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Raising Achievement for Students on the Autistic Spectrum

Autism has garnered much attention recently, however, despite advances in science, treatments and educational techniques, there are several common misconceptions about autistic children. Whether perpetuated by movies, such as Rain Man, or simply a lack of public education around the topic of autism, teachers are often bombarded by false representations of what autistic children are like.

We’ve looked at 5 common myths about autism and dug deep into their roots to try to reveal the truth behind these myths. Our hope is that with a greater understanding of autism, society’s perception and treatment of autistic individuals will move in a positive direction.

Myth #1 | Autism can be cured. Autism cannot be cured, however, with early intervention teachers and parents can come together to form a strong support group for the autistic student and implement treatment that when coupled with medical support can vastly improve his or her overall developmental outcome. With an array of strange treatments created to cure autistic children, adults in the child’s life must stay realistic and positive about the child’s future.

Myth #2 | Autistic children are mentally ill. As people we have a tendency to shy away from situations, people and things that make us uncomfortable. Because of this we often mislabel the effect this has on us. Everyday people have long deemed autism a mental illness; however, in reality it is a biological illness that inhibits proper brain development and growth. With early intervention some autistic children can test out of the autism spectrum.

Myth #3 | All autistic children are brilliant. Regardless of whether they are autistic or not, all children have strengths and weaknesses. Autistic children are much like other children in this sense. Some autistic children display strengths in certain areas, but this strength is often countered by extreme weaknesses, such as an inability to communicate or thoroughly understand a concept. Because autism is a spectrum disorder, teachers are likely to encounter a range of students with a variety of strengths and weaknesses.

Myth #4 | Autistic children were never loved and are incapable of showing love. It is often judged that children who are autistic are that way because their “refrigerator mothers” failed to provide proper love and touch when they were infants. We know now that there is more than likely a genetic predisposition that makes children liable to be autistic, not post-birth interactions.

Myth #5 | Autistic children neither need nor want friends. Depending on where they are on the autism spectrum, autistic children are not inherently objective to the idea of having friends, rather, they may be shy or have a hard time communicating with their classmates. The autistic child may truly want a friendship or relationship, but could be incapable of fully expressing what they need or desire.

Interacting with autistic children can be challenging, but rewarding. As educators it is our responsibility to move forward and clear the air about the common misconceptions regarding autistic students, with the hope that one day autistic people will be seen as individuals and not their diagnosis. When we begin to look at the person, we can operate on a new level of understanding that allows us to educate the community and build awareness about the disorder.

The guest author David Miller is a freelance writer and passionate about education, technology in school and math games. His new discovery: learning games from Game Wrapper provides students, teachers and parents with new ways to engage and learn.

]]> http://www.creativeeducation.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/10/autism-in-school-5-of-the-most-common-misunderstandings-explained/feed/ 6 http://www.creativeeducation.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/10/back-to-school-how-to-motivate-your-ks1-ks2-class-after-the-summer-break/ http://www.creativeeducation.co.uk/blog/index.php/2012/10/back-to-school-how-to-motivate-your-ks1-ks2-class-after-the-summer-break/#comments Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:38:02 +0000 meena http://www.creativeeducation.co.uk/blog/?p=3997

After a summer full of free time – most of which kids will have spent sleeping, lazing around and playing – it’s no wonder that many pupils find the return to school a difficult adjustment. The school routine of the previous year is a distant memory, and this can make coming back into a learning environment challenging.

As teachers, this is an issue we all face, but it can be exceptionally hard to address. With increasing distractions from learning (predominately in the form of smartphones and handheld games consoles) on top of the usual excitement of seeing friends again and unwillingness to concentrate, it is important we have a plan to motivate in place.

Reengaging students as soon as possible after the summer break is key to re-establishing a learning environment, and the most effective way to do this is to get them excited to learn again. Key Stage 1 and 2 aged children’s main motivation to learn is a lot more simple than older children’s – they want to learn when it’s fun.

