The problem with ‘Good’

  I was looking through my old blogs and realized I needed to heed my own advice. This is one I wrote over a year ago. With school starting again, I think it's time to review praise and declarations and put them back into practice!

“Good job!” “That picture looks good!” “Looking good sweetie!” “You are a good brother!” “You are a good boy!”

 

Sounds ‘good,’ right? I thought so too… until the day when I told my son, “Remember – you are a good student! You are a good friend!” just before sending him off to school. 

He looked at me without saying a word, but his eyes told me plenty: “Oh, sure. Don’t worry about the bullies I just told you about and the fact that only 1 or 2 of all the kids like me. Don’t worry about the teacher that blames and punishes me with all the kids because she doesn’t know who did wrong. Don’t worry about the homework you yelled at me last night because I didn’t do it fast enough. Yeah – sure. I’m good?” 

When he was gone, I thought about what he had told me through that look. He was telling me he needed something different, but I didn’t know what. I had learned to use declarations, or positive affirmations to boost myself and my family up. I use them daily. What was wrong with saying what I said? Well, he just didn’t believe it, I thought. You are supposed to say it until you believe it. But that look had said so much MORE! I mulled and prayed.. and read.

I am reading a new favorite book of mine: Liberated Parents,Liberated Children by  Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. It talked about just this thing. “To a lay person it always comes as a surprise when he praises a child generously and the child then becomes obnoxious. To the psychologist it's no mystery. He knows that children must throw off global praise, it's too confining. ...when we use global praise with children, we are practically asking for trouble." (pg. 57)

And that’s when it hit me: the phrase ‘You are a good student/friend” is too confining for him. My son hates authority, rules, and doing anything any way but his own. To say he IS good is like saying he HAS to be GOOD ALL THE TIME! To him, this is too much. Instead of trying, he gave up, made mischief and had as much fun as he could. Why try when it is impossible? 

So WHAT DO I DO??? 

My new favorite book had the answer as well: descriptive praise. Not a completely new concept to me; however, I was not using it correctly or effectively. This morning that changed.

I found something positive to ‘describe’ from the day before. When I woke him up I said, “Yesterday you told me how you earned a recognition in school. You said you were trying hard to pay attention even when the kids around you weren’t. That takes discipline and focus. You did it and got your reward. I wanted to tell you I appreciate your effort.” I then gave him a sticker in our reward system at home.

He smiled, and then told me he had talked with his brother the night before until after 9:00pm, (when he was supposed to be going to sleep) about the basketball tournament last weekend. I held back criticism and simply said, “I am happy you can talk to your brother about things that are important to you!” 

I didn’t even tell him to hurry up so he wouldn’t miss the bus; instead I simply said, “It is now 6:25.” He got up and got ready for school. Just before leaving he ran to me and said, “Today, when I get home from school I am going to take a 10 min break and then get right to work!”

That afternoon he took a longer break. He took all afternoon to do his chores and his homework. This time there was no badgering from me. I am finally learning to let him make his own decisions. He did finish his responsibilities. He even cleaned up his mess when he broke my glass measuring cup without me having to ask him to do it. Then I was able to describe that to him to: “I noticed when you made a mess, you went right ahead and cleaned it up. You swept all of the pieces off the floor. Where did you learn to clean up like that?”

He thought for a moment, “I guess I watched you and Dad do it.”

“You know. I am so glad you can watch Mom and Dad. Cleaning up after your mess was responsible. Thank you for cleaning up your mess!” His eyes beamed with pleasure. They were telling me a much different story than they had just the morning before.

Just before bed he said, “Tomorrow I am only going to take a 5 min break, and then get right to work!” Will he? Well, we will see. The day he does I will tell him, “Hey! You did exactly what you said you would. Now I know I can trust that when you say you will do something, you will.”

Oh… I almost forgot… about those declarations, “I am a good student! I am a good friend!”

They now read, “I am an attentive student!” and “I am a considerate and thoughtful friend!”

Now he will know exactly how to act, and he will believe he can.

Decisions and Change!

Emotions surge through me. Questions fill my mind.

Is this what I want for my baby?
Is this what he wants?
Does he understand what challenges he will face?
Will the other kids be nice to him?
Will he be getting a quality education?
Will the interpreter be qualified? 

