The reflection questions from this week include: Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing often have difficulty socializing and making friends with their peers. How can you address this within your classroom? Communicating with parents is very important. What are some ways you can communicate with parents and is there a better way than another?
Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing can have some difficulty in socializing and making friends, which is greatly impacted by communication. Especially at a young age, kids don't have the understanding or the patience to realize the efforts in communication and how to even facilitate the communication. During lessons, I would try to do some role-playing or maybe even highlight positive social behaviors such as if a student were to help another student or attempt in communicating in a different modality. Those behaviors I would praise and highlight to other students to model great examples of social behavior in and outside of the classroom. Another way would be to have a honest discussion about certain social behaviors such as how to get someones attention, if someone uses sign how do you approach them, etc. In regards to making friends, I would try to facilitate that in free play or snack time if I had younger kiddos but with the older kiddos I would use group projects or activities to help with getting our students who are D/HH out of their shell.
In communicating with parents, I agree that it is very important to have a good relationship with the parents. A relationship that is open and trusting is very important as well. Email and phone/text seems to be the most popular way to communicate. And as of right now, I would definitely use both when communicating with my parents. In regards to phone/text, I would express to the parents that they are welcome to text me with any emergencies or questions, but if it is not an emergency they may get a response the next day.
I really like your idea of role playing and highlighting those positive behaviors. We know that children (hearing or D/HH) learn a lot incidentally, and since our D/HH students generally do not "over-hear" positive behaviors, etc. it is important the we make a point to highlight what behaviors are acceptable and are not during incidences.
ReplyDeleteI would not give my parents my personal number because I would want to keep my personal life separate from my professional life. They could leave messages on my school phone/email if they need to get ahold of me. I would emphasize "Please allow up to 24 hours for response." at the beginning of each semester/year.
ReplyDeleteYou have some good ideas on how to incorporate and teach some social skills. I liked your ideas on pointing out the positive behaviors and emphasizing the appropriateness. As for communication, I agree with Craig. I've had the situation where a parent texted me all the time almost to the extreme. Because of this, I was not sure how to approach this parent to discuss communication and ask her to only text me when emergency. Thankfully, she got an email address this school year and this is how we communicate. You want to be available for parents but you do not want them to feel they can communicate anytime they want and you will respond.
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