“What ___ did this summer” Activity

Use your students’ desire to chat about their summer as a basis for an educational activity. Spilt you class up into pairs, and give them five minutes each to talk about their summer, and then a quiet fifteen minutes to compile a small piece on what their partner did that summer.

This doesn’t have to be extensive, as the aim of the exercise is to open up communication lines and get students used to remembering and writing down facts again. Remember that many won’t have practiced their writing skills at all over the summer, so this is a good, simple task to get them reengaged with compiling a report style piece.

The Cross-Subject Project

Beginning a cross-subject project at the beginning of term can quickly get pupils interested in learning again. Depending on your syllabus, you can combine learning in different subject areas with the topics you need to cover.

For example, using PE, Geography, English and Art together to produce an “Adventure Story” over the space of four weeks can work exceptionally well. Use PE lessons to create an “adventure world”, using crash mats as lakes and rivers, benches as stepping stones and rope bridges, and suspended climbing ropes and wall-mounted climbing apparatus as vines and cliff faces.

Allow them to plan their journey and story in the “adventure world”, and return to the classroom to start writing. Use Art lessons to produce illustrations for their stories, and work in Geography and even Science by teaching them about the natural habitat and animals that could be found in a tropical adventure place – is there a volcano there, are there earthquakes?

Rewards System

Make sure you have a rewards system in place for your class’s school work, whether it’s a standard school certificates or awards program, or one you create simply for your class.

Make sure you explain the system to your class on the first day to get them motivated to start earning these rewards and use colorful charts and posters to remind them how and what they can be rewarded for. Categories could include good behavior, helping fellow students, performing well in class tasks or completing homework or tests to a high standard.

How else do you get your class motivated after the summer break?

Louise Blake is a new mum and education and parenting blogger exceptionally interested in giving her little boy the best education possible. Currently she writes for School Stickers.

For more ideas on how to get creative and get your pupils loving learning check out our Creativity in the Primary Classroom course today!

As teachers, we live to be creative and find new and better ways to help children learn.

But equally, as teachers, we have an immense workload and it can be really difficult to make all the hours add up in the day.

Many of us turn to premade TES lesson plans as a way of squaring the circle.

But using somebody else’s lesson plan and being creative don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Here are 5 fun ideas for personalising a pre-made plan.

Develop the Lesson

Just because the plan has been made in advance, it doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. This is particularly important when looking at differentiation. What similar challenges would be suitable for less able, or your gifted, students? How can you develop on the theme of the original?

Make it Relevant

Depending on where your lesson plan came from, some can be quite old and generic. How can you really make it relevant by adding in things in the news or that come from the students’ experience. Instead of measuring the angles on a sheet of paper could they measure the angles your buildings around the school?

Personalise with Your Favourite Tasks

Every teacher, and every class has their favourite tasks – how can you incorporate them into your lesson plan to make it extra engaging? If your MFL group likes doing wordsearches could you add a wordsearch task as a starter to a premade plan covering a new topic?

Change the Delivery Method

You could cover the same topic but in a different way to adapt a plan to the needs of your students or what your school offers. The opportunities are endless – a suitable video from Youtube, acting out the content or even getting the students to prepare the lesson themselves and teach it to each other. Adding some interesting delivery methods can easily give a premade plan more pizzazz.

Go Cross Curricular

Just because you’re a science teacher, doesn’t mean you have to pick science lesson plans. How would an RE teacher address the question of reproductive ethics, or a drama teacher, or an English teacher? Why not take lesson plans from other subjects and try personalising those instead?

If you have other ideas, I’d love to hear them. Either respond in the comments or tweet me @creativeedu

FOR MORE INFORMATION TRY OUR COURSE:
Leadership Skills for New and Aspiring Middle Leaders

Honestly, how many hours have you wasted in this week, this month? How many meetings you’ve attended have been clear, focussed and prompt? How many have just descended into random discussion?

Follow the steps below and I think you can cut the time you spend in meetings by half. Imagine what you could do with all that extra time in your day!

What Would Happen If You Didn’t Have a Meeting?

Some regular meetings acquire a momentum of their own – “We have to have it because its the weekly team leaders meeting.” Do you really need to all sit down together? What would happen if you didn’t? Could you convey the information required without one?

