Presenter: Christine Reeve, PhD, BCBA-D
Through the use of case studies and scenarios of classrooms and students, videos, visual examples, and discussion, this presentation will focus on helping educators determine how to integrate the guidelines for good data collection and analysis with practical tools for getting it done. The presentation will include examples of data collection tools and strategies, strategies for organization and management of materials to track skills while working with students, guidelines for taking data, and methods for analyzing the data in an efficient manner to make decisions about students’ progress. Guidelines for data collection and analysis will be based on research in the area of data collection with practical applications that can be used in classroom settings. The examples shared are examples that have been used in a variety of types of classrooms, and teachers have indicated they have been helpful in the organization of their data collection and analysis process.
This presentation will assist teachers and related service professionals in planning for and implementing data collection and analysis plans. In addition, it will provide behavior analysts with strategies for assisting and training those involved in direct work with students with autism spectrum disorder through practical strategies that can be integrated into instructional programs.
Presenter: Claire Greer
This session will provide detailed information about five early language and literacy instructional routines: shared reading, predictable chart writing, alphabet/phonological awareness, independent reading, and independent writing. The focus will be on the teaching and use of core vocabulary within the routines to engage beginning communicators with significant cognitive disabilities and increase their literacy and communication abilities. Access to free resources to support planning and implementing the routines as well as student communication supports will be provided.
Presenter: Janet Sturm, PhD, CCC-SLP
This workshop will explore the use of high-quality differentiated writing instruction to foster writing development in students with significant disabilities across the age-span. A scientifically-based writing curriculum will be shared that combines a traditional Writers’ Workshop approach with strategy instruction and social interaction training. Case examples will be shared.
After completing this session, you will be able to:
Presenter: Patricia Obrzut, MS, OTR/L, Assistant Director of the Penrickton Center for Blind Children
Given the opportunity, any child can learn! Active learning, an innovative approach developed by Dr. Lilli Nielsen has reshaped educational programming. Motivating and empowering those with multiple special needs to be engaged by their environment, instead of being controlled by it.
Individuals with multiple disabilities (cerebral palsy, visual impairment, cognitive impairment, autism, hearing impairment, etc.) are at great risk from developing reliance on others to interact with the world around them. Active Learning recognizes that every child/adult with special needs is unique. The programming and intervention for facilitating learning must reflect this individuality. Active Learning emphasizes creating a developmentally appropriate and enriched environment so that children and adults with multiple special needs become active learners. This conference will help professionals and parents understand the theories of Active Learning, to facilitate simple ways to change the environment, and to create a daily curriculum that fosters independent and appropriate developmental learning.
Join Ms. Patricia Obrzut, M.S., O.T.R/L., as she provides you with this fresh and pioneering approach. Learn how to increase functional independence and developmental skills while reducing stereotypical, self-injurious or aggressive behaviors. This exciting conference will feature lecture, video and demonstrations.
Presenter: Susan Catlett, PhD, BCBA-D
Participants will learn about the possible causes of their students’ behavior. By working through competing pathways, the participants will be able to design their instruction (intervention) so that it directly and systematically teaches students functionally alternative replacement behaviors, thus making the problem behavior less or no longer necessary.
Objective: To gain a better understanding about why students engage in particular behaviors and how to create and implement instructional and behavioral strategies to align with that understanding.
This session is in the virtual conference.
Presenter: Michael Wehmeyer, PhD
Having an intellectual disability often means needing support to participate in life activities. However, this doesn’t mean that people with intellectual/developmental disabilities can’t set goals, make choices, and advocate for themselves. This session will review key components of self-determination and ways that educators can support students with significant disabilities in learning skills to improve their quality of life. Texas law requires self-determination to be a significant part of transition planning, as appropriate for each student. Hear from a national expert on self-determination to find out how you can apply these concepts in YOUR classroom.
Presenter: Jennifer Hamrick, PhD, BCBA
Being a special education teacher and responsible for multiple students with a variety of needs is a daunting task in and of itself. Add challenging behaviors to this daily responsibility and the stress and frustrations can become overwhelming for all classroom staff. Through teamwork and small group discussion, this session will identify ways to address challenging behavior both on the individual and classroom level. Participants will develop a basic action plan to start the new school year with tools to work together as a team to address challenging behaviors.
