Fun facts: I love Star Wars, music and reading. Current favorites: Pearl Jam Dark Matter and The Demon of Unrest by Eric Larson

AT in my house - Lever door handles

Professional resource (totally self serving!) - My book Inclusive Learning 365: Edtech Strategies for Every Day of the Year - inclusive365.com

Fun fact: I love staying active! I enjoy long runs, going to the gym, and playing sports. I am also a sucker for ice cream. Life’s all about balance… right?

AT in my house: Closed captioning on the TV

Professional resource: https://www.savvas.com/

Savvas has been a huge help for me in creating lesson plans for the fall. Your school does need to have a subscription but if they do their online teacher resources are amazing! They give teaching tips, practice worksheets, sample assessments, and more to go with every learning standard. I like to use this as a guide while creating my lessons and personalize it to my teaching style. 

Fun Fact: I was a cheerleader through college.

At device from my house: handrails for the stairs

Professional resource: Jennifer Serravallo Book- Gives tips and tricks to teach reading in any grade level for elementary school teachers

Fun fact: I have an identical twin sister!

At device at my house: my twin sister has a hearing aid!

Professional resource: Super Teacher Worksheets. This has been a huge help in providing me with resources that are by and approved by other teachers.

Fun Fact: My dog is my best friend. She is a German shepherd husky mix and I rescued her from Kuwait.

AT at home: Remote controllers (I can turn on my TV from my couch LOL no movement involved).

Professional Resource: Grammarly. It helps me so much to make sure I am grammatically correct and choosing the best words/phrases.

Fun fact: My happy place is the beach!

AT device in my house: My step stool so I can reach the higher cabinets.

Professional resource: Jennifer Serravallo - she provides phenomenal resources for teaching reading. I also love my Pinterest teaching boards!

FunFact:

I played soccer through high school and college and also plan to coach.

AT in my house: The ALEXA

Professional Resource:

Grammarly, it helps correct grammer mistakes or typos as I am writing which is very helpful when I am rushing!

Fun Facts: I love going to concerts, I am going to Good Morning America this Friday for the Concert Series to see Kane Brown perform! I also enjoy going to hockey games. I like the Pittsburgh Penguins.

AT at home: voice typing on my phone or laptop

Professional Resource: 

I often come across a lot of great teaching accounts on both Instagram and Tic Tok. The account that I have found on Instagram recently which is a great account to follow is learningattheprimarypond. She is a K-5 literacy specialist and she holds free webinars to help teachers learn more about different literacy teaching strategies you can use in your classroom. What I like most about her webinars is that she also provides free resources based on the webinar topics. I definitely recommend checking out her account and trying out one of her webinars!

Fun Fact: I love visiting the Jersey Shore in the summer and enjoy kayaking and hiking. I also love country music and will be seeing Luke Combs this weekend!

AT in my house: My pool robot (eliminates hours of brushing the pool)

Professional Resource: Teachers Pay Teachers- this website offers great ideas across the grade levels. I use it as a resource if I need ideas on lesson planning.

*pictured is my niece who recently turned 4

Resource: Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins has been one of my favorite books to read and reference. This book was a requirement for one of my classes and had to buy a copy for myself.

AT device from my home, my iPad that I use for literally everything, such as homework, classwork, now even serves my journal, assignments and even organizing my life.

Fun Fact: I was an amateur fighter at one point and have fought 10 times.

Fun Fact: I have a dog named Zeus and he is two years old. I enjoy working out, thrifting, playing piano, spending time with family and friends, trying new things, and watching sports! Some of my sports teams are the New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Steelers, and New York Yankees! 

At Home: Remote Controller to turn on the TV and LED lights where I can make my room more colorful and creative as possible. 

Professional Resource: 

Teachers Pay Teachers- As education specialists, we could assist teachers in finding some fun ideas or lessons students could do throughout the school year that will create meaningful learning. This resource is an online tool that would help me teach at my best by thinking that the best place to get ideas for teaching and learning is in the classroom. 

This framework helps with data collection by identifying students strengths, weaknesses, and what is lacking or can be built upon for them to become actively involved in the learning. After considering this data using the SETT Framework, AT can be implemented to help the student become actively engaged. The AT can be as low/ no tech to as high tech as needed as determined after consideration from the IEP team.