Set an Appropriate Length of Time

It’s amazing how most meetings are scheduled for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, a period or an hour. Be more creative with the time you allot meetings. If you currently have a 30 minute one scheduled, try scaling that back to 20 minutes. My bet would be you still cover all of the important ground.

Plan a Clear Agenda

Every meeting should have a purpose, an outcome which you expect to achieve. That’s not the same as knowing what decisions you’ll make, but it does mean knowing you’ll make a decision on something. To assist this, plan out a clear agenda so that everyone knows what will be discussed. Try to anticipate key objections so that people can marshal their arguments and their data in advance.

Encourage All Participants to Prepare Before

As a rough rule of thumb, every participant should spend as long preparing before the meeting as they do actually in the meeting itself. Any documents should be produced and circulated in advance enough to make sure that everybody has read them and understands them before they start. You don’t want a situation (which I endured in countless governor meetings) where people take time to read documents during the meeting they should have read well in advance. That isn’t a productive use of anyone’s time.

Start on Time, Be Rigorous

Whenever your meeting is due to start, start. That will soon convince the latecomers that coming late isn’t an option. Even if they miss out first time, they’ll soon get the idea. Be rigorous about the time alloted to various parts of the agenda too. Too often meetings drift as everyone spends half their time on the first point on the agenda, leaving the remainder glossed over or ignored in a rush at the end.

Step In to Prevent Long Off Topic Rants

Keeping to time will mean you’ll need to be a strong chair. By all means let people have their say, but when they’re not contibuting anything new, or are completely off topic, step in to keep the meeting flowing.

Write Up and Follow Up

Just as you spend as long preparing before the meeting as you spend in it, I think you should spend as long after the meeting making sure all the action points were covered off. If nothing changes as a result of your meeting, ultimately it was worthless. Make sure yours isn’t!

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Self Harm and Eating Disorders – Creating Positive Support

Eating disorders are a growing problem among our students, but often it can be very challenging to identify which students are at risk.

Prevention is always better than cure, but anorexia can be hard to identify in its early stages – only becoming obvious when significant intervention is required.

So how do you spot a child in your class with the signs of anorexia so you can get the appropriate support? It’s worth noting that no sign on its own is enough to ‘prove’ a child has anorexia, but if any child exhibits a number of the signs below it’s worth referring the matter to the relevant specialist within your school.

They Restrict Eating or Skip Meals

Mainly, to reduce their calorie intake anorexics will reduce their food intake. This can involve eating increasingly smaller meals in the lunch hall, or finding ways to eat elsewhere so that nobody can see the actual size of their portions. At its most severe they will simply skip meals altogether. Often they find ways of explaining this away, perhaps by getting involved in so many lunchtime activities that they are simply ‘too busy’ for lunch.

They Develop Complex Rules for Eating

Food is the epicentre of an anoxeric’s neuroses – so be aware if you see a student exhibiting strange behaviours around food. So for example a student may insist on cutting their food precisely in half and eating only that half, or not eating any food if it has the slightest blemish.

They Start Wearing Baggy Clothes and Get Cold Quickly

Often an anorexic will try to hide the extent of their weight loss by wearing baggy clothes. As their weight loss increases they will find it harder and harder to stay warm, so you may well also want to be wary of students dressed up unseasonably warmly much of the time.

The Become a Perfectionist

Anorexia is about giving sufferers control by controlling how they eat food. There is an element of perfectionism and conscientiousness in this that comes out in everything that they do. If you find students becoming more perfectionist in their school work this can be an early sign of a problem.

They Get Increasingly Isolated

As the disease progresses it becomes hard for the sufferer to think about anything else than their mental struggles with food. This results in them neglecting their friendship groups and becoming isolated in the year group. Also at school meal times are one of the main social occassions, so cutting themselves off from their friends allows them to avoid this stressful situation.

Poor Body Image

This is one the classic signs of anorexia. Sufferers will believe they are fat and obese even when to the rest of the world they are small and frail. If you find someone with a wildly distorted body image it’s important to discuss the matter with the relevant person on staff as soon as possible.

