Wisconsin Public Television University Place  Children With Down Syndrome in Preschool Programs  Joan Ershler  4/27/13 UP870  cc >> And I'm going to be talking about our program and just some general information about how we include children with special needs, including kids with Down syndrome, in our program. So this is what I'm going to be talking about today. First of all, creating a framework for looking at how inclusion occurs, and there are certain essentials that have to be in place in order for a program to be truly inclusive which means that children with Downs syndrome are present in the program and actively engaged in activities alongside of their peers. The first essential is a belief system that's based on inclusion and the value of the individual. And this is a belief system that is held by families, by staff, and also by a director of a program. The second essential is a good knowledge of how children develop. What are developmental sequences in early childhood that lead all the way to old age? The third essential is understanding a specific individual child in the context of his or her family. So what are their preferences? What are their values, etc? The next essential is the teachers must create a classroom that's based on equity, and I'll talk about what that means in a little bit. The next essential is what I'm calling good teaching, and I'll also define that in a little while. And, finally, the use of specific evidence-based teaching strategies. 

So this refers to using the science of teaching. I don't know if you've heard that there are sometimes a dichotomy between the art and science of teaching. The art is what teachers bring as an individual in terms of how they might interact with other people, respectfully, genuinely, and so forth. But there is also a growing body of knowledge that has to do with the science of teaching, and these are what I'm referring to as evidence-based practices. So first, I just want to start out by giving you this quote by Donald Winnicott: "There is no such thing as a baby, there is a baby and someone." So this means that we start with providing a program for a child in partnership with the family. And I really want to emphasize the partnership piece. We want to know what a family would like for their child, what their cultural preferences are, and truly use their experience and their knowledge as a basis included in our total approach. Regarding the belief system where we appreciate individuals, instead of aiming towards the average or thinking that children are more alike than different, switching to the idea that really what we can expect is variability, that children will be different. They will be individual. There will be some commonalities but that we shouldn't be assuming that children are all the same and that we're really interested in the variabilities. 

Completely legitimate. Also, replacing the word disability with individual ability, and this allows you to focus on what is possible. And that's an important switch in thinking strategy. And the last is thinking about the definition of fair. Now, when people think about fair, they think about everybody getting the same, and I'd like to propose what I've called the chocolate cake model of fairness or equity which is some people like the frosting, some people like the cake, and who's to say what's right or wrong. Fair is getting what you need. So when I go somewhere, I'm hoping that someone will take my frosting. [LAUGHTER] So taking a developmental perspective means that we focus on the sequence of skills that develop in five developmental domains which are: emotional development, social development, language and communication, cognitive development, and motor development. And I deliberately start with emotional development. This refers to a child who's able to handle disappointments, manage children coming into their space, using their toys, being able to handle the unexpected or what's called self-regulation. 

So regulating one's emotions. It also has to do with feeling really competent about yourself. Seeing yourself as an effective learner and seeing what you can do and having it pointed out to you what you can do. And in early childhood, we generally believe that children who don't have a strong emotional foundation are not going to be able to learn. The stable emotion being allows you to take advantage of all the learning opportunities that might be in front of you. Okay. And a developmental perspective is a contrast to what is typically looked at in child development, or can be looked at in child development, as acquiring developmental milestones. That is very different from looking at developmental sequences. So it's as if a child has a checklist of things to do. So by six months, I'm going to sit independently. 

By 12 months, I'm going to walk by myself, or pretty close to it. By six years, I can skip and I'm beginning to read. So those are pinpoints in time and it's in contrast to looking at the trajectory that children are taking to reach these milestones, and these milestones might occur at very different points of time. In addition to a general trajectory being a little different in terms of time or age, each area of development might be taking a different trajectory or a different length of time to reach the acquisition of skills within that developmental domain. And the last point about that is that the abilities in each developmental domain will interact with each other to help move along development. So instead of looking at pinpoints, we look at where a child's skills fall on a developmental continuum. And it allows us to see what a child has accomplished and what the next steps are for us to work on. And this is not to say that every child goes through the same sequence of skill development, but, generally, it's a general orientation that there is a path that children generally take and that some skills necessarily include skills that come before it. So, the little girl on the balance beam, I never reached that level. [LAUGHTER] But you know that for that little girl to do what she's doing, she had to be able to stand and balance herself just in a standing position, have some balance in order to run, shifting balance from foot to foot. 

