SPED 310 Week 12

This week was a week of many changes as we started preparation for our finals and learned new material to help us as teachers in the classroom.  On Monday we started a discussion on student behavior and how we respond to student behavior. The main lesson I learned from Monday was it is important to prevent than to repair. As we are able to teach to the child and their zone of proximal development, we can prevent the behavior that comes with being bored or not feeling comfortable in class. We talked about how we want to build our classroom around our students so that they have choices and they start to feel independence, even though our hidden curriculum is to guide them to be good students and citizens. As we praise and respect our students in the small things, it can help make bigger tasks seem less difficult and they are more likely to attempt to achieve these tasks.
This discussion on classroom behavior carried into Wednesday as we were able to talk about how we can apply and analyze our strategies and the student's behavior. The main way we realized how we could collect data was to use our ABC's. A is the Antecedent in which we are able to analyze their behavior that came prior to the initial unwanted behavior. As we view this over the next few days we can begin to develop a pattern of what happened to lead them to this behavior. B is for Behavior. This is the unwanted behavior and when we document this it should be as exact as we can  be in describing the behavior. C is the Consequence. This is what happened after the unwanted behavior, and was this consequence rewarding or punishing the behavior to lead them to a pattern of doing it again.
These are things we can use in every day life as well as our teaching. If I were to be having a difficult time with a behavior I have seen my husband (he's great, don't get me wrong), I would be able to use this to analyze him over a few days and experiment to see how I can change the unwanted behavior.
This week we also met as a group to discuss our final project which is a case study of a child and how we can defend her eligibility or not eligibility based on the criteria we have talked about his semester. My book has been the greatest resource to me in finding he information for our case study. My group has also been great, however, the book gives specific guides to how we can go about finding services for our case study. We met twice this week and have begun our paper and expect to finish it on Monday. I am so glad to have a great group to work with on this project. They are reliable and we have worked hard and had disagreements that we have worked through professionally about our case study. It has been fun to advocate the best we know how to for our child in the case study, and see what services we can get her. I have learned a lot this week!