Chapter 10 Questions:
1. When you think of tabletop activities for young children, what activities come to mind? Manipulatives? Puzzles? Cooking? Art and sensory activities? One of the most common tabletop activities in preschool programs is making creations with play dough. Children of all ages enjoy this activity. Watch this video to discover how one teacher uses play dough to encourage many different learning concepts with toddlers.Identify the developmental skills that toddlers are learning as they create with the play dough.
2. This teacher uses the mini script of building a birds nest to teach many learning concepts, including representational skills. Children with disabilities might have difficulty understanding that the play dough can represent a real object. What concrete objects, materials, or activities could you add to this experience to help children with disabilities make a connection between real and representational objects?
Chapter 14 Questions
1. Have you ever been involved in a parent/teacher meeting? Were you the parent? Teacher? Student? Regardless of your role, participating and partnering with a school team requires trust, respect, and collaboration. This video shows a school meeting in which teachers and parents are engaging in an IEP transition meeting to ensure that Mark, a child with developmental delays, will have a smooth transition into kindergarten. Watch how the team creates a strong collaboration between teachers and parents, with a commitment to what is best for Mark. How a teacher conveys and delivers information to the family can set the tone of the meeting. What did Ann, the teacher, do to start the meeting off on a positive note?
2. How a teacher conveys and delivers information to the receiving teacher, like the kindergarten teacher in this video, is also important. The narrator explains that, If teachers have positive expectations, then they are more likely to behave positively with the child. However, if they have heard a child described negatively, they may focus on the childs problems even though they know as professionals they should not have preconceived negative opinions. How does this statement make you feel about how teachers convey and receive information with each other?
Chapter 1 Questions
1.Think about an enjoyable group or community of which you are a member. It could be a spiritual group, hobby or sports group, family group, or other group. How do you feel when you get together with this specific set of people? You probably feel a strong sense of belonging to this group. Watch this video to see how literacy coach Shelly Outwater and teacher Erica Layte bring a strong sense of self identity and belonging to the school community that honors each child’s similarities and differences through a multicultural curriculum. In what ways did these teachers create a strong sense of self identity and belonging to the school community for the children in their classroom?
2. Young children have similarities and differences when it comes to their abilities. As a future teacher, explain three ways you will ensure that a child with disabilities feels the same strong sense of identity and belonging to the school community as you do to your specific group.
