- Grade Focus
- Post Secondary, Professional Development
- Age Level
- 18-22, 22+
- Subject
- Technology Integration Activity
- Digital Ethics, Discovering the Internet, PowerPoint Presentations
- Estimated Time of Completion
- 15 hours
Exploring Exceptionalities
Downloads for this lesson plan
Introduction
Teacher candidates increase their understanding of the various types of special needs that they may encounter in their teaching career. They research a specific exceptionality to discover its impact on learning and produce a PowerPoint presentation to share their findings.Prerequisite Experience
Teacher candidates will have demonstrated competence with navigating the Internet and keyboarding skills. They will possess some basic knowledge of the use of presentation software.Teacher Prep Time
Instructors will want to become familiar with some of the sites dealing with the topic areas and set up a social bookmarking account (e.g., delicious, diigo, etc.). It will be useful to look at the PowerPoint training videos found at Nortel LearniT. Teacher candidates should be directed to these videos prior to starting their assignment. Instructors will also want to become familair with the Pecha Kucha style of PowerPoint presentations. Here are some useful websites:
Project
Teacher candidates will create a Pecha Kucha style PowerPoint presentation (20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each) that demonstrates their understanding of a specific exceptionality.Assessment/Grading
An evaluation rubric has been provided to use in assessing the presentations.Time Management Tips
Teacher candidates can be divided into groups with others who are researching the same special need for the creation of the presentation.Lesson Plan Details
Engage
Teacher candidates will watch I'm Tyler, a video about a high school student with cerebral palsy who encourages viewers to practice ability awareness. Following a discussion of the video, each teacher candidate will be given an envelope. Inside the envelope is a note explaining that there will be a new student in the class where they will be student teaching during the upcoming teaching block. The new student will have one of the following exceptionalities:
- Learning Disability
- Down syndrome
- Traumatic Brain Injury
- Gifted
- Autism Spectrum Disorder
- Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
- Oppositional Defiance Disorder
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Cerebral Palsy
- Spina Bifida
- Seizue Disorder
- Hearing loss (Hard of Hearing/Deaf)
- Vision loss (Partially Sighted/Blind)
Sample Note:
Just wanted to let you know - there will be a new student in your class for the next teaching block. All we know so far is that his name is Gerald Jones and he has a learning disability in the area of written expression. We'll have more specific information when his files arrive but I thought you would want to know before you began planning your lessons.
As there is much variation within each exceptionality, at least two students will have the same general diagnosis but with different specifics (e.g., one student with ADHD - Predominately Inattentive Type and another with ADHD - Combined Type) so that each teacher candidate has a different student description. Pairs of teacher candidates who have students with the same general exceptionality will identify what they would want to know about this student and where they could obtain this information. A large group sharing of questions and sources of information will follow.
This should lead to a discussion about the credibility of online sources. This is of particular importance as there are many legitimate looking websites that provide questionable information about various exceptionalities. Teacher candidates will complete the tutorial, Internet Detective: Wise up to the Web, which is included in the Resources section of the Nortel LearniT website, prior to beginning their research. Those who want additional information about how to better navigate the vast resources on the web will be directed to check out the Discovering the Internet video tutorials (Search Engines, Better Searches, Advanced Searches, and Image Searches) on the Nortel LearniT website.
Explore
Teacher candidates will use the identified sources (e.g, textbooks, websites, organizations, etc.) to find the needed information. A list of initial website bookmarks will be available at Diigo which teacher candidates will add to.
Diigo has educator accounts where a class of students can be set up as group. Student accounts have special settings which only allow their teachers and classmates to contact them and access their personal profile information. In addition to bookmarking, students can highlight portions of the page and attach sticky notes to specific parts.
Explain
Pairs of teacher candidates who have students with the same general exceptionality will meet to share their findings and complete a compare/contrast graphic organizer.Elaborate
Since it is possible that teacher candidates could have any of these students in their class during their teaching career, they will share their learning with each other through the creation of a Pecha Kucha style PowerPoint presentation. An example of a Pecha Kucha style presentation will be shown to the class.
Teacher candidates will be provided with a template to create a storyboard.
Evaluate
An evaluation rubric will be used to assess the presentations. Teacher candidates will also self-assess their work by providing a written response to the following questions: What did you learn? What can you do that you could not do before completing this assignment.Extend
Teacher candidates can review and edit the relevant Wikipedia entry.
They could record the narration for their presentation and upload it to a presentation sharing site (e.g., slideshare). The Nortel LearniT PowerPoint Presentations video tutorial, Voice, may be helpful for those who do not have experience adding narration to a presentation.