My Day at the IDEAS Autism Centre

"You have got to keep autistic children engaged with the world. You cannot let them tune out"

By Temple Grandin 

On Thursday (13 November 2014), we had the opportunity to visit the IDEAS Autism Centre in Rawang . Although it took us 2 hours drive away, it was really a worthwhile experience that I've encountered throughout my life. This centre is a bungalow, located in the housing area. 

When we arrived at the centre, some of the children were having a circle time, where they were singing ABCs songs. Then, they went to their classrooms based on their respective levels. There were at least 2 teachers for each class to facilitate students learning. While the bigger classes has three teachers. 

The principal of the school named Pn.Sharifah led us to her office where she talks and gives us more information on this centre. First, she stated that the aim of this centre was to provide a holistic early intervention; care, therapy and education to children with autism from low-income households so that children will be able to attend mainstream government schools by age seven to nine. The principal added that it is to expose children with autism to public by bring them outside and provide instructions of ways they could express themselves. It is called the Early Intervention Centre, where students are ranged from about ages 3-8. Moreover, this centre provides type of therapy such as speech, pet, play, occupational and music therapy. In Occupational therapy class, it has a colourful mat, trampoline, which stimulates children to play and group sessions, which encourages symbolic play and turn taking and this helps to prepare them for daily life.  

The enrollment of the child in the centre is strict, where only selected students chosen based on their parents income. This centre is cater for parents from low socio-economic backgrounds. The  principal and teachers conduct a pre-assessment test to see the ability of child, where skills such as fine motor, gross motor, imitation, self help skills, school readiness, oral, social and development skills. If the child  have successfully passed the pre-assessment, they will have to go through a full assessment for a period of one week. With this, all of their skills will be further assessed. An Individual Educational Plan (IEP) is prepared for each child to cater their needs and plan their progress within six months period. With the help of lessons and activities will help  these children to strengthen their skills areas. 

On the very same day, some students were away for horse riding(twice a week), which is a method of pet therapy. The centre do have other activities such as

•      Swimming classes
•      Handicraft
•      Sensory Integration 
•      Domestic activities (fold clothes, watery, and gardening)
•      Social Skills
•       Behaviour Modification
•      Science 
•      Arts and Crafts (Bracelet and Bangles)
•      Music 
•      Therapy Education and Care 
•      Bakery 
•      Imitation skills
•      Fine motor skills
•      Gross motor skills
•      Oral motor skills 

Eventhough it is a small centre, it has many facilities provided for students. First, was the beautifully, and  colourful classrooms which make learning more attractive for students. There are Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced classes. The materials within these classrooms were new, lots of visual materials for students and the principal told us that most of the teaching materials used were adapted from the ABA Syllabus or created specifically for the needs of the children. For example, during the book activity,  teachers use books  to develop students’ fine motor skills and teach small groups of students. Teachers will also create pre-made books, by referring to the Applied Behaviour Analysis Program (National Curriculum). and also copy some information from the original book. In addition, there were also hands on materials to gauge students multi-sensory learning, such as students have a play gym for them to work on their motor skills. During Pet therapy classes, students will learn to take care of fishes in the aquarium and three cats in the centre. 

  In the Beginner class, materials such as ball, mat is used for play therapy. Teachers also teach music therapy by using the percussion instrument. Teachers use the percussions to teach students by listening and playing to the rhythmic music and children with autism use music to increase their social interaction and improve social skills. Children use their own creativity in creating toys and interacting with toys during the toy therapy lesson.

Next, I went to the Intermediate class that fits more than 10 students . I observed that students were seated very closely with each other and they were organised to seat in that way to prevent them from running around the classroom. Although this may prevent them from running, but children with autism tend to feel tight and uncomfortable with others. This may lead them to have anxiety. According to the principal, the teachers would not keep them seated in that way, and then to lead them out. These students were given a 10 minute wait time. Besides, I also looked into students responses where they have poor organizational skills, avoid eye contact, and do not feel rewarded by social interaction. 

