Educational Psychology

For my lesson, I taught a life skills lesson on how to go bowling. The students really seemed to enjoy it. We were practicing for a field trip that they were going to be going on the next day. I used a lot of ideas from Piaget in planning my lesson. The students I taught, were ages 4th-6th grade, they had profound disabilities. None of them are able to talk or communicate other than when given two choices of pictures they can choose the one they want. Some of the students are in wheel chairs and not able to move themselves across the room. For my lesson, I focused a lot on play. I made sure to include play in the lesson by letting the students practice bowling. The students were able to bowl mostly independently with the use of a ramp made out of pvc pipe to roll the ball down to hit the pins. The students used Piagets play theories, by being able to bowl on their own, but also having to watch their peers bowl, and we focused a lot on clapping and congratulating peers after they

The teacher I work with does a great job with this. I think that it is something done a little more easily in special education than in regular education. Each student has different biology, and ability of how much they can learn at once. The teacher I work with provides each student with individualized tools for learning, even if they are working on the same skill as another student. Each student has an individualized reward/behavior system. She is always providing different ways for the students to learn, we are never learning in the same way, which is great for the students. I think that the student have a great need for more of this in their lives at school and at home. Things need to be different for each student so that they can all learn in the best way possible for them. When I teach, I also try to differentiate my lessons for each student depending on their level of learning too. so that each student can get as much as possible out of the lessons.

In my field work, the teacher I am working with uses a lot of constructivism in her students learning. She does a lot of sensory and play activities that allow the students to be active in and explore the topic being talked about and reflect by asking questions and inquiring about them with the teachers and one another before going into a lesson on them. She does this by providing toys and objects for the students to platy with that relate to the theme of the lessons to use in their centers, and providing sensory table experiences that also relate to what is being discussed in class. Students are able to collaborate together to find out new things about the toys, objects, and topic being learned about..  I think that the students have a high need for this type of learning, they need to be able to explore things and learn them for themselves. These students need a purpose in their learning more than other students so it is very important for them to find ways to do this themselves.

In my field work, I see a lot of growth mindset being demonstrated. We are constantly telling kids, good work, you worked so hard, thanks for trying, etc... This is very important in an Autism classroom, as these students need the extra motivation. We try to stay away from telling kids they are wrong and instead just tell them to try again.  When students answer a question incorrectly, we don't give a lot of praise, but still say good trying, or thanks for trying, lets do it again though, and then continue with the activity and when they get an answer correct, you would give more excited sounds praise and saying things like, you did it, good work, your working so hard, awesome lets try again!  We have a lot of extrinsic motivators in our class, in preschool those are pretty easy to have, just a high five can be extremely motivating for the students, but we also have a lot of simple toys that the students are able to choose what they want to work for before beginning a lesson

I think that in my field work class the children in the class are facing a few psychological crises. Trust vs. Mistrust being the biggest one. The kids are 3-5 years old mostly functioning well below that age level in a lot of areas of their life. The come to school everyday and have to leave their parents, who they trust the most to stay with us for multiple hours at a time. If the students weren’t able to trust the teachers in the classroom, they wouldn’t be able to learn. As teachers they have to teach the students trust by having them stick to a schedule so that the kids always know what is happening next. In my classroom, the teacher uses visual schedules, and we always do the same activity at the end of the day while we wait for parents to pick them up. And same with at drop off, the kids know the schedule and know right what they will start doing as soon as they are dropped off in class. I would say that we have a good mix of students in the identity diffusion and foreclosu

In my field experience classroom, the teacher uses a lot of way to focus the students attention. First of all she will give focused attention to the student she is working with. They will go sit at a table in the corner away from all other students so she and the student are both able to focus on one another better. She also is careful to give plenty of wait time between asking a student to do a task before she goes into helping them with the task. She will give up to 30 seconds depending on the student. She will start out with a simple and recognizable task, and then slowly move into something more difficult.  (Chinking). She uses meaningful lessons to relate the new tasks to things that the students already know or are interested in which makes them more memorable for the students. She will have the students use maintenance rehearsal to repeat the task many times and in many settings for a long period of time (distributed practice) before declaring that they are able to functionally