Workshops Reflection Education Critical Thinking Example

Those students have a problem with both conceptual and abstract thinking. This workshop is, therefore, very important since it helps the students acquire budgeting skills. Teaching these skills in form of the game makes it not only interesting but also helps in retention rate of the skills learnt by the learners. The use of the visual cues made teaching easier especially for the low functioning skills. Allowing the low functioning students choose weekly goals by themselves from the given choices makes them comfortable since they choose the goals that best suits them and ones which are easy to achieve.
After graduation from school they would use the budgetary skills they acquired where needed so that they would not just make decisions without making any considerations. The only important improvement would be to take time to teach these skills and do some assessment to determine whether the students have acquired these skills on not and take the necessary action. Other teaching methods can also be applied e.g. using an approach which would also be important to cater for the sensory and communication needs of all the students. The teacher should have in mind that he/she has both low functioning students and high functioning students.
The next workshop would help learners learn how they can ask for accommodation in various places like the workplace. This workshop was very effective for both high functioning and low functioning students. The ice braking event was very effective since it aroused the interest of the students which helped them take part in the class. This was important because the lesson required full participation by all the learners in the roles they had to play in the lesson. If the ice breaking activity was not there, the students might have remained tensed and fail to participate in the lesson unlike with this activity where the students did not even know that the lesson had already started.
Asking and answering questions in the lesson helped the students understand the scenarios they had demonstrated. Apart from the questions in the lesson the teacher could have used other methods like group discussions to help the student understand the content. The low function learners appeared to perform better only for a short time and so the roles they played should only take a short time so that they would not encounter difficulties. The students should be given both difficult and easy tasks during the lessons so that they will undergo some challenge before being successful.
Teaching the issue of accommodation independently was very effective especially for the low functioning learners who take a lot of time to learn new concepts and skills. The teacher also needed to give the students information regarding the start and end of all activities as well as the expectations for every job. The approach used in teaching this skill was found effective since the objectives were met.
The next Lesson was the Easter Bird Nest Recipe. The introduction bit for this lesson was better than the others since the learners knew their job and expectations for the lesson. The teaching aids specifically the photos of ingredients during the various steps in the preparation process made the lesson both clear and interesting. They also helped the learners remember the content they learnt for long since they could answer questions on what they did in every step and what they learnt. The title for the food they were preparing was also carefully selected ‘bird nest’ which aroused interest in the learner since they wanted to know why the food was being referred to as bird’s nest and how it’s preparation.
The learners were allowed to participate fully during the lesson by being told to read the ingredients loudly and having them mix the pretzels and making the bird nest. Involving the students during the lesson also made it interesting and it also helped them enjoy the lesson since they could participate in the lesson.
More pictures and demonstrations should have been useful in the lesson especially because of the low functioning students since it’s important to create a good mental picture of what the teacher is talking about.
This lesson will be very helpful to the learners when they graduate from high school since food preparation is an important daily activity since every person needs to eat good food. They, therefore, need to have such skills so that they can prepare their own meals without relying on anybody to do that for them.
The next lesson was watching the movie Finding Nemo then relate it to disability. One of the challenges with the movie is that it led to verbal overload because most of the sentences were long and unclear hence difficulties in understanding the main point. The lesson was, therefore, a very difficult one since the students with autism have problems in speech interpretation. They, therefore, could not understand very many things from the movie by just watching it. The students could also not interpret facial expressions since the students could not read the facial expressions of the characters in the movie as well as interpreting body language.
However high functioning students were in a better place compared to low functioning students who understood very little from the movie and had a lot of difficulties following up all the events in the movie.
The students required better preparation for this lesson by stating the lesson objectives and expectations clearly. A good explanation about the movie would also be necessary so that the learners know what to pay attention to in the movie and also to make them in a position to understand all the events in the movie. The learners would then engage in a discussion so as to relate the movie with disability.
The discussion after the lesson, however, helped the learners understand the movie after discussing its events. The movie was also useful in helping the learners get other skills like improving their concentration and interpretation skills. After high school graduation they can apply the same skills to understand the movie and any other activities that unfold daily. They can do this through discussing what they saw with other people or even trying to understand it by themselves.
