Happenings at Our Schools

One of the most important skills our children can learn that will serve them as they become adults is self-advocacy. At the youngest ages, this involves teaching them to ask for help when they need it. All children are reluctant to ask for help when other children might notice and react by laughing or commenting. Special education students are particularly reluctant to ask for help as there are already many activities, such as having an aide or being pulled out for special classes, that mark them as different, and they don't want to draw further attention to themselves. To help build self advocacy skills, they need to practice asking in a safe environment. In our school, one teacher is addressing this in her 4th-grade classroom with a great idea. She has a check-in board with several categories ranging from "I'm doing great! to "We need to talk!" Each child has a marker on the board that they can move around to the different categories. This helps the children ask for help when they need it and helps them to come to realize over time that we all need a little help sometimes. This especially helps the mainstreamed and included special education students to build those critical skills in a safe environment without feeling singled out because everybody uses them. The board is kept in a semi-private area to discourage students from over-analyzing it. Kudos to Mrs. Affortunatto for implementing this in her classroom at McKenzie for all of the students. We appreciate her efforts to go the extra mile to help the students be comfortable asking for help!

Pictured here is Mr. Rizi, one of the resource teachers at McKenzie showing us one way to approach multi-sensory learning. Everyone learns a little differently, and to reach all children, it's important to use a variety of methods to teach the same topics. An example of this is that some people learn better when they are moving around and doing things. Doing phonics on the playground with chalk takes a step away from ordinary pencils and paper at a desk and helps reinforce the lessons for those types of learners. On another day, he might teach the same topic using an auditory-based game to reach children who learn best by hearing. Thanks go out to Mr. Rizi for his creativity in keeping our students engaged!