The SETT Framework assists with the development and implementation of data collection in multiple ways. It can gather data regarding the surroundings of a student and the assignments they must finish in order to be an engaged learner. It involves choosing and incorporating the right resources into educational programs to encourage student participation and achievement. For instance, with online grading systems, in order for educators, administrators, parents, and students to identify a student's areas of strength and growth, communication is a critical component of education. Another example is that with classroom tablets, it could allow teachers to use differentiation in all aspects of the classroom. In this case, during assignments, students can work at their own pace, and instructors can provide one-on-one guidance.

A fun fact about me is I am a vegetarian, I have been one for about 10 years.

An example of AT in my house is a ring camera at my front door.

Professional resources I use is Khan academy. This is a great free resource that I use in my classroom. This resources has content about all areas of social studies (and many other content areas) through articles and videos.

We need to get away from the one-size-fits-all model and allow students to achieve goals in whatever way best fits them. They also discussed a lot about “eliminating the barriers,” which is something that I was unfamiliar with beforehand. What would make achieving this goal hard for my students? How can I guide them around the barriers or how can we overcome them together? At the end of the podcast, they talked a lot about being open with your students. Sometimes reaching out and having an honest conversation with them will lead to the best outcome for all. 

Fun fact: I recently got in engaged to a fellow Ramapo teacher ed. graduate but we were never actually at Ramapo at the same time.

AT: In 2021, I temporarily became a quadriplegic so I have many assistive devices in my home such as canes, braces, shower chairs, and more.

Resource: I like using social media as a guide to find new methods, practices, technology, and more into my classroom.

These three categories are part of collecting data for the student. This can identify strengths and weaknesses the student might have, what environment suits them best, which tasks should be expected from them, and what their goals should be.

As the pandemic got situated and issues started to resolve, medicine came out things slowly went back to normal, but the effects are still lasting. Some of these effects have been positive, when a student is absent they have experience with technology and so do the teachers to keep them up to date, parent meetings are optionally virtual now which makes them much more accessible. Some grade levels are, unfortunately, still playing catch up and trying to make up for the learning that was lost. This has made grade levels behind where they usually are, which is difficult for teachers because they have had to adjust to teaching what is needed at that moment.

These strategies are put in place by the members of the IEP team to determine what can help the student. Taking the steps to consider the student, the environment, and the task would greatly help in deciding which low-tech tools could be useful.

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Fun fact: I love ice cream and have always wanted to own my own ice cream shop

AT: I have a big family that is always so loud so I always have to use subtitles when watching a show in my house

Resource: I always use Grammarly when writing anything, I think it's so helpful!

Fun Fact: Some fun facts about me are that I have a dog named Peaches and I enjoy running.

AT: Large print books

Professional Resource: One great resource is We Are Teachers. It has so many articles, worksheets, and ideas to help in any classroom.

I tried to also explore it on my Lenovo Thinkpad. This was a little more difficult because I am not the best at navigating this computer and it is also quite old so it moves slow. One thing I found is that you can turn on a narrator that will read out what is going on on the screen. There are more zoom tools than I have imagined. I always thought it would just be the pinch zoom, but there are all different levels and types of way to zoom which I found interesting.

• Promote imaginative thinking. Students can build early literacy and speech skills simply by telling stories and tales (and lies LOL). 

• Make students realize they have a voice. Letting students build fantasies, dreams, and just being creative can get them moving in the right direction.

• There are so many great online resources (Lesson Pix was really cool). 

The SETT Framework also emphasizes the importance of data collection. By gathering baseline data and conducting regular assessments, educators can monitor the student's progress and make necessary adjustments to the AT plan. This continuous feedback loop ensures that the AT tools and strategies remain effective and responsive to the student's evolving needs.

Firstly, it empowers students by helping them recognize their own voice and creativity, encouraging them to explore their ideas and dreams. Secondly, storytelling fosters imaginative thinking, which supports the development of early literacy and speech skills, even when students are creating imaginative or playful tales. Lastly, there are valuable online resources available, I have used resources like epic for online storytelling.