They Avoid Sports

This distorted body image and a desire to avoid being discovered can lead sufferers to want to do almost anything to avoid undressing in front of other people.
This post was adapted, with permission, from Pooky Hesmondhalgh’s excellent blog on the topic Eating Disorders Advice. It’s full of helpful guides on the topic for teachers and parents and is well worth a look.

We’re over half way through the year now, and no doubt you’ve been trying your hardest to keep your classes on a tight leash.

But now’s also the time, with spring approaching and youthful exuberance in full flow that your class can start to slip away from you.

So what are the early warning signs, so that you can address it before the learning starts to suffer?

Lack of Respect

Are your class still showing you the same level of respect that a) you deserve and b) you’ve come to expect? Where once a question was asked politely with hands up is it now shouted across the classroom? Can students not be bothered even to bring the correct equipment?

Increased Lateness

As well as being a symptom of a general decline in behaviour lateness can cause it too – if not handled effectively. When a student comes late to class don’t let it put you off your flow or disrupt your lesson, just give them ‘the look’ and pick them up on it once the whole class has settled down to work.

Lowering Achievement

Have you had a few poor homeworks on the bounce? Maybe now’s the time to start thinking seriously about the class’ behaviour. Poor performance is a clear sign of disengagement and when pupils start to get disengaged, behaviour is the next thing to suffer.

Take a Long Time to Settle

Do your students always seem to have something better to do these days rather than start your lessons?

They Take Things too Far

Everyone likes a good laugh and a joke, but lately have things been getting a bit out of hand? Have you been getting a glare in through the window when the deputy head passes your classes? Do you find that when a member of senior management do pop in the class instantly quietens down?

Questions from Colleagues

Teachers are usually thoughtful about approaching colleagues directly about behaviour problems in their classes, but have you been asked quite a few questions recently about a class? Is it just a subtle way of your colleagues suggesting you address the issue before it gets out of hand?

Calls from Parents

Some parents complain about the slightest thing, some couldn’t care less, but any concerned call from a parent means you need to revaluate the behaviour of that class. What are the issues they’ve raised? Do they apply to your class?

And lastly the most important – what am I to do about it?

If you’re looking to improve the quality of behaviour in your class take a look at our new DVD range on Positive Behaviour Management by behaviour expert Sue Cowley. It’s full of practical advice that can help you put your class back on the straight and narrow.

“I am an actor really – giving a performance in the classroom.”

I must have heard teachers draw that analogy dozens of times. Often they will develop their thesis with phrases like ‘You’ve got to have your classroom character, wear your teacher’s mask or you wouldn’t survive.’

Having trained as both as an actor and a teacher and worked in both capacities in a variety of institutions, I do not think these kinds of statement are just throwaway quips to re-assure the listener that their bark is worse than their bite; rather, they are heartfelt sentiments of professionals who know just how much planning, energy and formal presentational skill goes into their classroom delivery.

Interestingly, once you start to think of a classroom as a form of theatre, not only do the teachers become actors, but so can the young people.  If in SRE we wish to develop young people’s confidence and ability to manage their relationships, then in the most effective forms of classroom learning teachers may need to be more akin to theatre directors with the students increasingly becoming empowered actors.

In the early years of Apause I was hired as a theatre practitioner to help develop the training programme for the peer educators.  Dr John Tripp, the founder of the programme, wanted something that would give them more of a performance ‘edge’ and engage the learners as confident actors might.  He also thrust a set of script into my hands and explained that they had been adapted from a uniquely successful project in Atlanta,USAand we needed to help peer educators bring them to life in the classroom.

I began to consider the question; “What kind of theatre are we dealing with here?”  The beauty of having the scripts was that we had a highly codified account of what the original programme developers had intended.

Indeed, we could begin to see precisely why this programme was one of only two in 1990 that had actually reduced the risk taking practices of the target population, or ‘learners’ as we came to dub them.

