Artifact

Language Class Observation

Rationale

I have included this classroom observation of a reading tutorial at Chelsea School to exemplify my understanding of and dedication to language development in regards to students with ELN. This observation was done for my EDCC 605: Educational Measurement and Evaluation class. It includes a thorough description of the educational facility, the classroom environment, the teacher and her methods, the students, and the lesson. The observation centered on one student in particular and his use of language and his learning style. During the observation I analyzed the student’s language deficiencies and made recommendations as to how he can better develop his use of language. An interview with the teacher was conducted where we covered her strengths and weaknesses and recommendations were made as to what could strengthen the effectiveness of this classroom. This artifact is an example of my understanding of using individualized strategies to enhance language development and teaching communication skills to individuals with ELN. I will continue to do this in my classroom and will continue to observe other classrooms to build my repertoire of strategies.

Assistive Technology Example

My students at Chelsea School are diverse and unique, each with their own perspective and thusly they communicate in their own unique way. To accommodate this while making sure everyone learns the content and skills of my classes I utilize a variety of different communication strategies, methods, devices and technologies that allow the student to express themselves in the way they communicate and learn best. This artifact is just one example of my adherence to this standard. It is a student-produced script for my TV Productions 1 class, which I scribed for him in Microsoft Word and then he copied and pasted it into Kurzweil 3000, an assistive technology reading and word processing program, so that he could edit it and use it to produce storyboards and other pre-production assignments to ready himself for the production of his video project. Also included in this artifact is a picture of a student using the speech to text program Word Q/Speak Q, where she speaks into the headphones and her speech is translated to text in the program. This artifact shows my familiarity with augmentative, alternative, and assistive technologies to support and enhance communication of individuals with exceptional needs. I will continue to use, build upon, and reflect upon these different communication methods so that I can best teach my students.

Spanish Classwork

This artifact is a combination of assignments from my SPA 500: Spanish for Educators class that I recently took to build upon and enhance my communication skills for use inside the classroom and out. Montgomery County, the district that I work in, has an increasing number of Spanish-speaking residents and students, and I want to make sure I am well prepared to use communication strategies and resources to facilitate the understanding of subject matter for individuals with ELN whose primary language is not English and to also be able to reach out to and work with their families, advocates, etc. These assignments were especially helpful because one in particular deals with working with a Spanish-speaking student who is struggling in class and reaching out to his parents for support. The others deal with a real-world field experience that my class participated in that involved us ordering at a strictly Spanish-speaking restaurant. This is a class that helped me build upon the education I received in high school in regards to Spanish and I will continue to build my knowledge of this and other languages so that I can effectively cater to the individual communication needs of my students and their families while gaining a better understanding of their diversity and cultural differences.

Acting Lesson Plan
- video portion

This lesson plan on acting was done as part of my EDTE 689: Advanced Seminar in Teaching class. This assignment involves a myriad of different communication methods, strategies, and understandings not just on my part, but in terms of my students as well. First, I had to conduct a needs assessment of my school and the class that I planned on administering this lesson on to understand exactly what the specific learning needs and areas of support were for my students. The artifact then includes the lesson plan, which I conducted, videotaped, and reflected upon. This lesson included the communication methods of monologuing, improvisation, and acting from a script. Monologuing required the students to understand another character’s point of view and attempt to speak aloud as that person so that they could communicate something about their character to the class individually. Next, the improvisation not only had the students have to understand their character and how that character would communicate, but to listen to and interact with one another in a loose setting where they could make their own choices of how best to handle the situation. Acting from a given script required the students to communicate more specifically and directly. This artifact exemplifies my understanding of typical and atypical language development and the ways in which exceptional conditions can interact with an individual’s experience with and use of language while matching my communication methods to an individual’s language proficiency and cultural and linguistic differences. For example, I read and discussed the handouts to certain students while others preferred to read and understand their characters on their own. I made sure to give all directions orally and in print and repeat them as necessary throughout the lesson. This was an extremely fun lesson and, as seen in the video, the students had a blast. I will continue to develop, implement, and reflect upon lessons such as this that enhance and cater to individual communication differences.