The learners started by filling the social surveys and playing cards in the lesson that followed. The card game was important because the learners did not even know when the lesson started since it was interesting. The objectives for this workshop were not provided hence the learner could not find out whether they were achieved or not. The skills acquired in this lesson will be very useful in real life to identify careers and relate tools of work to different careers. The rewards were important in motivating the students to keep answering questions in class. The students are also able to discriminate between different jobs in real life.
For the low functioning learners this lesson was a bit difficult but with time they could also differentiate the various jobs and identify the job when given the tools used by the profession in that field e.g. the mechanics. Asking and answering questions was important because it helped the learners contemplate about the most important points. The lesson objectives need to be given in such lessons in the future since the objectives help the learner be aware of what they should achieve during the lesson. The students should have been given a notice of the beginning and end of each lesson which was not done in this case.
Some students acquired the abstract skills while others did not. This could be because people with autism have a problem with both abstract and conceptual thinking. Visual cues could have been used to help students get the abstract skills with ease. Majority of the students who did not acquire these skills were the low functioning students
The next lesson had an aim of helping the students understand how to act in an interview. It started off very well by asking and answering questions so that they could start thinking about the topic. Other activities could be used to cater for low functioning students since they would encounter difficulties when handled in the same way with the high functioning students during this workshop. Demonstrations by mentors were part of the lesson and they gave the students a good mental image of what to do in a job interview.
The use of pictures at the end of the lesson gave a chance to the students who might not have understood clearly how they should look especially the low functioning students. The students were able to understand of what to talk about themselves and how to impress the employer during the interview so that they could get employed. Some of the low functioning students had a problem understanding the concepts in this lesson but after the activity at the end of the lesson, they all understood clearly.
The lesson was very important to the learners because, at one point, in life they will appear in an interview when they will be seeking for employment. The skills learnt in the lesson would, therefore, help them understand how they would carry themselves during the lesson so that they would compete favorably with others in an interview.
More activities are necessary in this lesson so that the learners would have a clear mental image and understand without struggling. They could also be allowed to play some roles during the lesson like appearing for a mock interview, which would also make the lesson enjoyable.
This lesson on Black History Month best suited the high functioning students who could took part in the discussion and understood the concrete skills in the lesson. Low functioning students encountered difficulties. Other activities would have been useful in the lesson to make it easier for the low functioning students to understand the skills that were being taught.
Some students could not understand the speech because it was long and led to verbal overload. A brief explanation after the speech or discussion would have been helpful so that the students could understand the speech. Most of the students understood the meaning of a dream and were able to come up with a dream which they would make a reality later.
The teaching activities for this lesson were abstract making the lesson boring and some students could not concentrate fully. Activities that could make the lesson interesting needed to be used in the lesson. Activities that would help them participate in the lesson also needed to be included in the lesson so that the lesson does not become boring. The teacher also needs to inform the students clearly about the beginning and end of activities during the lesson as well as expectations of the tasks during the lesson.
The students are in a better position to relate with people of all races since they understood that people are the same and have equal rights and privileges. By writing down their future dreams, the students became focused since they got future goals.
The purpose of the lesson for this day was to teach the students how to prepare snacks by themselves. The students understood their task during this lesson. The demonstrations during the lesson were very helpful because the students prepared the snacks by themselves when given a chance during the lesson.
The photos used during the lesson made the lesson interesting and gave the students a clear mental image of what was expected of them. More photos can be used during the lesson to make understanding easy. The steps could be divided into simple steps easier to understand. It would be easier if the students were taught each step independently and sometimes repeat for the purpose of practicing.
The students were allowed to eat the snacks prepared during the lesson. This was made them enjoy both the lesson and the snacks they had prepared and hence like the lessons more. The students could also be allowed to prepare the snacks or even take part in the preparation so that at least they could enjoy the lesson. Students can also be taught preparation of other snacks so that they would have a wide variety to choose from.
The skills they acquired during this lesson will be very useful in future because the students will use them to prepare snacks by themselves and save some money which they could use to buy other things. They can even prepare them and sell them to generate some income. The students also need to practice a skill severally even after they have mastered it.