Over the last half of the semester as we have done our group presentations on different disabilities and special needs I have learned a lot. When we discussed poverty and abuse and things like that, it made total sense that those things would be considered a special need. It was really neat to be able to learn more about these needs to help prepare me for the future.
When the group presented on Autism we learned that it is becoming more widely known. There used to be many different forms of Autism, and there still are, but they are all under one umbrella now that is categorized as Autism. I couldn't believe the costs that it takes to support a student with Autism. I knew it was expensive but I never realized how expensive it was. We also got to learn more about learning disabilities. A learning disability can be very frustrating for a student because they may be extremely smart but have a harder time learning in a school setting. Reading is one major struggle these may have; things like dyslexia can make reading anything extremely hard and the students tend to lose focus when that is the majority of what they do at school.
The group that did the speech and language impairments had a really neat activity to demonstrate this disability. They had us play chubby bunny and put 3 marshmallows in our mouth. After we put the marshmallows in our mouths we had to tell a partner three different things about ourselves and our partner had to see if they could understand. My mouth is really small- it has been my whole life. After stuffing 3 marshmallows in my mouth I could not talk. I tried so hard and it was frustrating because I couldn't get out what I wanted to say and my partner could not understand.
Cognitive Impairment was another disability we learned about. Cognitive Impairment includes many different things. This group had us do an activity involving limited motor skills. They taped our fingers together and had us write a sentence or two. It was hard to get the sentence written down all the way before they wanted to move on, and I could see how students with a cognitive impairment could get behind in school and lose focus.
The next presentation discussed emotional and behavioral disorders. A lot of common disorders include: anxiety, depression, bipolar, OCD, and schizophrenia. This group made a really big impression on me because they had us in a group of 4 and gave each of us a disorder. Then they gave us a handful of M&M's and told us each to individually count out the total amount of M&M's using the description of the disorder they gave us. It was so hard to focus on counting because everyone was doing something different and stealing the candy from each other to count it. It made me feel anxious, and it irritated me because no one would leave my candy alone.
ADHD was another disability we talked about. A student with ADHD can have many symptoms and sometimes it may take awhile to see if they persist. It was nice to be able to learn more about this so as a future educator I will be able to tell if the symptoms could be ADHD or if they are just having an off day. We talked a lot about accommodations for these students; some of these include- fidget tools, setting clear expectations, posting expectations, highlighting the key points and helping students focus instead of getting frustrated. One group talked a lot about scaffolding strategies and how these can help the students learn in the best way possible. Things such as modeling, working with a partner/small group and using visuals are all good ways to scaffold learning so that all students are able to learn and grow in the classroom.
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