I was in a 4th - 6th grade Learning Support Classroom with Mrs. Miller at Cochranton Elementary School. She has students with Learning Disabilities, Intellectual Disabilities, Other Health Impairments, and Emotional Disturbance. I enjoyed getting to know her students and worked with about 12 of them. I was able to be there for three full school days and loved working on reading and math skills. One component I worked on while in this classroom was establishing a culture for learning. Since the students were older and I usually work with younger students, I could tell how much the students loved to learn but just had difficulty understanding the whole process. For my lessons, I tried to make them fun and engaging. My first lesson, I had them read their story of the week. Then I created a sequencing activity for them to color and write in one word to describe the part of the story. The students loved the activity and were excited to color the pictures.
My second lesson was an introduction activity and games for counting money. I had games for the students to play including coin bingo and counting money into cupcake liners. The students loved learning about money because they want to know how to count money and it applies to them in the real world.
The technology in Mrs. Miller's class are laptops and iPads, personal FM system, and text-to-speech and speech-to-text software on laptops.
During the online transition because of COVID-19, I went down to the school to help with the first packet pick up. I also helped Mrs. Miller pack her packets for her students and got to help organize the lessons with her. The biggest challenge for her was to make sure the students were actually doing their work and their parents were not doing it for them. I suggested to have her students use the app, EPIC so she could track her students reading and give assessments or assignments through the app. She loves the app and is excited to use it more often with her students.