Katelynn Just PSIII PD Project

PSIII Professional Development Project Summary: Parallel Programming in Grade 6 Social Studies
It was my goal with this project to increase my experience differentiating in an inclusive classroom. Throughout my degree specializing in special/inclusive education I have been given an abundance of tools in order to develop a successful inclusive classroom and it was my aim to utilize these tools throughout my professional development project. I had to take many factors in to account when developing a parallel program for grade six social studies.

I began developing the parallel program by first getting to know the student in which the differentiation would benefit. Payton is an eleven year old girl with Down syndrome. She is in an inclusive grade six classroom with 33 students. Payton has extremely limited fine motor skills which prevent her from writing. She also has limited speech and often speaks in single word sentences. With prompting she can verbally produce multi word sentences however. Payton can read at about a grade two level and succeeds in reading out loud. It is evident that her difficulty with speech steams from a difficulty with processing information and putting it into complete thoughts. She can, however produce more fluid sentences when she is reading information out loud. Payton loves to work on her iPad using various apps. Some of her other favorite things include dancing, her dog Willow, and especially the color purple. It was very important to take all of this information into account when developing a program for her. My next step was to determine the curriculum content in which we would be focusing on in the parallel program. The grade six curriculum has a strong emphasis on local and

Katelynn Just PSIII PD Project

provincial government. I chose to focus on aspects of government and community for this parallel program. The curriculum outcome goals for Payton were for her to be able identify various individuals in her community, various places in her community, services within her community and vocabulary associated with her community and government. We also looked at which government (local and provincial) was in charge of various services. Other goals for Payton were to use complete sentences when communicating thoughts, ideas, or needs. My goal was to create meaningful activities for Payton that still had connections to the grade six curriculum. It was necessary to differentiate the curriculum for Payton so that it was within her zone of proximal development. By working within her zone of proximal development we were able to see growth and successes. This parallel program took the form of numerous resources and activities that Payton could work through at her own pace. Many of the activities were in a hands-on, matching format. Having manipulatives that she can physically match was successful for Payton because of her difficulty with fine motor skills, such as writing. Examples of matching activities included matching various people in the community to their places of work, matching pictures of various community people with their title, and matching services to provincial and local government. I also took into consideration Paytons enjoyment of working on her iPad by incorporating various apps that focused on people in the community and places in the community. Some of the apps also focused on traffic signs which we thought would benefit her in her daily life; for example as she walks to school. Another way that technology was integrated into this parallel program was in an activity book in which Payton used a computer

Katelynn Just PSIII PD Project

to search for images of various things within her community. The booklet had prompts which helped to guide her searches. Due to Paytons difficulty with fine motor skills a modified keyboard was used with large keys for typing. To work with Payton on meeting her speech goals we introduced sentence strips and WH questions as suggested by the Speech Language Pathologist. Sentence strips worked well to help Payton break down sentences into smaller words. By reading the sentence strips Payton was encouraged to speak more fluidly, in complete sentences. Sentence strips were also used to help her answer various questions by providing the first part for the sentence and having her fill in the missing word. WH questions encouraged Payton to look at pictures of people in various places in her community and identify who, where, and what from the picture. This activity served two purposes by encouraging Payton to use complete sentences and to identify people and places in the community. I worked to increase Paytons motivation throughout this parallel program by incorporating some of Paytons interests and likes. All of her activities and resources were placed in purple folders and binders. Payton is drawn to the color purple and enjoys things associated with purple. We also incorporated technology throughout the program to increase her interest and motivation. Another form of technology that assisted in the parallel program was Proloquo2Go. This is a form of assistive speech language technology that was not directly curriculum based but rather aided in Paytons communication of program content. This program could be modified and I worked to incorporate curriculum content into folders that Payton could access.

Katelynn Just PSIII PD Project

Proloquo2Go will be an excellent program that can grow with her throughout her schooling. It was through my past experience with this program that made me believe that it would be an excellent fit for Payton. My professional development project has proven to be a collaborative effort between other teachers, educational assistants, parents, admin, and speech language pathologists. I have learned so much by collaborating with others. By sharing their knowledge and experiences I have been able to add even more tools to my toolbox to use in future differentiation. I believe that this project was a successful and worthwhile endeavor which has benefited not only the student but I have also gained invaluable experience.