For the last two months, my son had been at home with me. Field trips, nature observations, projects, sensory activities, sibling teaching sessions, planning, reading, filming, viewing, etc etc.

Not that it was all fun and games and went just the way I wanted it to. Quite the opposite. But, it became clear to me that what my boy needed was a period of time to heal, to discover himself again, to gain confidence once more; to discover learning again. 

Then one day, he decided that that  time had come to an end. After a particularly hard day, I looked at him and signed, "You're not happy. You miss school, don't you?" 

We then launched into a conversation of what options he had for school: a local deaf program with part mainstreaming and part resource classroom with a teacher of the deaf, home, or the local elementary school where his brother goes. 

Perfect, I thought, it's time to teach him how to make good decisions in his life. If he can learn this now, it will benefit him greatly in his future!

Being a faithful Christian family, I brought in the scriptures. In the Doctrine and Covenants (scriptures from the LDS faith), these verses are found. They guide anyone seeking answer to finding a decision based on answers from the Holy Ghost:

"Study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.
But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong" (D&C 9:8-9)

We sat down, Mom, Dad, son, and brother for support. We listed and discussed all pros and con's to each decision. We asked others who may know more. We talked to deaf adults who went to school in their local schools (mainstreamed) growing up, including Dad. 

He made a decision.

Then he prayed. And our whole family prayed with him. 

He felt he had an answer... Attend the local school with his brother. He was excited. 

And here's the condition we discussed, "Since this is your decision, and your Father in Heaven has said it is a good choice, whatever happens, we face it together. There will be challenges. You may find you hate it. You may love it. No matter what, you stick it out until the end of the year. Then we'll reevaluate and see what to do."

It's been 4 weeks now. Not without challenges, but with motivation to learn, to grow, and to do his best. He has made friends and figured out ways to communicate with them. He has come home sad, frustrated, excited, concerned, happy, calm, and angry. There have been bullies and really great friends. In other words, he's having a normal experience. 

Is this what I want for my baby?
     I want him to be happy, engaged, leaning and growing... All of that is happening. Could there be a better place for him out there? Maybe, but for now...he's doing ok.

Is this what he wants?
    Yes...he explored all the options. He decided this for himself. For him, that was really important.

Does he understand what challenges he will face? He does now, and is facing them bravely! 

Will the other kids be nice to him?
Some will, some won't...isn't that true for most kids? We've dealt with that before (Dealing with Bullying) and I love how this little guy responded to the bullies! Stay tuned for my next post for that!

Will he be getting a quality education?
    With 20% of content lost through interpretation even with the best interpreters, some educational value is sacrificed. However, this local school and teacher are using many of the effective strategies that I talked about earlier, and they are challenging and engaging my boy, pushing him on. For 3rd grade, with added support of reading and writing at home, he'll be alright for now. The best answer for every deaf child? I would say, emphatically, no! Those arguments will make this post too long, I'll add it to my list! 

And what of next year? And the year after? I don't know those answers. I guess we have more decisions yet to make. Thank goodness we know the steps to do so.

Our Sensory Table

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood." - Fred Rogers

In classic 3rd grade classrooms, you probably would not find a sensory table, but for our home school that we share with a toddler and a 4 year old, we have decided it is a necessity!

Sensory activities allow creative and open-ended play. They allow for problem solving, pretend play, investigation, exploration and experiments. It's also great for a break between activities that require more focus, transition times, and times of stress and anger. For more information on sensory processing and aiding kids with anxiety and anger you can click here: Lemon Lime Adventures

A great resource for more activities (and where I found some of these below): FunAtHomeWithKids.com

Making Color Beans and Pasta

Materials:

jar with a lid or seal-able container

food coloring (we used neon)

beans (pinto or white worked best)

Macaroni or other pasta

wax paper

Procedure:

1. Drop the food color into the jar with the pasta. 

(15 drops to 1 cup pasta/beans)

2. Make sure the lid is on tight and SHAKE!!

3. Pour out onto the wax paper and spread out to dry.

Enjoy!

Add Educational Activities:

Sorting and Labeling: add objects related to your activity, or sort and label the different colors, beans and pasta, etc.

Language Arts: vocabulary and spelling practice, letter identification. Adjectives: make a list of words that describe what is in your sensory table.