Presenters: Liz Plachta and Mark Hublar
Liz Plachta, Co-founder of Ruby’s Rainbow and Mark Hublar, speaker and advocate for people with disabilities, come together in a powerful keynote speech on how providing opportunity and raising the expectation of people with disabilities is changing the narrative.
Through the sharing of real life stories and experiences, attendees will learn what raised expectations and opportunity can mean for someone with a disability and how it can greatly impact the outcome of their life.
Presenter: Claire Greer, PhD
Having a complete and robust understanding of number takes time to develop but can be achieved through numerous opportunities to learn and practice counting with a variety of experiences and materials. This is especially true for students with significant cognitive disabilities who require structure and repetition to support their learning as well as the modeling of procedures, concepts, and mathematical language. One way to support teachers in developing this type of instruction is through the use of an instructional routine. The early counting routine draws upon principles of distributed learning combined with brief periods of explicit instruction to provide students with significant cognitive disabilities the kind of extensive and repeated instruction they need to support their learning.
Presenter: Janet Sturm, PhD, CCC-SLP
This session will target how to provide instructional contexts that optimize foundational writing and communication skills for students with significant disabilities. A writing curriculum will be shared that is scientifically-derived, standards-based, and linked to the alternate assessments. Learn how explicit writing instruction embedded in social interaction can foster speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
Presenter: Carol Huntley
Everyone should bring their devices and get ready for some hands on practice on how to use these devices for the training of students for work readiness and transition goals and objectives. Although we will cover apps, a good deal of what we will cover is how to use the free apps that come with the devices (i.e., camera, lists, etc.) to help create ways that students can become less prompt dependent by using their phones and tablets without even having to be on wifi or a phone line.
Presenter: Patty Obrzut, OT, Asst. Director of the Penrickton Center for Blind Children
Attaining the ability to grasp is a complex process in individuals with multiple special needs. This session will focus on detailed Active Learning strategies emphasizing those fine motor skills typically achieved from birth to two years. Participants will learn how to establish Active Learning environments to provide learners with opportunities to develop comprehending hands.
This session is a part of the virtual conference.
Presenter: April T. Giauque
Daily we see Social Scenes and we are judged by our response to them. ASD students struggle with social scenes, how do they socially connect with others? As teachers and parents, how do you help them? Through Stories! I will demonstrate how to examine the social success/failures of characters in books, and how students will then modify their behavior for social success!
Presenter: Katlyn Rateau
New and veteran teachers find it difficult to track and manage data. Data should be easily read by others, easy to keep track of, and organized in a way that is functional for a SPED teacher. Like any good student we learn best from peer models. Collaborating and changing other's ideas to meet the needs of your classroom is just what you do. I'll share free resources and ideas about color coding systems, data clipboards, progress monitoring cards, and data binders/folders with a focus on simplicity and organization.
Handouts will be posted as soon as they are received.
Participants will get the chance for Q & A with Mark Hublar and Liz Plachta to continue the discussion of how changing the conversation and shifting the mindset on campus and in society is making an impact on people with disabilities.
Presenters: Diana Hiebeler, Deborrah Gauntlett, & Forrest Hancock
Join us to learn how to blend a storybook-based curriculum with motor activities to support the development of literacy and motor skills for children 3-6 years old. You will learn a system for selecting and analyzing storybooks that lend themselves to be actively represented through motor activities. Your presenters will describe how they work together to develop the motor activities and how they gather and construct the materials needed for each literacy-based motor activity session. Watch video, slides, and demonstrations of actual storybook-based motor activities to see how it is done. You will get an opportunity to actively engage in developing motor activities that are based on a preselected storybook.
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Presenter: Christine Reeve, PhD, BCBA-D
Structured Work Systems are amazing tools to build independence, which is so important for our students in special education. They seem easy to understand. But knowing how to set them up to be successful in your classroom isn't always so easy. In addition, there are a tons of "versions" of work systems out there, but not all of them are effective in moving students to independence.
