Experiment 2: Children's Book
Proposal: My original piece is a lesson plan that utilizes a book called “My Food” by Heidi Johansen. Because I was rushed for time at that point in the semester, I had picked an easy book without doing much research. Heidi Johansen’s book is great for young children in teaching them connections between food vocabulary and food images, but it is not the most effective book that can be used in this lesson plan. In the reflection part of the lesson plan, I had written that the book was not appropriate because the missing plot lead to a lack of attention, making the easily distractible students even more distracted. I believe that a book with more of a plot (although just as many pictures, colors, and vocabulary words) would be more helpful for the students to really grasp the lesson.
I plan to create a children’s book directed at my specific audience of 3 year olds on the autism spectrum. Based on my experience in Psych 211 with this audience, these students are not as cognitively developed as their peers, so they require certain books that they can understand, but will also teach them the skills they need to learn, along with morals and etiquette. The book will have a simple structure (introduce problem, problem gets worse, solution), which is vital in a book for young children. I will include colors, food vocabulary words, healthy choices, and an successful set-up for the lesson plan’s activity, which involves putting different colored pom poms into a container’s mouth. With such a story, I believe the students will be more interested and ready to learn.
It is important to note that the character in the story does not necessarily have autism. Rather, the book is directed at kids with autism. There are subtle undertones of things that relate to special needs, including sensory eating disorders and accepting everything/everyone even though they’re different. I also plan to include a parent’s guide to kids with sensory eating disorders, a common symptom found in children with special needs. I’m excited to create this experiment because it is combining my childhood love of picture books with special needs, something I’m interested in now.
