Posted by Denis Soukhanov on Wed, Aug 25, 2010
Open teacher-parent communication is a key aspect to a child’s academic and social gains. Parents should be informed of what their children will be learning, assessment dates, homework assignments, projects, along with social and behavioral interactions. Teachers should not only communicate concerns but also successes and progress. Building teacher-parent relationships through consistent communication is especially vital to the success of special needs students. Traditional communication between teachers and parents was done through face-to-face meetings including conferences and open houses. In the 21st century, there are many ways to keep connected with parents using technology. Using a combination of these resources can involve parents in their child’s successful education.
Email
One of the most popular ways for communicating with parents is via email. At the beginning of the school year, it is important to get all parent contact information including addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Within your email service you can setup email contacts, including mailing lists. This way you can send email out to either specific parents or send out a blast email update for what the students will be learning in school. Two things to keep in mind when emailing parents is to keep your correspondence professional and that email communication between parents and teachers is considered a legal document. Stick to the topic at hand and do not mention other students in the email.
Classroom Websites
Building a classroom website is also another easy and popular way for teacher-parent communication. There are many online resources that can be used for free or low cost that are specifically designed for teachers or provide school-based templates to create a website for students and parents. Classroom websites can be used to update all of the parents and students of the class schedule, assessment dates, classroom happenings, and even to post pictures or classroom activities and field trips or include scanned documents of the students work. This is also a great place to post the classroom policies and procedures.
Google Sites, Scholastic, School Notes, and TeacherWeb are all great options for teachers to use to create classroom sites.
iPod/iPad Communications
If your students are lucky enough to be in a school where students are provided their own iPod or iPad, there are several different ways that teachers can communicate with parents through these devices. One way is by creating voice memos. For a special education teacher, they can record a specific memo for a parent about what the child accomplished for the day and what they should work on at home. The parent can send back a memo about the child’s progress at home and concerns or questions back to the teacher. The calendar feature can also be used or other planner applications can be loaded to the device for the student and teacher to add information about upcoming assignments, due dates, and field trips. This can be reviewed by the parent at home to keep up-to-date.
Twitter
Another way to keep in contact with parents is to build a twitter community. The teacher should create a specific account for communication with the parents. This can be set to a private so only parents who request permission and are granted can see the tweets. Besides being able to tweet updates for quizzes, tests, and projects, the teacher can tweet about relevant articles that parents can read or online resources for the students to use at home. The great thing about Twitter is that the parents would be able to also communicate with each other building a dialog not only between teacher and parent, but also between parent and parent.
All of these methods of teacher-parent communication are to help build the relationship between the teacher and the parent to better serve the child’s education and social growth needs. When there is an open path for communication and all parties are involved in the child’s education, the support created through this can help students to meet and exceed their yearly gain goals.
Article by Laura Ketcham
Photo by RambergMediaImages
Free Teacher Resources | Special Education by MangoMon by MangoMon
Posted by Lauren Grossberg on Wed, Aug 18, 2010
Children with special needs or other learning disabilities usually need extra help in the classroom, but they oftentimes need help outside the classroom in social situations and other interactions with people.
Teaneck’s Extended School Year is a six-week summer program that is offered to the special education students in New Jersey school districts. The programs focus on behaviors like nonverbal communication, problem solving and appropriate social behavior.
With students ranging in differences from all over the autism spectrum, there are many different needs and behaviors that have to be addressed. One thing in common is that all of these students need help in socializing with one another. With the help of this program, six different social skills modules will be covered.
Because social skills are such an integral part of education for autistic students, the summer program is also used to help them keep up with these behaviors through the summer months. Some students may have trouble communicating with others while some may have a harder time socializing.
A main focus is on nonverbal communication, which can alter relationships with teachers and students in the classroom if misunderstood. Combined with help from the West Bergen Mental Health Center, parents are also offered classes and guidance in supporting their children.
By combining education and health, the friendly and knowledgeable staff hopes to offer helpful and effective help to help children with special needs lead more efficient lives. Keeping up in the summer months is a crucial step in bettering social and behavioral interactions during the school year.
Free Teacher Resources | Special Education by MangoMon by MangoMon
Posted by Lauren Grossberg on Fri, Jul 16, 2010
A frozen yogurt shop may not be the typical meeting point for kids to play, but for the Plano Lego Lovers, it is. This group, which has more than 100 member including autistic children recently met up and played with the latest Toy Story 3 Lego set.
The group was started as a way to bring kids together by playing with Legos, but also to bring them together to socialize. Carla Graham, parent of an autistic child, was searching for a play group. Since her child was so interested in Legos, she decided to use the toys as a way to bring other children together, playing and socializing and communicating with each other.
By meeting just a few times a month, students of all capabilities gather at schools or local restaurants where they play. Not only do they have fun, but they can practice their learning skills, social skills and other shared interests.
Even though some children come with plans to build certain structures, they usually all end up working together and collaborating to come up with new and unique creations. This playtime is the perfect opportunity for these children that don’t get to socialize that often to do it when they are in a more comfortable place.