Math: count the beans and noodles, group and compare, hide flash cards with math operations.

Science: create a habitat or world inside your sensory table. We're going to use the materials below for a pond/swamp world. We will learn about the animal groups that live there. 

Another great sensory table activity: Kinetic Sand.

Also known as "indoor sand," this is sand that holds together more than natural sand. It is very therapeutic. Adults love playing in it just as much as kids. We've already made sand castles and shapes and messes. Luckily, it's a lot easier to clean up than real sand too!

 

Wait! We're not finished! One more! These are water marbles.        

You can purchase them at Time to Play

They start out tiny!

Put them in a bin and pour water over them.

We had fun watching them grow!

Here they are at full size!

This is one of our FAVORITE sensory activities!***

                                            ***just make sure the little ones don't eat them!

Effective Instructional Strategies Explained... These are the Good Ones!

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted the more ineffective strategies... NOW! For the good ones! Again, as I said in my first post, a BALANCE of the different approaches is needed! Here's the link to the strategies to limit (more Ineffective Strategies)

Whole Language approach: Also called, the “Top to bottom approach,” and is contrasted to a phonics or skills based approach to decoding and spelling. The philosophy here is to focus on meaning and strategy instruction, literature-based or integrated instruction. Many of the next strategies are a part of a whole language philosophy. When looking at second language learners, including Deaf children, this philosophy and approach to language is critical! This one will get its own post…for now this link shows a very basic overview.

A Writing Activity

Readers and Writer’s workshop: Writers engage in reading and writing for their own purposes. Led by the teacher through ‘mini lessons’ the students learning reading and writing strategies while choosing their own reading and writing topics. This is a great explanation! 

 You can also see how I did a mini writer's workshop lesson with my son during the writing of our recent vacation blog. In it I note how I picked two grammar principles to teach during that writing session. After we had done the writing together, he felt confident to write on his own.

Cooperative learning: More than just working in groups, cooperative learning gives each student a chance to fulfill a different role in a group: a leader, a secretary, a moderator, etc. while completing the assigned task. More here

Visuals (SMART boards, pictures, tables, graphs): Visuals are so important for deaf children, it is their primary learning style (even if they are using Auditory Listening Devices (ALDs)). Teachers who use visuals will have an easier time of keeping students’ attention while increasing performance.

Bi-lingual/Tri- modal instruction (English/ASL/speech and listening as needed): Using American Sign Language (ASL) to teach English. More than just using sign language as the ‘mode of communication’ in the classroom, these strategies connect and bridge ASL and English while developing both. The goal is for your child to truly become bilingual in ASL and English. This one needs its own post… and you can find basic explanation here for now. This is one article of how a preschool approach might look.

This is our Sensory table - with spelling words!

Balanced Literacy Approach – Children need read in different ways every day. The teacher should be reading aloud to the class daily in ASL following the 15 principles of Read Alouds . Shared reading happens as the same book, or book type, is read repeatedly and the reading shared between student and teacher, with the teacher modeling and supporting the students as they read. Finally, the students read the SAME book on their own, with confidence.

Hands on Activities: Math manipulatives, science projects, field trips, art, constructing reports on research, creating artifacts. As part of integrated units, hands on activities give the students a way to discover new knowledge or to put their learning into action. Our LegoFraction lesson is one example.

Painting a house as part of our Fire unit.

Integrated Thematic Units: Teachers select a theme around which to base all subjects around. In the Fall math, science and language arts can all relate to the Autumn Season. Basic skills instruction is still built into the daily routine, but the main teaching revolves around the theme. Focus is on depth and world knowledge through whole language learning. Check it out more here.

Development of child’s Native Language (ASL): ASL should be focused on and developed. When bilinguals strengthen their native language, the second language is also strengthened (reference here). Easily added to thematic units, ASL can enrich the learning of any subject. We’ll have some fun examples of this!

Always Reading!

Differentiated Assessments: Rubrics, portfolios, testing on content only (using ASL and oral exams), presentations, projects, writing samples, etc. While standard testing is still required, grades can be determined based on a variety of assessments that not only allow the students to shine in different ways, but also develop a variety of different skills. Find a great explanation here.

