Psych 211 Lesson plan and reflection
Original Piece
Midterm Paper
Theme: Food and Development
Ann Arbor Preschool and Family Center is a public preschool in Ann Arbor and has the following mission statement: “The Preschool and Family Center strives to support, engage, & collaborate with families and community in order to prepare children for future success by providing comprehensive high quality early childhood education programs within an inclusive and nurturing environment.” This preschool is split between students from low income families and students that have special needs. It works to integrate the two types of students with each other while also providing them with the best education that is specific to their needs. As stated in the mission statement, Ann Arbor Preschool and Family Center also works on promoting independence and preparing them for elementary school by nurturing them. We have been volunteering at this preschool for about a month and have learned a lot about what helps our students develop and how they learn best.
Specifically, we work with students on the autism spectrum at Level 1. The main goal in these classrooms for our specific students is to develop independence so that they can hopefully continue onto public schools and learn to interact with other kids. In order to direct our lesson to our students’ development stage, we need to adjust the lesson to make sure it is something that will work with the dynamic of their classroom and something that the students are able to do. At our site in particular, almost every area of development is lacking and needs to be stressed in the classroom. With this project, we are encouraging the maturation of multiple facets of development including fine motor skills, language, and cognitive comprehension. What’s more, the students will be becoming familiar with healthy eating habits, which is an important lesson to include as the students move into their unit of daily life activities including teeth brushing.
After determining what would be asking too much of our preschoolers and finding the right activity for their development stage, we came up with the idea of a 30 minute lesson for which we will use a book aimed towards 2 or 3 year olds, but rather than focusing on the content of the book we would use the vocabulary to help the students practice their other skills. We decided to use the book “My Food” by Heidi Johansen, which focuses on simple food names that the preschoolers can repeat back to us and grasp the meaning of. After reading the book, we will complete two activities: first, we will go back to and practice repeating the words with the students, making sure each student is participating and speaking. Then, we will use either a toy doll or another toy the children choose and give them utensils to practice feeding the doll. This way they can become more comfortable with eating themselves and having the independence to do so, and also with using their fine motor skills through the utensils. The two activities incorporate the use of numerous Key Development Indicators including speaking, listening and responding, exploring print, fine motor skills, and healthy behavior.
When we discussed our lesson plan with the preschool teacher we plan to work with, she was very supportive of the idea. It was suggested that we work in one of the centers; we explained the premise of our lesson plan to the teacher, Jenny. She responded by saying “the assignment sounds great. It also sounds like it would work to do in the fine motor center. You won’t get every child but it would still be fun to do!” She also provided another option for when to implement the lesson plan. She suggested that we could carry out the lesson during morning circle time so that we would be able to work with every student.
Hopefully through this lesson we will see our students improve in their language skills and motor skills. One of our overarching goals is the development of the preschoolers’ fine motor skills. At their age, students with autism have not yet mastered their fine motor skills like holding and using pencils, eating utensils, or tongs. They are generally thought to begin to understand how to use these skills around age four or five with education and teaching. Thus, encouraging fine motor development through the use of tongs matches their developmental stage, which is developing competence of fine motor skills. Another overarching goal of this lesson is to encourage speaking, which is especially important at their age and developmental stage of language, which is limited and low due to their diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, which is “suspected when language not only is delayed but also is deviant, that is, different in terms of vocabulary, grammar, or communicative pattern from the language of younger children” (Feldman, 2005). By motivating the students to use their words to describe the foods, we hope to improve their language skills that are lacking. We think this is a lesson that will positively impact the students because it will make them excited about food and eating, while also helping them learn how to work in a positive way that helps them interact with others. The preschoolers will be able to put more food words into their vocabulary and implement these words into their daily routine. They will also improve their coordination through the development of their fine motor skills using tongs which will benefit them in the long run when it comes to holding pencils, markers, etc. We hope that by teaching a useful lesson like healthy food choices will have an impact on the food they choose to eat to encourage their good physical health later in life. A lesson like this is important at this time in the students’ lives because good eating habits need to be encouraged early. Through this lesson we also are hoping to instill confidence in the preschoolers so that they can use these skills in the future and practice the vocabulary with different people, such as their parents, classmates, teachers, and other adults. This will also help enforce something our teachers encourage, which is independence.
In detail, our lesson plan will have a few specific steps. First, we need to gather our materials. We will be using the book “My Food,” a toy with an open mouth, tongs, and a number of small toys such as pom poms to use for the pretend food. These materials will be obtained prior to the lesson from local stores with the exception of the toy, which can be found at site. We will not need the teachers and teachers’ aids to assist us in the lesson, but the participation of the students is crucial for them to benefit from the lesson. In order to be as prepared as possible to implement this lesson plan, we will meet prior to the lesson day to practice and discuss the plan that we have detailed above. Since we will be doing it in Emma’s classroom, she will explain the names and overall demeanors of the children that they will be working with to Katie to ensure the most success possible.
