I am ! got the email yesterday that I will be presenting at MICCA this year. I have wanted to present at MICCA for years and now I am! I walked on a cloud for all of 10 minutes after I read the e-mail twice.
Then I had to get laptops set up for my "high flyers" in 3rd grade and teach 3 classes and do lunch bunch with 4 th grade. So now I return to the cloud.
And think, well ,now what? I have asked another teacher if she wants to come too. Have to arrange registration for her if, if, if. Check to see if I take a sick day ,all day or 1/ 2 day or do I take a personal business day?
But that's not all, I need to plan the presentation, though I know what I am going to do. I will talk about how we manage autism students in media by using technology. And this is simple tech for the teacher.
Autism students are largely visual learners, as more and more students are becoming. So I copy the Boardmaker way of using social stories to instruct autism students. My school has two classrooms-ful. I consult with the classroom autism teacher for topics. Currently they are doing nutrition, Maryland and the United States. I search in the catalog for books that connect with the topics, or browse the shelves. So for nutrition I read I Wouldn't Not Eat a Tomato and The Food Pyramid, one ficiton one non fiction. For Maryland I found a book at the public library Chesapeake Bay Walk, animals around the bay, and B is for Blue Crab, a Maryland alphabet book. Both non fiction but loads of good pictures. The U.S.? The Great Seal of the United States and Celebrate the 50 States. Again non fiction.
Here's the tech connection: a template in Powerpoint, title and author on top in a text box, I use an image of the book cover for the first picture, labeled cover. Then the fun starts. I read through the book locating vocabulary that is familiar and unfamiliar. Type the vocab words in to more text boxes 10 words or so for each book, sometimes more. I look for clip are to describe the vocabulary word. This can be tricky. I serch in clip art, MS online and other free clip art/photo places. The last two pictures on the page are for YES and NO. I can ask questions for review. Truely this sounds too simple to be real. It does take time but for planning I am done for the next six weeks for my autism Monday class.
BTW this class is scheduled in my planning time. Autism students usually need extra practice for any instruction.
The payoff: Today one of our students who can be a behavior handful , actually sat down during his regular media time and listened to the story for part fo the class. And I saw him interacting with others. Big Wow and finally I got direct eye contact with him and some speech "Thank you", "Time to go", "goodbye" .
Of course I won't know ever if this new student behavior was because he has practiced media more, so that his behaviors have changed or if he is moving along and at a faster rate because of the instruction he is getting in regualr classroom or what.
Any how it was a great moment for him and me.