Beginning with how independent work systems benefit the student, the family, and the classroom, this presentation will outline the elements of independent work systems. It will walk participants through making decisions for how to set them up for their individual students. Then it will focus on how to teach students to use work systems effectively, types and examples of tasks for different ages and functioning that work well with work systems, and how to take data and increase difficulty of the system as the student progresses.
Participants will learn about the possible causes of their students’ behavior. By working through competing pathways, the participants will be able to make function based behavior decisions for student intervention.
Presenter: Susan Catlett, PhD, BCBA-D
Presenter: Dr. Eric Robinson & Erin Bradley
Approximately 13% of school-age children received special education services in 2014-2015, which equates to over 6 million students in the U.S (NCES, 2017). Of these students, approximately 21% were diagnosed as having a developmental delay, ASD, or ID. As the school culture continues to support mainstreaming for children with special needs, there is an increased need to provide behavior support for regular and special education teachers. The session will provide a class-wide approach to managing student behavior and describe how this model can easily be used to consult/collaborate with peer teachers on addressing behavior issues in the classroom.
Specifically, this session will address four areas: First, a basic description and current national and state demographics of children with developmental disabilities (including DD, ID and ASD) will be provided including expectations based on developmental stages. Second, evidence on the impact of several popular classroom management strategies will be discussed. Third, a class-wide model for managing behavior for school-age children will be presented along with sample class-wide plans will be provided and discussed to allow the participants to interact with the materials. Fourth, teachers will learn how to use the class-wide model as a consultation tool with peer teachers. Since most state education agencies do not require pre-service teachers to complete a classroom management course, it often falls to teachers to learn from each other.
This session will provide teachers with a model to manage class-wide issues as well as how to assist peer teachers in creating a successful management plan.
Presenter: Patty Obrzut, OT, Asst. Director of the Penrickton Center for Blind Children
The ability to move is a prerequisite for all learning. Our perception of the world, self-concept, emotional development and self-esteem are influenced by our ability, or lack of ability, to move. This session will focus on how individuals with multiple special needs progress from reflexive and unintentional movements to intentional movements. Participants with learn to establish Active Learning environments that provide learners with opportunities to move independently, resulting in the increased skill attainment.
This session is a part of the virtual conference.
Presenter: Ken Breslow, PhD, LSSP
The practice, whether we are a parent, a counselor, a speech therapist, a school psychologist, and educational diagnostician, or other professional working with Pre-K to 12 students, is largely zeroed in on the straight-line path of assessment/identification and treatment/intervention of students with disabilities. Lost in the process is the fact that the disability “label” is one that the child carries through their rest of their lives often without the knowledge or recognition that having a disability is only a small part of one’s identity. This session proposes that rather than train on a particular skill, that we reflect on what we think about disabilities, and our respective roles in relations to students with disabilities--as parents, as evaluators, and as teachers.
Where are we coming from when we think about disabilities? Who or what do we depend on for our information? Where are our (re)sources coming from? Has it always been this way? Is it different for people of different cultures?
Where do we go from here? We will reflect on and share the different tools we each have to support children as they may their way through the K-12 experience and beyond.
Presenter: Tammy Cowen
I will explore how the use of mindfulness practices in schools can help students that have experienced trauma learn to be aware of their emotions and regulate their responses to them.
Presenters: Renee Borders & Gustavo Tostado
How often do you see a student with a disability working in the community and think to yourself - WOW that is great - he really seems to enjoy his job and also so very good at it! How often do you think what was the process behind this to help the student become employed? Supported Employment is a process....Not just getting a job. Supported Employment services enable students to gain valuable paid work experience with support while still in school. Join us on a journey of 21 years of creating and implementing a supported employment process. This student driven process will be demonstrated and include how to develop an action plan for job development that includes the student's contributions and gifts, preferences and interests, conditions needed for employment and work skills for a good job match.
There's a story there, and we would like to tell the story!