These learners, over a period of four sessions were being equipped to recognise and interpret pressure situations, understand the options available to them and then through guidance by the peers, demonstrate that they had a range of skills that would enable them to keep in control in those situations. They had been given the opportunity to observe and practise assertiveness skills.

In fact, by the end of the sessions they could perform entire scenarios in which they both created the pressure situations and played characters who demonstrated how to deal with them.  I was in no doubt that this method of empowerment, consistent with Bandura’s social learning theory model of behaviour acquisition was in fact achieved through a novel form of theatre-in-education.  We came to call this approach to collaborative learning the ‘Scripted Performance Workshop’ (SPW).

Coming back to consider the adult teacher of SRE, I have long thought how disempowering it can be for a teacher – how little opportunity they have to develop their performance.

Relatively few SRE teachers feel they are specialists or have had sufficient training in the subject.  They are often encouraged to believe they should be able to overcome the generation gap and develop spontaneous discussion about taboo matters in a subject area that is not underpinned by either a statutory curriculum or a rigorously developed set of teaching and learning strategies and resources.

Over the years at Apause we have come to look at adult-led SRE as another opportunity to apply the SPW approach.  Like peer educators, quite understandably, most teachers come to the subject with some apprehension.  They really appreciate highly structured lesson plans with the option of starting with a script.

The small group learning activities are easy to facilitate with most of the subject specific information already intrinsic to the group learning materials themselves.  Feedback is carefully structured and often takes the form of role plays or a prepared presentation of their group’s ideas.  All of this activity is conceived of by us as kind of performance or ‘theatre’ and it is codified in a set of classroom notes or ‘scripts’.

For schools wanting to take a new approach to teaching relevant and useful SRE, the Scripted Performance Workshop provides a safe and sensible approach.  Pupils and teachers feel comfortable within their roles and both gain knowledge, experience and performance skills in a system similar to that described by Albert Bandura as ‘Guided Mastery’.  The scripts offer a transparency, enabling parents and governors not only to see the full subject matter covered but to have confidence in the conclusions the learners will reach.

David Evans is the Director of SRE Project – an organisations that supports schools in delivering their SRE programmes. You can find out more about their workshops for teachers and for peer educators by following the links.

Pupils with EAL face two main challenges:  they need to learn English and they need to learn the content of the curriculum.

Teachers have to accept that pupils with EAL may not always access every aspect of the lesson but we should plan teaching approaches to match needs and accelerate learning.

In our planning we should recognise that learning a language is more than just learning vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation; it involves using all these elements appropriately for a variety of real purposes or functions.

Scaffolding as the Basis of Support

The principle of scaffolding should form the basis of support for all EAL learners, whether it is in the areas of speaking, listening, reading, writing or accessing the curriculum.

It may take the form of providing a graphic organiser for reading, a writing frame for writing or prompts for speaking.  It may be through pointing at an object as it is named, or the adult ensuring that the language they are using to describe how to carry out a science investigation is connected to the actions of a demonstration.

Developing the writing skills to cope with the demands of the curriculum is crucial for EAL learners.  Some pupils will arrive with well-developed literacy skills in their first language.  As the child acquires English language, many of these skills can be transferred to writing in English.

The transferral of these skills, however, will depend on factors such as the similarities and differences of the first language to English.  The acquisition of literacy skills in English is often directly related to the structure of the EAL learner’s first language and how it relates to English.

Developing the Skills to Master Writing

The skills involved in writing for any pupil are complex, but this is especially true for pupils learning English as an additional language.  Not only do they have to grapple with elements such as grammatical forms, sentence word order, vocabulary, punctuation and spelling, but they also need to think about features such as cohesion, genre and overall organisation.

Reading and writing are inextricably linked and eliciting writing from EAL pupils should integrate these two skills.  Pupils should also always be provided with focused speaking and listening activities in the lessons leading up to the writing tasks.

Placing listening and speaking at the heart of the writing sequence will enable EAL learners to rehearse the language they will use in their writing and to explore and experiment with how they will use it.

A third essential aspect of developing the writing of pupils learning English as an additional language is the modelling / demonstration of both the processes and the product.