And that's the kind of thinking that we look at when we're working with children from a developmental perspective. What this allows teachers to do is to scaffold learning. And if you think of a scaffold as part of constructing or renovating an apartment building in New York City, or downtown Madison, you'll see that there are different layers, platforms that workers are working on starting from the bottom up to the top, and each one builds on the one previously. And this idea of applying the notion of scaffolding is based on Vygotsky, who is a Russian scientist, and he developed the theory of how children should learn, which is, indicated in the red quote, "sequencing and pacing learning, challenging students to extend their current levels of understanding." So, we want kids to move ahead by providing them with just the right amount of challenge for each skill that they're working on. So we understand where they are, we know where they want to go, and we want little baby steps to get there. If it's too much, then it doesn't work. If it's too little, it's boring and there's no growth. So we want just the right amount of challenge. And there has been research to show that this type of scaffolding is very effective when teachers use this in a classroom doing what's called differentiated instruction so that for each child, a teacher will know where they are, where they need to go, and individualize the steps to get there. Some children will be working on very similar things, some will be working at different points within that sequence. 

And scaffolding has been looked at in many ways. It's been studied extensively in terms of literacy, and we'll get into that. So, an example of scaffolding is a curriculum that was developed for early childhood called tools of the mind, and this is based on pretend play. Teachers set up a theme, or the theme might come from the children, that's related to what the children already know. They choose props and toys. They help the children plan their play and monitor the progress so they're right there with the children playing. They coach children, give them suggestions and modeling how they might play. They connect different themes of the play, and they are able to help children negotiate with each other and manage conflicts that will inevitably arise. And they also encourage children to talk to each other, work problems out with each other, get ideas from each other. So, the role of the teacher is to be present, right there, to connect, connect with children, make sure that children connect with each other, and to extend learning by asking questions, by commenting on what the children are doing, and so forth. 

This is an example from Australia. >> [INAUDIBLE]  >> So the teacher is commenting. >> [INAUDIBLE]  >> Coaching. >> [INAUDIBLE]  >> And there's a little girl helping. So encouraging peers to help each other. Okay, so now I'm going to turn to what evidence-based strategies are. This is the science of teaching. This is the gold standard for looking at research that can inform teaching that you can trust. And the requirements are that children are randomly assigned to an experimental group or control group that doesn't get the treatment, the researching subjects don't know which group is receiving the treatment when they're evaluating results or collecting data, and the outcomes of the intervention are stated and measured objectively. So they try to eliminate the subjectivity of looking at the results. 

So sometimes, in teaching especially, there is no gold standard. I'm going to talk about two evidence-based strategies, but if there is no gold standard, then there can be a decision making model for determining how to teach using smaller, less well-controlled studies about a specific strategy. If these are less than experimental studies, at least they do provide some information. There's more general research showing how children learn, such as young children learn through play, and these become best practices, which means that most people are doing them, they're based on a lot of experience, and another type of best practice is using intentional teaching. So not just letting children free in an area, just run wild, but really having a purpose and a plan for what the children will be doing in a particular activity. And then sometimes we can apply evidence-based strategies that have been shown to be effective with children who are typically developing and apply them to children who have various learning challenges. So, good teaching is intentional teaching, which incorporates research findings, expert opinion and experience. It's planned. It takes advantage of learning opportunities that are also not expected. It's based on assessment of children's abilities, including observation which further informs the teaching, and it's play-based in early childhood. 

So now I'm going to talk about how, one of the essentials was creating a classroom community of equity. And this refers to the social/emotional climate in a classroom. Do children feel emotionally safe? Or are they nervous about what they're doing in a classroom? We want children to feel safe emotionally, that they're accepted, and that they're supported. So, one way to create this kind of community is to let children know what to expect during the day, and a common strategy is using picture schedules. So this is a schedule of a classroom routine during the day, and you can see there are pictures of the kids doing what they're doing with labels. And the teacher just goes over in the beginning of the day, this is the order of events, and if children lose their way during the day and not know what to do, then a teacher can refer them back to what did we say the plan was? And here's an example of a classroom that's a toddler classroom with more pictures so there's more description. It also incorporates learning numbers, sequencing, and that type of thing. So picture schedules help children know what they're doing and feel safe in a classroom. A second way to create a classroom that is supportive, social/emotionally, is to make sure the children can count on the adults to support them. It means that adults respond with positive affect consistently and predictably. 