There were 9 staff altogether, 4 volunteers for each activity in the classroom. According to the principal, the teachers have to be consistent. teachers have t constantly provide instructions to the students by making simple, concrete, and clear, and also teach social rules or skills, such as turn taking and social distance. To check students understanding, teachers will repeat instructions. Using short sentences to ensure clarity in instructions. They even organise meetings between parents, teachers, and therapists to ensure that their child will practice their skills in and out of the classroom. This provides a routine for them to follow, which leads them to a sense of security. 

Teachers should establish appropriate expectations for growth and competence. First, teacher should support the children with autism learning and help him build skills and independence. It is often the well-meaning tendency for teachers to carry out everyday tasks for a student with autism to speak about the student, tie his shoes, and walk him to class. In order for the teacher to build competence in children with autism, it needs patience, prioritizing and establishing small goals to reach the desired outcome. Based on my observations, during the self help skills lessons, the teachers taught students to be independent such as learning to dress well, choose their own set of clothing.  The principal said that some students would not prefer to wear certain type of clothing. While in Pet Therapy class, teachers monitors and show students how to care for animals such as fishes and cats.

Overall, this visit has been an  eye opening experience for me by seeing the different ways of SEN centres operates. It was my first time visiting an autism centre and seeing how children with autism learn basic facts and skills. The facilities, activities, and materials provided by the school were attractive, and boost students’ motivation to learn. I have learnt a lot from this trip such as it is nice to have centres that provides a place for these students to develop their potentials to the fullest. I believed that having proper guidance and treatments will  help lead these children to be independent citizens. This centre does help the parents  in terms of resources and support.  In the future, I hope that I can visit more centres, not just autism, but also other SEN centres to get a bigger picture of how these centres operate in terms of their curriculum and teaching methods.

      

English Language Communication Project in SJKT Ladang Semenyih:Day 2 (17/10/2014)

On 17th October 2014, it is our second day going to SJK(T) Ladang Semenyih to carry out the activities that we designed for the students for Day 2. 

The Process of Design

Before we planned more activities for the Day 2, we plan to have a 2 minute recap on what students have learned in Day 1. This will help them to remember what they have learned previously and able to connect with this lesson. Then, we thought of having a "Hangman Game" that will encourage language acquisition use in the classroom. It also helps to attract students attention, lower students stress(low affective filter),  and gives students to have the chance of real communication. This will improve their English vocabulary on Secondary School include pronunciation and spelling. 

The Hangman game is  related to the theory below:

Play and Cognitive Development 
Vygotsky said that unstructured play which is a good way for students to learn. He says imaginative play is essential to cognitive development. It enables students to further their knowledge and form building blocks to go further in their education( reach the Zone of Proximal Development)

When children play, they imitate others actions- teachers can educate children in a fun and meaningful way. For example, when children playing in groups to solve the Hangman game

After the Hangman game, students will be divided into their groups assigned in Day 1. Students will be assisted by their group teachers and help to finish up their drawing for 30 minutes. 

Group 1: My Primary School Memories (Teacher Lee and Teacher Derrick)

Group2: Qualities of Secondary School Students ( Teacher Stella and Tiffany)

Group3: My Ideal Secondary School (Teacher Rynnie and Syeera)

Once all three groups are done with their drawings, they will stay in their groups and relax for at least 3- 5 minutes, before moving on to the next activity. This will also be the time where the group teachers will be able to bond with their students and ask them questions regarding the task they will have to do. 

Our next activity is the Guided Reading activity, instructions for group teachers 

1. Conduct a short vocabulary lesson by choosing the difficult words that students may not be familiar or  find it confusing. Teachers  elicit the vocabularies either by showing pictures, words, or gestures to elicit certain words and phrases from students. 

2. Read the passage. The passage contain words and phrases slightly above the level of the students, teachers scaffold students to enable them to understand the material. 