• Always have personalized content. Make students feel important and engaged by implementing things each student likes.

• Interactive learning is very valuable as well. Incorporate images, sounds, and clickable features to make the learning more engaging.

• Langage practice is also important. Using storytelling to help AAC users practice vocabulary and sentence structure. Storytelling also gives students a chance to see their imagination and let their minds roam this will build the child self-esteem levels as well.

1) With the development of narratives and storytelling, telling narratives helps develop communication competence. This could help others build connections that enthrall their own audience and make an impression that sticks for the long term. It could also allow the audience to connect with the information on a personal level and gain a deeper understanding of the message's intent and significance. 

2) Using narratives and storytelling as an intervention helps support children with language disorders. With narrative intervention, it helps educators teach story grammar, sophisticated vocabulary, social pragmatics, inference, and language. As a component of an interactive intervention, storytelling encourages the understanding and use of complicated language.

3) Using verbal modeling and aided language input models as the learner progresses. This, to me, is the method of learning by imitating the actions of others. This made me think of the process of observational learning. For instance, children learn how to tie their shoes and use tableware by modeling. Teachers utilize modeling as an educational approach to enhance their teaching abilities and reduce their teaching efforts. An educator is modeling every time they walk a student through an explanation of a subject.

My seconds takeaway is that there can be challenges to narrative telling for AAC users. They can have limited opportunities for story telling, their closed question options limits authentic conversations. It is hard for them to lead a conversation with limited vocabulary and utterance length.

My last takeaway is that AAC users can still use narratives. This can be done by collaborating with families and staff to find content that is interesting and meaningful to the child. Developing these narratives can be collaborative by asking many questions, giving binary choices, using scaffolding/ prompting, and by using visual cues. 

This is no small task, it a process that must be done properly and not just be thrown together. This is a collaborative effort. Proper documentation is also of great importance to track success. 

• The speaker mentioned "Don't create, curate." She emphasized finding resources already out there and tweaking them to fit your own strategies and ideas. Some of the resources mentioned to help "curate" were Seesaw, Google Classroom, Google Site, and Wakelet. Seesaw allows you to make a blog where you can publish resources. The link to the blog can be easily shared with other educators. Wakelet is similar to a Pinterest board where you can insert videos, drop links, and organize them. Wakelet also allows for easy sharing.

• Screencastify can be used to make videos that can easily be sent out to parents for them to view with their child. With videos on screencastify, students can see their teachers face as they talk through the video which is helpful during online learning.

• Direct therapy is working face to face with a student or client. Direct therapy can be in person or digital but it is synchronous. An example of this type of therapy would be in person or a live online session. Indirect therapy is working with others to offer better support for the student or client. This form of therapy can be offered in person or digitally with asynchronous or synchronous options. An example of this therapy would be providing classroom training for Aided Language Input. For example, a video for parents related to modeling during mealtime.

Using narratives/story telling as an intervention:

1. Supports children with language disorders

2. Supports the development of literacy

   • How sentences develop

3. Supports students with learning disabilities

1. Storytelling and narratives help to develop communication competence. Children develop the ability to tell narratives and stories through participation in conversations. By the age of 6, children can relay stories about events that happen in their lives.

2. Narratives and storytelling are used as an intervention with those diagnosed with language disorders and learning disabilities. Narratives/storytelling help with summarizing and support the development of literacy.

3. Storytelling/narratives are challenging for users of AAC. Many conversations become partner dominated and AAC users have a difficult time introducing new information. Oftentimes, AAC users have poor story organization. By using Narratives with AAC users, it can help them develop narratives using scaffolding, sentence prompts, visual aids, cues, as well as modeling, which is very important. There are many online apps that can assist with storytelling such as Make Belief Comix, Lesson Pix, and low tech tools such as visual strips to assist emerging and developing readers.

