students about appropriate noise levels in the classroom.

While oral language is a priority in our classrooms,  noisy chitter chat can be distracting for our learners.

Noise levels can be a problem with open-plan classrooms, especially the high noise levels coming from the other classes sharing the same space. This is particularly problematic when a class is trying to engage in critical listening activities where it is essential that the children can hear the new concepts they are being taught.

We must remember that during the learning situation in a classroom, the student is submitted to two different types of stimuli: the main one that is the teacher's voice or main student sharing and that is the one the student must direct all his attention to; and the secondary one that is the competitive noise and that the student must be able to neglect it in order to allow the main message not to be distorted. This can be a challenge for everyone but particularly for students with processing or communication difficulties. 

If you would like a copy or some help please get in touch.

What am I learning ?

We have been focusing on how we can share our Learning Intentions with our students.
Students with special learning needs often need visual representation to help them remember their goals and targets or the strategies they need to learning.
Check out some of the examples from my fabulous colleagues at Sommerville.

Managing self

Our students need to learn a range of skills and abilities to help them to do well in life. A very important key competency is managing their own behaviour.
Some of our students struggle with managing themselves when something goes wrong. We need to teach them some strategies to cope.
Here are a few visual strategies we use with our students.
We personalise these to suit the individual needs of each student.
The student needs to be taught how to use these strategies before they are upset and need them.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like copies or some ideas.

Additional support at Writing time.

Do your students need additional support at writing time?

Sometimes using writing plans and frames at the planning and draft stage help our learners remember their ideas add more information to their stories.

 Sentence starters and models scaffold the students writing until they understand the structure needed and have developed a memory for their ideas.

Writing involves alot of thinking and processing  as well as good language skills.

"Planning takes the writing assignment and long-term memory as input, which then produces a conceptual plan for the document as output. Planning includes sub-activities of generating (coming up with ideas), organizing (arranging those ideas logically in one’s head), and goal setting (determining what effects one wants to achieve and modifying one’s generating and organizing activities to achieve local or global goals). "  Hayes and Flower (1980)

Let's make it easier for our students to experience success!