3. Answer the questions on the provided worksheet

The reason we designed  a reading activity is to provide input to prepare students for their script writing 

My observations during this activity

 Group 1: Teacher Lee and Teacher Derrick elicit the words regarding what students have already know or seen in their everyday lives. Overall, this group of students seems to have more difficulties in understanding the comprehension even after all the eliciting, gestures given by the teachers. This group of students need more support by relating the words to the things they like  in their daily lives. 

For example: Treasure. Give example of Peter Pan Pirate Captain Hook finding a box full of gold coins

Group 2: Teacher Stella and Teacher Tiffany elicit the words using lots of colourful pictures, lots of gestures, and simple words. Really interesting though 

Group 3: Teacher Rynnie and Teacher Syeera elicit the words using lots of visual, photographs.I was impressed with their material because they were  authentic and attractive. According to McDonough&Shaw(2005), talk about glossy prints in some materials to make the book even more attractive. Their material serve a  purpose of them understanding the vocabularies being taught. 

Materials for the Reading Activity 

When reading/discourse skills are involved, is there much in a way of 'appropriate' text beyond the sentence?. As teachers, we do find our materials sometimes provide too much emphasis on developing students skills rather giving them enough opportunity for them to practice those skills on extended reading passages(McDonough&Shaw, 2005)

Our materials do have some positives and negatives. The positive part of our materials is that the reading comprehension passages for all three groups contain words and phrases slightly above the students ability levels. Teachers scaffold students in their own groups and enable them to understand the material(reading comprehension passages). Group 1 reading comprehension passages is interesting because it has a letter in an envelope. The letter comes in an envelope provides an authentic experience.  However, Group 2 reading comprehension passages has lots of pictures and the questions were simple enough for students to do. 

The negative part of the materials are the Group 1  reading comprehension passages. First, we found that there is a slight grammatical errors in the text. Students do not understand some of the words we expected of them in the comprehension passages. 

In the next part of the lesson, we will have the White board game. Reason that we designed this game is to have an interesting activity between reading and writing to not lose attention of the students. Our initial plan was to divide the students into six subgroups, but since there is not enough time. We automatically move to Plan B, where we split students into 3 groups instead of 6 subgroups. 

Mini White Board games related to the Cognitive model. Kuhlman, 2007 defined 'cognitive learning' as the process of taking new information in the working memory and integrating it with the existing knowledge in the long term memory. Once information stores in the long term memory, students can recall it and transfer the knowledge to the real world situation

Working memory: Your working memory is good at processing information, but it can only hold so much at one time. The active thinking comes from the working memory. We designed this activity in order for students to use their working memory to write words. Picture a working memory like a whiteboard where students can write lots of words. On the whiteboard, students will need the space to write down information(temporary storage) and do problem solving(active processing).    

Initially, we want students to divide into 6 subgroups 

1.  Each group will be given mini whiteboards and colourful whiteboard markers 

2. Teacher Priscilla and Teacher Chee Hao will pose questions on Secondary School. 

3. Each student in the group were require to raise their hands quickly in order to answer the question and receive a point 

Script Writing 

1. Before we asked students to do their script writing, 3 teachers will demonstrate by showing example of written script and a picture. The script is based on the picture we drew on Ideal Secondary School, for example. 

Me, Teacher So Yeon, Teacher Chee Hao and Teacher Lee will say our lines to describe the picture. The reason we do this is to show students what they need to prepare for their mini presentations on the 31st October 2014. 

Afterthat, it is the students turn to do the script. They will be in their same groups together with their group teachers. Teachers will give students a blank A4 papers with lines for students to do their script. Each students must have at least one or two lines. 

Once they have done, students practice their scripts with their group teachers. Then, each group would come in front and present their topic to the whole class. 

Kim's Game 

The reason we do the Kim's game is to test their memory game. This game is where the teacher will show a tree  full of vocabulary words related to the theme "Secondary School". Students were require to look at the words but not writing them down. Then, the teacher took out the tree, and students need to write down what are the vocabulary words they see from  the tree. 