Though we have our lesson planned out well, we are likely to see some challenges when teaching the lesson to the students. The challenges we anticipate are specific to the students in the classroom. Because the students are low functioning, they are not accustomed to sitting still and paying attention to a book. To accommodate for this, we chose a short book that is generally meant for even younger children. The cognitive and attention level of the younger audience that the book is meant for is more comparable to the students in the preschool as opposed to a preschool-level book. Additionally, to combat the students’ nature to be easily distracted, if their attention level is especially low, we could incorporate the lesson between each page of the book. This way, the students will be doing an activity after listening for a short amount of time and repeating these steps until the book ends. We will also have to make sure to include each student throughout the lesson, so they don’t feel left out and lose attention. This is a common problem we face while volunteering in the classroom: when the students are having circle time and they are not fully participating in the activity, they lose attention and just look around the room, not participating in the activity. We hope to eliminate this loss of attention by making our lesson engaging for every student and giving them each multiple turns to participate so they feel more included.
Throughout this lesson, we hope to further develop the cognitive, language, and physical components of the preschooler’s brains, while also ingraining the new vocabulary and fine motor skills into their heads so they can be used in the future. We also want to incorporate the mission of Ann Arbor Preschool and Family Center, by making sure these are skills that the students can use in the future and that they feel supported and encouraged in the environment we create during our lesson.
Reflection
The implementation of our lesson plan went smoothly. With the way that the schedule is set up, we got to present the lesson to 2 different pairs of students as they cycled through the fine motor center, which is where we were stationed. The second part of the lesson plan, where the students would use the tongs or a spoon to scoop pom poms into a toy’s mouth, worked well, probably because the students were fascinated by the materials around them. When we demonstrated the squeezing of the tongs and dropping of the pompoms, they were interested and wanted to try it themselves. On the other hand, one thing that didn’t go over as well was the reading of the book. Even though the book was incredibly short and aimed at an even younger audience, the kids still got distracted from the reader. We had planned to incorporate the tong usage into the middle of the book if the students were to get distracted, but we did not end up doing this. Instead, we kept reading and tried to regain their attention. We changed our initial plan because the book was so short and the activity was so much longer that we would have never been able to return to reading, and even if we did, it would have only been a page or two until it was complete. It did not seem logical to stop reading right before it was done, so our original plan for handling the problem of distraction would not have been the most successful in the grand scheme of things. We also had to deal with the proposed problem of making sure every student was included. The solution to this varied by student. In our first set of students, one student got distracted easily and would not focus on the activity for more than a few minutes. So, we encouraged turn taking between the students. When it seemed like the student was starting to get distracted, we would prompt him with the direction to ‘give the tongs to his friend so it can be his turn.’ This type of sharing not only included both students, but also supported the development of interactive play. For the second set of students, both kids were interested in interacting with the pompoms, so one used a spoon while the other used tongs, and then they switched materials. I think we were right to anticipate the need to include every student and the importance, therefore, of making the activity engaging, but as we saw, the specific solution to the problem was individually based. Since our lesson was very basic, there was not many unforeseen aspects. Having the assistance of a TA was unanticipated, but her presence was helpful and made the students pay more attention to the lesson, although her experience did intimidate me a little.
I really enjoyed leading this activity. Although I did not feel like a teacher since the students know me as a playmate and since a TA was near, I liked being in the authoritative position of leader. My favorite part of administering the lesson was watching the students realize how to use the tongs and successfully put the pompoms in the toy’s mouth. Their faces lit up at their achievement and it made them want to do it again. That excitement is what made me like giving the lesson the most; somehow it is more fulfilling than the excitement they show in play, perhaps because I could predict this excitement and my own lesson plan was what conjured it!
One thing I learned in this experience is that it’s not all that easy to make a lesson plan, especially for students with low-functioning autism. The unpredictability of their attention span and behavior and their low level of development makes choosing a book and creating an activity quite the chore. If I were to do a similar lesson plan for students in general education classes, I would choose a book that has a real story, not just one that has vocabulary words. Then, instead of having the students repeat the words to me before putting the ‘food’ in the toy’s mouth, I could ask them to create a new part of the story, like “What other food would the main character like?” or “What food would he not like?” so they could expand their storytelling skills and imagination. I hope to have a similar experience again soon! I love helping the students learn.
References
Feldman, H. M. (2005). Evaluation and management of language and speech disorders in preschool children. Pediatr Rev, 26(131), 40.