11/25/2014
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Today 25 special education bloggers have teamed up to show our appreciation to all the hard-working special educators out there with a "Thankful for Special Educators Blog Hop"! Special educators wear many hats. Not only do they work with students with special needs but they also work with social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech and language pathologists, parents, principals, general education teachers and more! There job is not only to teach students with disabilities but also to inform parents and other educators of effective strategies to use with their children and so much more. One of the important roles of a special educator is to assist the general education teachers in bringing about awareness of disabilities to their general education student population. In the last blog hop I shared my free Disability Awareness Student Booklet to help teachers do
just that. Today I want to share another freebie with you.
Special Educator Tip
It is important that we teach students about the different kinds of disabilities and what they might look like but we can take it a step further and teach them about the assistive technologies that might go along with some of those disabilities. I had the privilege of teaching both special education and general education students and I know how students can be when they see other students using special tools or having special "privileges" that they don't get. It can seem unfair to them if they don't know why the student is using them. For example, I had a few students with ADD in my gen. ed. classroom who used wiggle seats and the rest of the students all wanted one. So my tip is to explain the need for certain assistive technologies (AT) and, if appropriate, allow students to try AT devices so they can experience them and gain a better understanding of how they work. My students loved testing out the wiggle seats! In my free Assistive Technologies Flip Book you can teach students about the different types of ATs and talk about how they help
students with different disabilities.
Use this flip book to spark discussion. You could also talk about different learning strategies that some students with disabilities may benefit from such as drawing pictures. You can ask students questions like, "Would it be fair for me to allow one student to use a picture that they drew to help them recall information on a test?" "What if that student had memory difficulties?" If your students say no it wouldn't be fair you can say, "So we shouldn't let students who have trouble seeing use glasses on a test either, right?" Talk about what the word 'fair' means and how being fair doesn't necessarily mean everyone gets the same treatment. To read more about assistive technologies and my personal
story click here. I hope your students enjoy this flip book activity!
Grab your Free Flip Book!
Be sure to read the tip above to get the most out of this freebie and so you don't miss my additional freebie (if you didn't grab it in the last blog hop)! Click on the image below
to download your freebie.
Big Savings!
TpT is having a site-wide sale for Cyber Monday where you can get up to 28% off when you use the promo code: TPTCYBER this sale will be Dec. 1-2. My entire store will be 28% off (with promo code) including my already marked down 20% off bundles! Click the
image below to check it out!
Custom Special Education Bundle Giveaway
As an extra thank you to all my special educator friends I have put together a custom special education bundle comprised of the following products from my TpT store! Enter to win this custom bundle and I'll announce a winner next week Friday!
Hop to the Next Blog!
Thanks for stopping by! For more freebies and tips, continue the trip through the blog hop by checking out The Bender Bunch...just click the button below.
Thank you to the Following Contributors!
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