Gaming in Education

Jun 29, 2012 by

Knowing that I am interested in modifying games to fit a child’s needs, A friend sent me this link. Game-Based Learning to Teach and Assess 21st Century Skills  While I agree with most of what Andrew Miller has to say I think there are some key points that need to be questioned.  First a skilled teacher is needed to determine the proper balance between gaming and other methods of teaching to maximize learning, otherwise splinter skills are inevitable .  Second, as far as I know students are not going to be playing games in college for grades or in the work place for evaluations.  They need to understand this and realize that the rules and methods will change in those settings.  Students will be set up for failure if they believe playing angry birds...

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?Core Curriculum and the SLP?

Jun 23, 2012 by

?Core Curriculum and the SLP?

I am so confused, I almost don’t know where to begin. I never thought of myself as a therapist who followed or worked from the curriculum. I have always thought of myself as someone who supports development of the underlying skills needed to access the curriculum independently. Working with 3-8 grades at a time it would be nearly impossible to know the exact curriculum in each grade. Not to mention seeing kids only 1-2 times a week it is hard to keep up, even with curriculum vocabulary. Often our small groups are designed to work on a specific skill and are made up of students of different ages or in different classes. Occasionally I’ve incorporated long term projects such as books or concepts especially if I knew my students were struggling. Going into the...

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Can schools be proactive rather than reactive?...

Jun 15, 2012 by

Over my years of working as a Speech Language Pathologist, I’ve worked in many schools. Every school has it’s own set pluses and minuses. Wouldn’t it be great to create a school with only pluses. For that to happen, schools would have to get into the mind set of being proactive rather than reactive. Here is my list of the positive and proactive ideas I’ve seen implemented in school systems that seem to work well. Some of these are simple, some take some effort and some are no longer possible in the public schools because of the changes taking place in education. What’s on your list? A consistent leveled discipline plan, one that is followed by the whole school. Walking into any classroom and knowing what the expectations are makes it easy for professionals...

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Play Skills Are More Important Than You Think!...

Jun 6, 2012 by

Play Skills Are More Important Than You Think!

This article was originally posted in Your Middle Schooler: A Unique Age April 2008. I met with someone this week who runs corporate events, basically arranges for adults to “play” and was reminded of this article. I’ve always had strong feelings about play and development of play skills. I am seeing the trickle down effect with the older kids who don’t know how to “play”, get along with others, see others perspective or work in groups. This morning I read an article in Smithsonian Magazine by Monica Watrous call “Playing for Keepsies”. It was a small article about a gentleman named Bruce Breslow and his Moon Marble Company in Bonner Springs, Kansas. The Moon Marble Company produces both expensive hand crafted marbles and inexpensive machine made marbles. Breslow is a woodworker who became interested...

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The Dropsies

Jun 6, 2012 by

I just wanted to share a funny story about a student I proctored during some testing we do. This student basically has the dropsies. The first time we worked together they must have dropped their pencil over 20 times. And every time they dropped their pencil they stopped what they were doing and dove under the table for it. As far as I know there is no accommodation for this this type of problem. After observing the student the first 15 or so times, I realized they only dropped their pencil when they were concentrating and organizing their response. Diving under the table broke that concentration. With that unstandardized data under my belt I began to brainstorm….”What could I do about this?” Since I am a bright gal with lots of experience and three...

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