ECD 310 WEEK 5 FINAL ASSIGNMENT

Week 3 Discussion 1

Assistive Technology for Children with Disabilities: Creating Opportunities for Education, Inclusion, and Participation

Scaffolding for Student Success

Group Name: Group 1

Scaffolding for Student Success and Assistive Technology for Children with Disabilities are two different evidence-based strategies, both created for the success of children’s education and growth. Scaffolding is provided by the teacher for child success in a lesson. They provide as much support as possible in the beginning of a lesson and lessen the amount of support once the child has become more confident in their ability to complete the tasks on their own, (Powell & Driver). Teachers must understand their students and provide support for them to build upon their knowledge and skills. Scaffolding for children is understanding what children already know and building upon those skills to build confident and knowledge while challenging their minds appropriately, (Education, 2015).

While scaffolding creates success for children through classroom support, so does Assistive Technology for children with disabilities. Though both strategies work to create support for the child and their education, they still have their differences. Assistive technology goes beyond the classroom and provides children with disabilities opportunities they may not otherwise have. For most children with disabilities, providing them with assistive technology is the difference from them enjoying their rights or depriving them of them, (World Health Organization, 2015). Assistive technology are tools that provide the child with the ability in mobility, vision, hearing, communication, and cognition, (World Health Organization, 2015). Providing children with assistive technology may provide them with the ability to communicate, socialize, maneuver on their own as well as give them the opportunity to compete tasks independently.

Evidence-Based Strategies

Evidence-based strategies are important for children with disabilities especially for providing inclusion in the classroom. Evidence-based practices have been previously tested by highly qualified teachers, testing in a school setting to ensure the strategies success before releasing it. Strategies are important for children in the classroom to have the opportunity to gain their greatest education and have the opportunity to succeed throughout their lives.

Reflection on Synthesis

As an educator I would work with children, families, and co-workers to implement evidence-based strategies that are appropriate for each child and will provide them with the opportunity to be their best. I will use both strategies in the classroom to

provide children with inclusion first by understanding that abilities and their struggles. I would learn about them and where they need support in one area over the other. After learning how and what kind of support a child requires, I would implement assistive technology so that they may gain independence and gain skills for their future success throughout life.

References

Alberta Education. (2018, April 10). Scaffolding for student success [Video file]. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKLDjmPk_RE

Powell, S. R., & Driver, M. K. (2013). Working with exceptional students: An introduction to special education (2nd ed.). Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/ (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)

World Health Organization. (2015). Assistive Technology for Children with Disabilities: Creating Opportunities for Education, Inclusion and Participation. World Health Organization. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/disabilities/files/Assistive-Tech- Web.pdf Week 3 Discussion 2

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is when the learning environment is created with the individual children in mind and is incorporated upon the thoughts on how the needs of the children will be met. The three principles of UDL are representation, action and expression and engagement. Representation is presenting the information in more than one way so children can be able to learn. Action and expression is allowing the children to learn in different ways and demonstrate that they know the information that was presented. Engagement is how the children feel about what they are learning and how engaged they are in their learning opportunities.

Based on the age of children you plan to work with, the three main considerations you will need to be mindful of when implementing the principles of UDL in your work. Since Head Start has ages 3-5 years and a regular childcare ages range from 6 weeks to 12 years old, I would take their ages into consideration and make sure that I am representing the separate classes that I have to oversee and that I am putting forward every effort meet the concerns and goals of the age group. I would also have to consider the possibility of not having the disability staff available to assist with the children that has disabilities. I would have to make sure that my co-teacher assist me in providing opportunities for the children to be able to demonstrate the skills that we are working such as social emotional making friends. Another thing to consider is the child’s attendance, is the child ability to be a school is going to hinder the process that could possibly take place if they were coming to school regularly.

One challenge that you see when implementing UDL in your future educational setting would be if staff has been trained adequately to meet the needs of the children in the

program. Without adequate staff training, the children will not fully benefit from what the UDL environment has to offer. One possible solution to that challenge would be for staff to be trained properly in order to meet the needs of the children. Collaboration with others will make children with disabilities goals a little easier obtain. The children will have a team that is working together to help them be successful in school. The skills that they will obtained can be carried on into their adulthood.

References

Alberta Education. (2015, January 30). Scaffolding for student success (Links to an

external site.) . Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTR_snb-0nQ (Links to an external site.)

The Iris Center. (2016). Universal design for learning: Creating a learning environment that challenges and engages all students (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/udl/ Reply Reply to Comment

Caryn,

Essentially, with UDL we want to create strong learners who can become independent learners and be able to problem solve and be able to figure out how they learn and to be able to grab the information however works best for them. Independent learners are able to figure out how to learn, understand how they are making progress and become strong lifelong learners...meaning they figure out what interests them, how they best learn and how they can best demonstrate their knowledge of what they have just learned. It's not really about learning a specific skillset, but learning how to learn in and of itself.

We want to look at the individual student and our classroom set up. We want to be clear with the difference between modification and accommodation. A modification is typically used for a student who is in the moderate-severe program of Special Education...so of course we would consider modifications for them. For general education students or students with a 504 Plan, accommodations/supports can be given and we hope that this leads the student to eventually becoming independent to be able to complete the task at hand independently. The difference is that modifications actually lower the curriculum standards that are expected of a student in a particular grade level. An accommodation is put into place to help support a child to obtain mastery on grade level standards. So an accommodation would be something like extended time, breaks, breaking down a larger assignment into smaller parts (chunking), text to speech (when it's not for reading comprehension), speech to text, less problems on an assignment, using color overlays.

UDL is just an approach to teaching. The focal point is to meet the needs of all students. It can be helpful for all kids, including kids.

Caryn, if you had a child who had a hard time focusing in your classroom/school, what are a couple accommodations you might suggest to the 504 Team or IEP Team that could be added to the IEP to help this student in the classroom? Watch this video and see if this gives you some ideas you hadn't even thought about using/suggesting.

Edited by Susan Agbulos on Nov 27 at 9:21pm