The Joseph Robert Shaw Foundation

Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury

Who Reads? Creating new routines for learning new skills

By

Joey turned to me, putting his eyes directly in line with mine. “Miss Ann-Bailey. Teacher” he said, smiling. While this is true, I quickly recognized the attempt to negotiate with me. My friend, it is only because I am your teacher that we are having this battle, I explained. And I’m holding firm because I know you can do it. One day you will read many books all to yourself. Right now, we are reading this book together. Now, find “IS”.

He gave me a similar look to what he gave me years ago when we first started using the eye gaze and I insisted on him using the device instead of simply looking at what he wanted and laughing. Back then, he believed he had a communication system that worked for him. The idea that I would change this system made him mad. Eventually, Joey and I worked through it, and now he uses his device like a pro. To get here though, he needed to bend and I needed to bend until we found our middle ground. [Read more…]

When Ideas Don’t Work…

By

Shortly after Christmas I was meeting with Joey and noticed the newly opened card game – Sleeping Queens- sitting on his family’s couch. It happened to be a game I love, and one that I not only play with my own children, but also with many of the children I work with. I’ve never worked with a child who didn’t like this game. Joey’s older brother was also home from school, and I jumped on the chance to turn this into a meaningful learning and bonding moment.

The game has dragons, knights, queens, and kings – all vocabulary that Joey has. It also has number cards and encourages the players to make number sentences in order to get new cards (4 + 2 = 6, so that if you have the cards 4, 2, and 6, you can play all three). My mind was spinning. I could encourage Joey’s counting, adding, and back and forth turn taking and game play. All while engaging him in a game other kindergartners like. Sure, we’d have a lot to problem solve, but if we could figure out how to make this work there could be all sorts of opportunities to explore. 

Sometimes, I need to keep my ideas to myself. [Read more…]

Analyzing Data and Making Decisions

By

I have spent the last few hours analyzing Joey’s data over the last year and looking at trends and patterns. I have the opportunity to present Joey’s journey and the data of his progress at both the DADD Annual Conference in January 2020, and at the Council for Exceptional Children’s Annual Conference in February, 2020.

Previously, Joey’s data was fairly remarkable. The last time I had the opportunity to present on Joey’s work he was 4 and a half. He had recently made impressive progress on the number of words he generated in a ten minute time sampling, and the graph this created was remarkable. When I went in and added the 2019 data into the graph, I had a moment of disappointment. I no longer have that beautiful uphill climb I’d seen in 2018.

Instead, it is more of a mountain range – with peaks and valleys, and currently, what seems to be a decline. 

What’s going on? [Read more…]

Winter Colds

By

None of us like winter colds. It can often feel that we stand next to one wrong person in line at the grocery store and suddenly we have a week or two of fighting off an unrelenting cold. These colds always seem to interrupt our sleep, make our thoughts fuzzy, tire us out more easily, and just generally slow us down. Still, we tend to be able to continue to function, advocate for our basic needs, and tell others just how crummy we feel. One articulate first grader who was learning to speak English came into my classroom years ago and announced that her head was full of nose juice that made her feel like she was underwater. I’ve never heard a more specific description.

Of course, for Joey, and students like him, colds mean so much more. Colds threaten his general health as his body has a harder time fighting off germs. Recovery time for him can be so much longer than the rest of us. His sleep and daily rhythm are interrupted. Just saying hello or asking for help becomes a heavy chore.

When I am taking data on Joey’s communication abilities, I am constantly looking for trends. Is his communication increasing? What types of communication is he using? What encourages him to engage more? The data will reflect increases in his ability, and then, it will stop. Is he regressing? Often, there is something interfering. Colds are frequently a culprit at slowing him down.  [Read more…]

Exploring Similar Sounding Words – Looking Deeper into Components of Learning to Read on the AAC Device

By

Joey and I were happily reading “There is a Bird on Your Head” by Mo Willems when we stopped to count the birds on poor Gerald’s head. I prompted Joey to use his page with numbers to tell me that there were two birds. He did, and we went on. Yet as I was reading, I kept hearing “To. Too. Two”. Each “to” was from a different place on the device. Some were the numbers, some were the word to. Of course, each sounded exactly the same.

Joey was carefully going through every place on his device that has any form of the word to, and was selecting it. He has the number two in at least three different places, and then of course there is the regular word to, which is in two different places.  [Read more…]

Saturday Serenade

By

Test post for Saturday Serenades https://www.musichealsglennjan.com/saturday-serenades

Bitnami