Scaffolding in the Classroom

Scaffolding can take place through various means:

• Scaffolding by adults
• Scaffolding through visual support
• Scaffolding through collaborative work
• Scaffolding through practical experiences

Scaffolding by adults can include:

• Modelling and demonstration
• Recasting and remodelling pupils’ language
• Guided talk, guided reading and guided writing
• Ensuring EAL learners understand what is expected of them
• Focused feedback and explicit praise

Teachers can also adopt additional approaches to develop writing skills for pupils new to English including:

• Labelling a picture
• Matching simple sentences to pictures
• Reconstructing a cut up sentence
• Simple cloze activities with each sentence illustrated by a picture
• Matching the beginnings and endings of sentences
• Simple handwriting practice tasks

Three scaffolds frequently used by teachers include:

Visuals

All pupils with EAL will benefit from the use of visuals.  Visuals can reduce the amount of language content whilst retaining cognitive demand. They can also support pupils in constructing text through providing prompts and scaffolds.

Graphic organisers

These can be used in a number of ways and can be used to support pupils with text comprehension, text construction or to support speaking and listening.  They can be used before, during or after reading.  They can also be used as a framework for note taking.

Activating prior knowledge

Most new learning is based on connecting new ideas and concepts onto knowledge already obtained.  Activating prior knowledge creates a stepping stone to the next level of learning.  Activating prior knowledge also offers the opportunity for pupils to draw on and bring their experiences, cultures and backgrounds into the classroom.

This blog post was adapted from our course Developing the Writing Skills of EAL Learners. Follow the link to find out more information, including when the course is running in your area.

I was struck yesterday when I read this post by Seth Godin In Search of a Timid Trapeeze Artist (you can read it, it’s very short!)

What he says is generally true of all organisations – and of schools too.

Innovation in teaching isn’t really something you can dabble in, it’s a lifestyle choice. A choice to constantly drive at the boundaries of what’s possible in your lessons.

Those of us who try to be ‘a bit innovative but no more’ will always struggle.

That’s not to say innovation is easy – particularly when you’re burdened with workload – in fact it’s almost difficult by definition, but it’s definitely, definitely worth it.

I’d love to hear some of the examples you have of throwing yourself completely into an innovative project or teaching style. Sharing makes us stronger! Just tweet me @creativeedu or post in the comments below

There is no failure, only feedback.

But as much as we might know this implicitly sometimes the way feedback is given can make it feel like we’ve failed. The problem is particularly acute with teaching, as so many of the outcomes can sometimes be subjective. Were a class really engaged? Were students making sufficient progress? Was that lesson ‘good’?

So even if it’s not given in the right way, how do you turn criticism into positive feedback that will help you improve?

Keep your cool

When you’re receiving the feeback, listen without showing any negative or defensive emotions. This is difficult, but essential.

Summarise the key points

Outline what the other person has said to make sure you have understood them correctly and also to show that you have taken it all in.

Ask questions

The more specific the criticism, the more helpful. Find out what you did, when you did it, and what gave your critic the impression they have.

Prioritise

Criticism is rarely groundless, but often exaggerated.  Decide which elements are useful and thus what you can do differently to be more effective.

Put yourself in their shoes

Think about how the person who seems to be criticising you looks at the world.  Could they have been trying to help? Are they under pressure themselves? Think about why they have these views about you.

Get them on your side

Ask those who criticise you for their advice. By making them part of the solution (as mentor, coach or whatever) they are less likely to criticise you in future.

Be grateful

Thank people who criticise you. Not only have they given you free information but you will also disarm them (and they are likely to think better of you immediately, which can’t be bad).

Think positive

Reframe criticism that focuses on what went badly.  Consider what positive steps you can take to improve in the future.

Hit the punchbag, not the person

If you are angry, take it out on something, not someone. It’s understandable to be annoyed, but not very useful.

I hope you find that useful. I’d love to hear some of your feedback about great advice you’ve received, or for that matter criticism delivered really badly! Do comment below or tweet me @creativeedu