Structured routines with strong classroom management: All students thrive off of structured routines and strong classroom management. Class meetings and rules can engage the students in the governing of their own class, encouraging more cooperation. Positive reinforcement for following routines and being engaged in learning is a must.

While this list is extensive and feels overwhelming, as you learn more about a Whole Language approach, you will see how so many of these strategies fall into place. It is my goal to provide you with examples of these strategies and how they might look both in the classroom, and at  home.I'll update this post with links to those examples as they come!

Language Experience Books... or Blog!

This is an example of a Language Experience Book. This beginning is more complicated as my son who is 8 was doing the 'writing.' Language Experience books can be just pictures, pictures with one or two words or one sentence for the little ones. You will see this later on in our post. The point is to DO an activity that engages your child, Take pictures, and then write about those pictures. The finished product should be something that your child can look at over and over and 'read.' Even if he or she isn't reading the actual words, it is the act of reading that creates confidence, builds print recognition and expressive language. In the beginning, I am translating what my son tells me in ASL into written English, modeling for him what his ASL looks like in English.

Our Trip!

We went to Portland, Oregon. There's my sisters, and my brother. Mom took this picture of us. Dad was making silly faces behind Mom's back. That's why my baby has a puzzled look on her face, and how I remembered Dad making a silly face.

Do you know why 1/6 of the bridge is raised?

If the bridge didn't raise up, a big tall boat would crash into the bridge and could sink! And it could destroy the bridge too. This means if people were trying to get home and had to cross the bridge, they couldn't go and they might get lost going another way.

Mom took a picture of us for our blog.
We didn't know we would make a blog post until later.

The geese are standing on the grass above the dock. That is why there is a brown pole behind them. My sister wanted to pet the geese, but Mom said, "No! They are wild geese!"

*You'll notice in this next passage, the writing changes. This is my 8 year old writing now. When I correct written English of Deaf children, I do so carefully; a little at a time. I pick one or two concepts to focus on and that's what we correct. Today we focused on some conventions: quotations (that we learned a week ago and that he wanted to attempt in written English on his own), and making sentences out of a really long run on. This helps to build confidence while teaching the grammar.

                                                                 NEXT DAY,
                                                             MORNING

At Multnomah Falls, we walk to bridge. We are decide who go high or down. My two sister are want to down because my Baby are cold and my other sister cold too. So my dad are said, "your two sister come down with me you and your brother go with your mom go to the top."

Later I are scare to go high, on the 6 of 11switch backs. Mom said,"Wait to 7 of 11 then will stop." When we arrived at the 7th, Mom ask me, "Do you want more?"

I said ,"yes i want more until end."

Mom said," Let's go!"

There was a small cave in the side of the mountain!

It was 1/4 mile from the bottom to the bridge. We hiked 1 mile up to the top of the mountain and then 1/4 mile more down hill to the top of the waterfall. Then we came back down, fast. Mom said, "Don't run!"  I asked, "Why?"
Mom said, "There's no railing, if you fall, you could fall all the way down the mountain."

I said, "It's ok. We can run and see what happens."


And I jogged with control, but Mom think I really ran, but I didn't.

Here we are at the top of the fall! 

This is the view looking down!

How many miles did we hike altogether?

on the way up 1 2/4 and 1 2/4 on the way back down...

The answer is...3 miles!                                                       

                                                                                                        

I made it!

This is a view of the falls from the Bridge.

                          

  This is the view from the top. 

                                                          AFTERNOON
                          
                                                               FISH EGG GORGE 

At this point, it was my daughter's turn (she's 4). She wanted to do the typing, so we kept things brief. She is learning a lot about names right now and I made that a focus of her writing. The hope is that as the child re-reads the experience book, words are learned, experiences re-told and world knowledge is reinforced and expounded upon. We are working on expressive language, telling stories and practicing reading!             

 A plant in the pond.                                

big Sturgeon fish

baby Trout fish

Mallard ducks

baby Salmon fish

                                                   

                                                         AFTERNOON       

 BONNEVILLE Lock AND DAM

          We also went to the ocean (2 weeks ago) to see what wild life and plants were there too! 

Here is the diorama I made!

                      

           

We compared the Ocean and Lake Environments using a Venn Diagram and prepared a presentation.

Thanks for reading about our trip! For more information and ideas about Experience Books, click here!

I'll try to do another example soon!