Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury
It is November, which means I am thinking about what I am grateful for. This fall I realize that one of my greatest areas of thankfulness is that my own children have been included in the Augmentative Learning Program Study (ALPS) Inclusive Pod hosted by Joey’s Foundation. While I have always been pleased when my children were placed in inclusion classrooms in their elementary school, this feels like a completely different opportunity.
So what is the benefit from this inclusive experience?
One aspect of our Augmented Learning Study Program is providing small group academic instruction that would be seen in schools. In this time of virtual learning, we want our learners to have an opportunity to learn in groups from each other – as COVID safely as they can.
One challenge we have worked on is making an inclusive guided reading experience for our first graders who use and do not use devices. As I’ve written about before in teaching Joey to read – it can be extremely tiring for him to read the words on the page and then find them on his device. If we measured his ability to read and comprehend through his output on his device we would continue to see him reading at a beginning kindergarten level. And yet, Joey consistently recognizes many of the words from the dulce list through first grade. He is also able to match sentences from a guided reading text to their picture – demonstrating reading comprehension.
So how do we make that a group activity?
O
nce our first Reader’s Theater play was complete it was time to move on and tackle our next challenge – how to make trick or treating happen in accordance with the CDC’s social distancing recommendations. This felt like the perfect real-world application to problem solving.
Our Augmentative Learning Program Study (ALPS) performed their first Readers’ Theater!
This was certainly a labor of love for our group, as the students were required to produce every part of this performance – from writing the script to making the costumes.
One aspect we needed to solve early on in our ALPS adventure was the physical setup.
In transitioning from working one on one to working in a group with Joey, I was surprised at how Joey’s physical device itself interfered with connecting him with the whole group lessons.
