After spending 30 hours in a life skills classroom and my peers in other types of Special Education classrooms, we worked together to design a fall themed activities that worked on skills the students in our field were learning. After creating our activities, we invited the students and their parents to come to the school for a Fall Fest night of fun and games. My activity working fine motor skills. I had students use tongs or tweezers to grab spiders out of a spider web (string strung through a bin with holes in the sides). The students had to see how many spiders they could pull out in one minute. Then the students had to count out how many spiders they grabbed. At the end, each student got a sticker as a reward. In addition to support from myself and other pre-service teachers, the students had visual and written out task analysis sheets on how to do the activity if they needed reminders.
Overall, the night was so much fun, not only for the students, but also for us as pre-service teachers. It was so heart-warming to make those students smile and feel welcomed in the school.
Prior to the actual event, we worked together to edit and critique one another's task analysis sheets to make sure the tasks were broken down into small enough chunks for students to be able to perform the task. Receiving criticism is not always easy, but this task taught me the importance of putting my pride aside in order to improve my work to better benefit my students.
Overall, the night was so much fun, not only for the students, but also for us as pre-service teachers. It was so heart-warming to make those students smile and feel welcomed in the school.
Prior to the actual event, we worked together to edit and critique one another's task analysis sheets to make sure the tasks were broken down into small enough chunks for students to be able to perform the task. Receiving criticism is not always easy, but this task taught me the importance of putting my pride aside in order to improve my work to better benefit my students.