Tuesday, November 19, 2013

7A- Christina Neeley- In Response to Courtney Cruz


Courtney,

     Your topic was interesting and engaging.  I never really knew what the term SCLC, I now know that it stands for Social Communication Learning Challenges.  After reading further I came to realize that I have many kids in my classroom that suffers with social communication.  Some of the challenges that these students face are:
-Adapting in a social situation by struggling with the thoughts, emotions, and needs of those with whom they interact.
-Conative skills will be the skills students with SCLC will struggle with the most.
     Your paper was well written and very informative.  It was organized so that I was able to easily navigate to explore answers for the questions that I had in addition to the discussion questions.  The headings throughout your paper were helpful and broke the information up so that it was easy to read.
     The connection to Social Thinking was key in stating that in simple terms it is teaching the thinking behind the social skill.  Social thinking should be taught to kids with social learning challenges not as an additional school subject, but as a core instructional element that impacts each moment of the school day.
I learned that there are benefits and challenges to implementing this, they are as follows:
-Benefits: It is essential that we understand the perspective of other’s around us.  This also means that we need to take into consideration that perspective and be able to adapt our response accordingly
-Challenges: Time, it’s not a quick fix, vocabulary, embedding terminology throughout the school day, and the lack of social skills will negatively every relationship that they try to have.
     The Power-point flowed nicely with your paper and honed in on the key points.  I especially liked the ILAUGH framework in teaching problem solving as well as effective communication. 
                        I= Initiating novel activities
                        L= Listening actively
                        A= Abstracting and inferencing
                        U= Understanding perspective
                        G= Gestalt: the big picture
                        H= Humor and human relatedness (Winner, 2000, p.14)
Much like other Positive Behavior Supports, a lot of time is required to put this support in place.  A few years ago I taught in a Public Charter school on the East side of Youngstown.  We used the acronym ARMOR, this was recognized school-wide as a behavioral system throughout the school in all levels.
                        A= Always listening actively
                        R= Respectful at all times
                        M= My body belongs to me
                        O= Our community is organized and clean
                        R= Ready to learn
     I found it beneficial to work in a place where all of the staff used the same language.  I do believe that it somewhat reduced the negative behavior when teachers were consistent about implementing this plan. 
     In my classroom now we use behavior charts to monitor progress as well as the “Give Me Five” rules.  We only have five simple classroom rules: Eyes watching, ears listening, head thinking, hands still, mouth quiet.  Students will move up or down the chart based on their behavior and if they are following the rules.  Often times we have to deal with our socially backwards students that feel that they’ve done nothing wrong to deserve punishment.  We handle them with kid gloves to de-escalate the child and make them understand what they’ve done wrong through a brief mediation.
     You have a variety of helpful resources to gain more information on this topic.  Thank you for bringing SCLC to life through your paper and PowerPoint.  I feel that I have a better understanding for what these kids are going through and how important it is not to leave this children behind.  It is very important to tackle their social issues with research based evidence in order for them to be able to function within society.  It is partially up to the teachers to make this social connection happen for the sake of the child’s present and future relationships.

 

 

 

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