Ends with a recap and wrap up. 

Connection 

the process of designing and materials are well adapt to the  lessons compare to the previous experience. What we have learned in our previous experience, we build new experiences by making sure our materials is suitable for students in terms of their proficiency level, culture and syllabus. My previous experiences were helpful as I learned a lot on how to design activities and think of materials that could be attractive and meaningful for students to learn. 

Confusion & Conflict

This time, the sections were much better to understand compared than before. 

There will no conflict arises between my group members this time. Everyone comes to a consensus and agree to go with the plan of designing the activities for the second day

Considerations 

Paid attention

All three reading comprehension passages is the instructions, and the visual layout of materials, explanations that accompany with exercises except for Group 1 passage. 

Did not pay attention

Material: Group 1 reading comprehension passage contain too much unfamiliar vocabulary

Material: Blank A4 papers with lines. The group teachers gave this material to students without any sentence starter. This will make them feel stress and anxiety of what to write. But the group teachers scaffold students on. The material seem vague as there were no pictures compared to Group 2 and Group 3 reading passages 

An example of an script is to give them something to start with, instead of a blank sheet. Blank A4 papers with lines- Teachers scaffold their learning 

Improve my materials if I've given an opportunity to do so in the future 

If I had the chance to improve my materials in the future. First, I will change the information contain in Group 1 passages by rewriting the sentences by relating the activities more closely to the students backgrounds and interests, models of authentic language. 

• Simplifying

This technique has been to texts, most often emphasize on reading comprehension passages. The emphasis is based on changing the sentence bound elements that match the text with the students proficiency level. 

Maybe by changing the sentence structure by reducing the sentence length, some of the complex sentences is rewritten into simple sentences, for example by replacing pronouns by nouns and pronouns followed by a main verb. Another change would be the grammatical structures contain in the passage. For instance, passives are converted to actives, and simple past tense to simple present(McDonough&Shaw, 2005) . 

Based on my observations on Group 1, the students seem to be struggling with understanding the vocabularies being elicited by the teacher, so I think it will be useful if the reading passage would contain vocabulary list, using simple definitions 

References 

1. Shaw,C.,&McDonough,J.(2005). Materials and Methods in ELT. United Kingdom:Blackwell Publishing
2. 

3. Kuhlmann,T.(2007).How to Get Your Learners to Remember More. The Rapid E-Learning Blog. Retrieved October, http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/how-to-get-your-learners-to-remember-more/

  

English Language Communication Project in SJKT Ladang Semenyih : Day 1 (10/10/2014)

This semester, our lecturers have come up with another English Language Communication Project in SJKT Ladang Semenyih and students from  the School of Education,  were divided into three groups. Our task is to design and conduct activities based on the theme set by the lecturers which is on "Secondary School". 

I'm a third year student and  was put in Group 2, together with 3 other third years, one second year, and five first year students. First, we get to know each other and decided on what kind of activities that we would like to design for the Tamil School Students and the materials to use for each of these activities.  I was appointed as the Co-leader of the group where I took all of my group members numbers and set a Whats-app group chat. We did this because it is easy to set meetings and email them on the activities. 

The Process of Design 

When I planned my lesson, I used the backwards design approach such as I was thinking that the final product should be a mini presentation on "My Ideal School". Then, I was having second thoughts that 25 students doing the same presentation on "My Ideal School" will be quite boring. So, I would like to divide these  students into three mixed ability groups and these three groups will be given three different sub-topics for them to do their mini presentation. 

• Group 1: My Primary School Memories 
• Group 2: Qualities of Secondary School Students 
• Group 3: My Ideal School 

While keeping this idea in mind, I knew there were certain concepts that my group members and I needed to get across the students. First, we planned to have two ice-breaking activities which is to get to know our students characters and familiarize them with their facilitators and to ensure that both us teachers and students are introduced to each other for the following weeks of teaching to be smooth sailing. During this time, we activate students prior knowledge about primary and secondary school by asking a lot of open ended questions

These two activities lasts about 30 minutes. 