Presenter: Ali Holt
Do you have students in your classroom who you know need communication support, but you just don't know how to provide it throughout your entire day? Are your students communicating but you feel they have more to say? In this presentation you will see practical and useful ways to support and encourage spontaneous language in your students throughout the school day. We will explore different areas of the PPCD classroom and how you can support communication in each area. We will talk about what communication is and what it is not and you will walk away feeling more confident and equipped to support your student's communication needs.
Presenter: Bridgette Hallowell
Learn how to tailor vocational training to meet the transition needs of your high school or 18+ students. This training provides an overview of classroom and community vocational training including increasing positive work behaviors and tips on how to get potential employers excited about your students. We will also discuss home based business training and using fundraisers to teach vocational skills.
Presenters: Alice Keller & Erika Guerrero
The Unified Champion Schools approach incorporates Special Olympics sports, leadership and related activities that empower youth to be change agents in their communities. This is a paradigm shift from a focus on events to that of a whole school movement for inclusion.
Special education and general education students alongside educators and administrators are encouraged to collaborate to create supportive classrooms, school-wide activities and opportunities for growth and success for all.
When everyone in a school fosters a socially inclusive school climate that emphasizes acceptance, respect and human dignity for all students, schools become places where no student is isolated because of the degree or type of disability or the services required to meet his/her needs.
Presenter: Christine Reeve, PhD, BCBA-D
Supervising staff, when you aren’t their boss, and building cohesive classroom teams that work smoothly together can be a huge challenge for special educators. It is one of those things that doesn’t really get taught much in teacher preparation programs. But it is possible to build a team that works well together and accomplishes the work of the day with the students with less stress and drama. This session will focus on processes to help special educators develop teams that work well together to the needs of the students. During this session, participants will learn methods for creating a collaborative vision for the classroom, keeping the staff’s focus on the students, and developing a well-organized team that implements effective practice across the day. Strategies for training staff to implement evidence-based practices will also be discussed.
Presenter: Valerie Conner
Granger High School piloted 3 student led ARD meetings during the 2017-18 school year. This session will review the process the Granger team used to implement this process. It will also include feedback obtained from students, parents and educators about the process. A copy of the Google Slide presentation students used in their meetings will also be provided.
Presenter: Barbara Hobbs, Education Specialist, ESC Region 16
Most people would rather leave the can closed. Until they get THAT call- George has his hands down his pants in class everyday. Come and join us as we cover sexuality topics of development, knowledge and behaviors related to individuals with disabilities. Be equipped to open that can and talk with your student or child about sexuality. Evidence based strategies such as visual supports, social narratives, and positive reinforcement will be explored to encourage safe, healthy and age appropriate relationships.
This session is a part of the virtual conference.
Presenter: Cheryl Flink
This session will focus on fun and interactive ideas that PPCD and early childhood educators can use for cooking and sensory lessons to enrich a child’s love for literacy and, develop oral language skills. This session will provide ideas on how to incorporate sensory integration experiences for students who are resistant eaters. The presenter will review examples of how a PPCD and General Education 3 year old classroom regularly integrate cooking and sensory exploration during inclusion time. The presenter will provide examples of how to differentiate the lesson for all types of learners. The presenter will show how to incorporate the different domains of the Pre-Kindergarten guidelines in each lesson. The audience will have the opportunity to participate in a live literacy and cooking demonstration!
Presenter: Darcy Schiller, Education Specialist, ESC Region 13
Special Education teachers experience burnout at higher rates than other professions. There is no denying that we have jobs with high demands that could cause high stress that could lead to burnout. In this interactive session, participants will hear the research behind burnout and self-care, discuss signs and symptoms of burnout, participate in self-care activities, and leave with their individualized burnout prevention, or self-care, plan. Remember, you cannot serve from an empty bowl.
Presenter: Monica Kurtz, Education Specialist, ESC Region 13
This session will focus on using visual strategies to facilitate communication both at home and at school. We will discuss several visual tools that are practical, easy-to-use, and easy-to-make at home or in the classroom.
Presenters: Courtney Forman & Chelsea Barrera
Fundamental information and strategies on incorporating CVI needs/strategies into the writing of the IEP and implementing CVI strategies in the various ranges of special education self-contained classrooms.