According to a paper by the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, children with autism and Asperger's syndrome are often drawn to Legos because of their systematic and structured nature. As they are more comfortable with the environment, these children with special needs can be more comfortable learning and interacting with their peers, too.
Picture By: oskay
Free Teacher Resources | Special Education by MangoMon
Posted by Denis Soukhanov on Fri, Jul 09, 2010
One of the most important things a teacher can do this summer is to build a PLN or Personal Learning Network. Your Personal Learning Network is a network of people that you connect with online for social and professional reasons. The top sites that I use for my PLN are Twitter, Delicious, Facebook, and Blogger. These sites allow me to connect with co-workers, family, friends, and former students, along with educators from around the world, educator-friendly companies, educators I met in college, professors, and other experts in the field. By using these different resources to connect with different people, I am able to find classroom resources, lesson plans, backchannels from conferences, along with new ideas to implement in my classroom.
Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging website. On Twitter you can follow the feeds (short statements) of people that you add. To build a PLN on special needs education, you can search the term “special needs education” to see what people are tweeting about on the subject. If you find someone that seems to be knowledgeable in the field and provides information or insight that you like, then you can follow that person. One feed to start to follow for education would be @MangoMon, Learning Today’s special needs education feed. You can also add my twitter account as a feed to follow educational technology including special needs education technology @TechSavvyLaura.
Wikis & Twitter
Another great resource for building a PLN is wikis. These are editable websites. One wiki site that I found following the Twitter feed at #ISTE10, from the ISTE Conference last week, was a wiki that has a list of teacher twitter users organized by their area of focus in education. For special education teachers, there are several different areas to search under including special education teachers, elementary teachers, and homebound teachers. Next to each teacher’s name is their Twitter screenname, a short synopsis of the person, what they do, and where they are located. This is a great way to build your special education PLN.
Delicious
Delicious is a social bookmarking site. It is very similar to bookmarks/favorites that you can access in your browser, however Delicious makes your bookmarks available online. Bookmarks can be tagged (have keywords added to them), so that you can search for similar sites within all of your bookmarks. Your bookmarks can be shared with other people. As a teacher you can create a Delicious account to keep websites easily accessible to integrate within your lessons. You can also search through other users links, including fellow teachers. Lab teachers could use a Delicious account as the homepage for the browser. They can then populate the account with the sites the students need to use in class. This way, it is easier for students to access the required sites for class lessons. Students can use Delicious as a way to save frequently visited sites. Students can use it to keep track of sources they are using for a research project.
Blogger
(and various other blogs)
I’ve actually written about blogging in several of my previous posts, but from the vantage point of student blogging. Blogger is one online resource for blogging. Blogging is creating an online journal. Many teachers maintain blogs for their classrooms or about educational topics. Through blogger for your PLN, you can create your own blog to reflect upon your teaching practices or share ideas with other teachers around the world. You can also search for other teachers, professors, educational professionals, and companies to follow their blogs. This can be done by subscribing to their updates and then receiving them in your email. This makes it much easier to follow rather than having to remember to go back to their sites weekly.
Including following MangoMon’s blog posts, here are some good blogs to follow for special education teachers:
- Jerry’s Special Education Blog on About.com
- Education Week’s Special Education Blog
- List of Top 50 Special Education Blogs
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking site. This site is mainly used for personal information that helps keep in touch with friends and family. It would not be a traditional tool that a teacher would think they could use for building a PLN, but many teachers have friends who are teachers that they may have connected with through school or work. I am surprised at the amount of educational connections that I was able to build on Facebook. Many of my teacher friends post links to articles, resources, or photographs of their classrooms. We are all able to reflect on our experiences along with sharing ideas and resources.
There are many more resources for building a PLN. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment and share your PLN resources below!
- Article by Laura Ketcham
Free Teacher Resources | Special Education by MangoMon
Posted by Lauren Grossberg on Wed, Jun 30, 2010
For students with special needs, there is often a specific place for them to go to work with specialists or people that can help them learn and grow. But, for children in other countries, they may not have a place to go at all.
The 10,000 deaf children in Afghanistan have since fallen into this category, with no opportunity for education or learning. Since the deaf community in this country is often treated like the female community, with no respect, education and advancements, people from other countries have taken a stand.
The nonprofit from Colorado, Mountain2Mountain
(M2M), which has already affected the lives of hundreds of men, women and children in Afghanistan, has been working towards giving these children the opportunities they deserve. With no sign language or communication, these children are missing out on the chance of a lifetime.
The Afghan National Association for the Deaf (ANAD) and M2M have recently started building a new school for deaf children in Kabul. The land, donated by the government is the future home to the green and sustainable buildings which will educate children and employ the community.
The school should be complete by the time school starts in the fall. With primary and secondary schools and teachers, about 800 children will learn International Sign Language and a new Afghani sign language. Because of the school's location, children can also learn about agriculture training, too.
This school is the only chance these children have to get an education and learn how to communicate. This innovative school will provide this chance for so many worthy children.
Free Teacher Resources | Special Education by MangoMon