Core learning areas can benefit from the use of no tech supports. My certification is in math, so I was focused on applying these practices within a mathematics classroom setting. I frequently use whiteboards and plastic sleeves for practice opposed to just pencil and paper. It allows for repetition of practice while keeping students engaged. Although word walls are typically used for sight words in elementary classrooms, in math, vocabulary walls or anchor charts serve a similar purpose. By constantly exposing students to important terms in their surrounding environment forces them to interact with them daily. There are many multi-sensory approaches to teach and reinforce math foundational skills that help reach learners they may not understand these concepts through a lesson. In math practice is key to being successful but many students don’t gain anything from a worksheet with practice problems. It is very easy to take a basic worksheet and turn it into a engaging, interactive experience. For example, the video mentioned find and match for primary students but this concept can be elevated for upper-level students. The find and match can be elevated to an around the room scavenger hunt activity! No/ low tech supports can benefit every student not just those with exceptionalities in math classrooms. 

• personalization is important and very possible with online storytelling. Each student may have different interests and these interests can be incorporated into their learning that will make them more engaged. This also can help them build their imaginations and go further in their thinking. Putting the students in control makes them feel important.

• other tools are helpful for engagement. Being able to be able to include things like sounds, images, gifs makes the learning more engaging.

• lastly, this is a really fun and interactive way for students to develop sentence structure, and literacy.

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1. My biggest takeaway is that indirect support is super valuable for a student and should not be underestimated. Typically, people probably assume that working directly with a student is most helpful, but educating the people close to the student can really strengthen the toolbox and knowledge of that student's circle which can have big effects.

2. Another takeaway is the convenience of sending materials to people that can be worked on asynchronously. As the speaker said, this helps families and educators to "work smarter not harder" because it eliminates scheduling issues and makes the most out of time. This helps AAC resources to be more accessible.

3. My third takeaway is about the value in modeling language using daily routines. The speaker talked about how suggesting involved activities for families to engage in with their child can actually be more of a burden. But the idea of working in AAC during everyday routines that families are already engaging in takes some stress away.

1) Allowing the student to use their imagination builds up their engagement by creating their own story rather than feeling like they are being forced to do a writing assignment they may not care for. This can be seen as a gateway to building skills for students without them even realizing they are building on said skills.

2) Using narrative storytelling as a way to build up language skills for students who have language disorders, and also students who have learning disabilities. There are many times it is extremely difficult to develop students' skills in writing when they might have a language disorder or a learning disability, but by framing it as an imaginative exercise it is easier to sneak in ways for them to develop their grammar and other skills. Making things fun for the students always makes it easier for them students to learn the topics at hand, and narrative writing is another great way to do that.

3) Through this technique there is a lot of room for positive reinforcement that the teacher can capitalize on to help the students grow.

• It allows students to understand that they have a voice of their own and it matters. They can use their imagination and creativity for whatever they want. It is empowering.

• There are many different resources for storytelling available for students of all ages.

• Personalized content is important. This adheres to all students with different personalities and interests, rather than one for all.

There are many instances where we do not need to use technology, but it is indeed a growing resource. Encouraging students to not rely of technology is important for their learning and their growth. Students can read physical books and physically write stuff down that they can keep forever. Students can help themselves when learning how to read and learning how to write as well. The tools can be as simple as a paper and pen, but it is still as important.

There are core learning areas that can benefit from the lack of tech support. Some of the core learning areas that can benefit from the use of no tech support are: from the video, the author brought about removing barriers before students can think about participating in their own learning. This can indicate, for instance, that teachers could provide and model opportunities. To foster curiosity in students and assist them in overcoming obstacles to learning, educators must embrace lifelong learning. Instructors ought to be kind and forgiving, allowing students further opportunities to succeed. They must be understanding of personal difficulties and offer further assistance beyond class. Assignments such as make-up examinations or exams missed might assist students in overcoming obstacles to their learning. Teachers may assist students in overcoming obstacles to learning and developing abilities for lifetime learning by doing this, especially when it comes to in-class discussions or group projects, for example. Another core learning area that can benefit from the use of no tech support that’s brought up in the video is the idea of keeping visual schedules going. If students are using schedules in class, they should be using them in the environment where they are learning. If students aren’t using visuals, they would have to use them in class. According to the author, there’s nothing fancy about technology, especially with post-it notes, scrap paper, a whiteboard, or notebook paper to develop these materials for students.