Sally Avern's Professional Journey

  My original thoughts: Thinking about differentiation prior to the observation I was thinking about how I differentiate for the group based on the things I do already. Concerned I wasn't differentiating effectively,  I explicitly listed the things I think I do: -ask the students to indicate silently they have an idea so that all students have to take part/ have thinking time -ensuring that the children that find it harder to follow along are next to me with the louder and more focused participants at the other end of the table -ensure we record our ideas so that we can return to them later if needed, or for those students are away often, they can see what happened while they were away.  -I often walk away from the table while they talk, giving the shy students an opportunity to talk without the teacher present. To eliminate that fear that they will say the wrong thing. (I am always within ear shot and paying attention, but pretend I am not.) -ensure I use the 'STOP' call...

 

Nuerodiversity refers to students who have or display symptoms of ADHD, ASD, Dyscalculia, Dyslexia, and Speech Disorders.  They effect Cognitive processing and therefore Executive functioning is impaired.  In order to ensure we have access to all the things we want to use/do. (People hours, tools, learning etc) we need to make sure we are collating our PLPs well so that we can show all our needs. Any level of adjustment gets funding and we no longer need a diagnosis for that funding to be put in place.  When talking to parents sometimes it's hard to know how to say that their child will not directly access their allocated '2 hours' or however it has been stated in the medical feild. Instead say: 'Our school already allocates extra people per grade to account for all of our diverse learners. We can definitely look at other things that they can access at our school from now on that is different to what they already recieve." Time will be given in staff meetings to up...