We started the lesson by first  Introducing the Theme "Secondary School". I allocated two teachers to carry out this part of the activity. They are required to have a sharing time with the students where these teachers will share their personal experience during their primary and secondary years and incorporate their experience to illustrate a positive image of Secondary School Life to inspire the students. The materials used was School Magazines, which allows students to look through the pictures, societies, students academic achievement and sports in a Secondary School environment.  The reason we design this is to encourage, motivate, and inspire students to strive in their Secondary Schools and the materials such as the school magazines enables students to explore such as by helping the learner to make discoveries in the language used in the school magazine. 

During this lesson, students feel at ease because they acquire background knowledge, and the organisation is presented well. Instructional materials such as teacher instructs students to look through the school magazines  as a basis of input for the learners receive and their language practices is through asking open ended questions about the information in the school magazine(Richard, 2001). Tomlinson agrees to Richard's opinion on instructional materials

This activity lasts about 30 minutes 

Next,  Teacher So Yeon and I designed two activities. One is about My Future Plans: Ambitions, UPSR Expectations, Talents, and Ways to Improve, while the other is Similarities and Differences between Primary and Secondary School. The reason we do two of the activities is to identify their ambitions, what they hoped to achieve in their UPSR exam, Talents, to recognize their weaknesses and to introduce students to the changes that will occur as they progress to their Secondary Education. On the first activity, Teacher So Yeon and I  prompt the  students  by providing the meaning, explanations and examples for each of these four sections. We also got our students interests by asking a lot of open ended questions and actively engaged them to participate in the discussion. We did this so they have a clear idea on what they are supposed to do in this activity. 

We managed to use Instruction Check Questions (ICQs) to check students understanding. The other teachers help by giving out coloured memo pads to students to write their answer, and they are required to paste it on the board. To my surprise, the students felt excited when they see materials such as the coloured memo pads, as there will happily choosing their favourite colours to write their answers. After each activity, I carried out a feedback session, where I gave each students  a constructive feedback on their answers. Their answers were pretty good, but I can see that they need to improve on their spellings and also able to differentiate  the spelling in both Malay and English. Same  method and  instructions were used in the 2nd Activity. 

Our materials for both Activity 1 and Activity 2 has achieve impact where it enables learners' curiosity, interest, and attention are attracted such as the My Future Plans activity has shown an attractive presentation, where the coloured memopads and coloured papers fill the space of the whiteboard(Tomlinson, 1998). The materials for these two activities took account of learners different learning styles such as it provides visual(e.g. learners prefer to see teacher writing the language down such as examples), auditory(e.g. hear the language from the teacher), and encourages students to be kinesthetic(e.g. learners did something physical such as following the activity instructions and stimulate students interests in pasting their colourful memo pads on the white board. These students are dependent by learning from the teachers. Moreover, I used my materials to provide opportunities for outcome feedback on students answers by encouraging students to spell the correct word and ask them why they wrote that particular answer (ibid).  

1st Activity- 45 minutes 

2nd Activity- 15 minutes 

In the Third activity, my group members and I have included an informal assessment that would require students to apply the knowledge that they have learned so far in this lesson. So we decided to split them into groups of three and got them to apply the knowledge they have learn and also each group has two teachers to teach on the topics assigned to them. 

The teachers in each group must first pre-teach some vocabulary and give instructions on what they need to prepare for their final mini-presentations. Students are given mahjong papers, magic pens. and colourful markers to draw and label their masterpiece. 

• Group 1: My Primary School Memories 
• Group 2: Qualities of Secondary School Students 
• Group 3: My Ideal Secondary School 

3rd Activity- 30 minutes 

The materials in all three activities such as memo pads and mahjong paper help learners to feel at ease are more relaxed because me and the other teachers taught them the concepts and provide examples on each of this activity. For example, the definition of "Ideal" and examples by showing a example of an "Ideal School" drawing. 

