Blog 6

Over multiple days this week, I've been able to go to Lander Elementary School to see and work with the autism unit there. The autism unit is a classroom of five or six year old children who have some kind of disability, such as autism. They're able to be in school and in a classroom with others, but they're not always able to be in a more traditional classroom with a bunch of kids that do not have a disability. So they learn in the autism unit classroom. There's much less children in this classroom and there are normally a couple more teachers in the room. In this room, the children are able to work more at their pace. Each student has their own schedule of what to do. And it is important that this schedule is illustrated and in front of them. The teachers can put pictures on the Velcro strip creating a schedule for the children. The children look at these pictures and complete the tasks from top to bottom, and when they're done with a task they take the picture off and do the next one. It's important because since these kids have a disability, it's not as easy for them to follow directions and to remember them and stay on task. With this schedule they're able to stay on task and complete their work. They have a similar sheet like their schedule that lists the work they need to complete. It shows pictures of the work they need to do like read, do spelling, write something, etc. And when they complete one of these tasks, they get a token to show they completed it. And once they finish everything and fill their sheet with tokens, they get rewarded. They get to choose their reward prior to starting such as playing with Legos, playing on the computer, etc. So it gives them a motivation to complete their tasks and get rewarded.

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