We end the lesson with a recap and wrap up. 

Overall the materials for Week 1 was positive because of its usefulness attractiveness that makes students feel motivated to accomplish certain task and also it adapts  well to the instructions for each of these activities. The term "Materials Development" talks about the principles  and procedures of the design. implementation, and evaluation of language teaching materials(Tomlinson, 2001). 

Processes of Designing and Using the Materials that Connect My Previous Experiences 

Throughout the years, this is not the first time for me teaching in SJK Ladang Semenyih, as I have been teaching and carrying out activities in this same school in my previous semester. I felt that process of designing activities and choosing the appropriate materials to carry out the activities with is manageable for me to plan because I was taught a lot by my seniors on how to have proper and simple instructions, and used Instruction Check Questions instead of asking students "Do you understand?", which students were eventually say yes with hesitation, Concept Check Questions(CCQs) is used to pre-teach certain types of vocabularies to students before attempting any reading articles regarding the theme and my seniors make sure that our instructions are easy to follow and have a loud and clear voice projection. I used materials such as colourful memo pads in the previous semester and also for this semester. I feel that this material is useful because of the attractiveness of the material(colourful memopads), students can write it using more than one memo pads and it is encourages students to paste it on the whiteboard(motivate them and improve their confidence level). 

These previous experiences are helpful to me because we had an amazing senior who literally taught us the steps of designing activities and ways of conducting them. She showed examples of instructions and language analysis samples, ICQs and CCQ. It really made me feel confident about using the knowledge and  the previous experience I've gained from my seniors and also peers to design fun and meaningful activities for students to enjoy throughout the lesson. 

You Tube Link on 'Concept Check Questions(CCQs) 

http://youtu.be/VKo0pz2qVys

Confusing and Conflict

Throughout the process of designing, there are some confusion in sections and also find them unclear. First, it was the theme on 'Secondary School", where I felt the theme is too broad and it is quite difficult for me and my group members to focus on a particular scope. Despite these difficulties, we chose to  focused 'Secondary School' in general. In addition, there was also a few conflicts between my group members during the stage of designing and using the materials such as one member in my group did not attend some meetings , thus  it made very difficult for us to split the task. Another thing is we faced more conflicts  when it comes during the teaching day itself, where some of my group members didn't keep to the time and rushed their ice-breaking activities. They are finishing the activities really fast, and left us with more time to spare. Thankfully, one of my members decided another activity such as the "Tangled activity" for students to relax after the first part of the lesson. Second,  some of my members didn't have the time to be with the students, which can be seen a lot in the introduction part. One of my members who is leading this activity taught using difficult concepts to explain about Secondary School and also did not allow students to explore and ask questions about  the School Magazines. Lastly, is when one of my group member was teaching, and the other members gave the coloured memo pads to students without listening to the instruction given. I'm afraid it has disturb the students concentration, but we managed to get their attention quickly :).  

Consideration  

Paid attention 

Overall, as a group, we managed to carry out all the activities, the materials were enough for both teachers and students to use to carry out the task, and all of my members managed to use the materials to engage the students in the activities. 

Did not pay attention 

Our group did not pay attention to the time for each activities. We will rushing the activities as students did not have the time to explore the materials , use them to ask questions and to enjoy themselves. Another thing, is I should have had a proper rehearsal with my group members, if I knew this things were about to happen. 

                                                                                                                         

Improve my materials in the future 

I think there is one material that I would like to improve which are the School Magazines. Instead of teachers reading and explaining about their experiences , I would like to have a mind map  on Secondary School to show students the types of buildings, the height of students, types of  extra-curricular clubs and societies  offered in Secondary Schools or even a made up story book on "My First Day at a Secondary School", that way students can prepare and see themselves ready to move on to Secondary School.  

Reference: 

Tomlinson, B. (Ed.). (2011). Materials developments in language teaching ( 2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.