A third aspect is teaching children classroom rules, and we usually think about this in terms of no running, no hitting, usually stated in the negative. And we want to try to state, we want to tell children what to do, and it's important that we have classroom rules that will promote the idea of being respectful and kind, considerate, for all the children in the classroom, whether they are typically developing or have special needs. So, generally, the rule that we have in our classrooms is to be kind and be careful. And the teachers might review this with them at circle time, they might remind them during the course of the day they're being kind and careful, and eventually this leads to a classroom community where children are reminding each other or noticing each other's kind and careful activities. So, for example, in one classroom, to begin teaching this notion of being kind and careful, when children, an individual child did something in a kind and careful way, like sharing a toy or passing the glue at an art table, the child would receive a pompom that they put in a jar. And eventually this evolves into children noticing what other children are doing and giving them pompoms in their jars. So another child sees that somebody did pass them the puzzle piece without a big fuss, and so that child can say I think that was really kind and careful and I'm going to give you a pompom in your jar. And just getting the pompoms is reward enough, and being noticed is reward enough. Are there many ways for children to learn through pictures, through verbal directions, through written words, and are there many ways for children to demonstrate what they have learned, either through speaking or drawing or pointing, acting out. And this is generally referred to as universal design for learning so that all children have access to showing what they know how to do and for receiving information in a way that's meaningful to them. 

And this is an example. >> [INAUDIBLE]  [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE]  [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE]  >> Okay, so that was, I apologize for the video. It was obviously homemade. So, another community building strategy is noticing whether teachers are attuned to each child's learning needs. And I'm going to show you a video of an event at our friendship carnival, which was on Valentine's Day, and having things like a friendship carnival also helped create a community that is accepting and inclusive. And this is following a little girl who was reluctant to join an activity. The teacher worked with her really well to bring her into it, and actually, this is a minute, but it took 45 minutes.  >> [INAUDIBLE]  [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE]  >> Okay, so that was an example of being brought in, letting her do this at her own pace, and she did it. Okay, classrooms that feel emotionally safe also encourage exploration and discovery. And what I've been talking about is creating a social/emotional climate in a classroom. 

There is an evidence-based model for doing, and it's called the pyramid model out of Vanderbilt University. And it assumes, on the bottom level, that you've created a classroom that has this supportive feeling to it where relationships are nurtured, children can count on teachers. Sometimes, though, teachers need to do something a little more intentional. So that means that teachers might plan a specific activity to address a certain social skill that they think the kids could use help with, and that's the green level. So I have a video that shows that. There was an incident in this classroom where a little girl approached another little girl who was coming into the classroom and said in a very loud voice, "You can't come in here, go away." And this was at drop-off time so it was too bad. It was very sad. And the teacher thought she's going to use this as an opportunity to talk to the children about what is kind behavior, welcoming behavior, and what is not. So, the teacher in the middle, Sharon, is setting up the small group activity during what they call chime time, and it's usually a problem solving time so that children come together, they use meditation bell to focus children's attention, and then you'll see her doing some deep breathing. This also has been shortened, and then she's introducing an activity that will help the children differentiate between what is kind and what is not. 

 And I have to apologize for the sound. >> [INAUDIBLE]  >> Notice they're doing their breathing. >> [INAUDIBLE]  >> So she's showing them that one of the trays has a happy face, one has two unhappy faces,  or maybe it's the reverse. And then she's going to act out a scenario with their friends Max and Molly, these two little dolls.  So, I'm going to just narrate this because you're not hearing it I bet, right? So Molly comes in, Max comes over to her and says, "Shut up." And when the kids did this, it was very shocking to hear. There she is. "Shut up." The children then had a chance to pretend they were receiving a certain message like Molly received, like "go away" or "I like you." The children could decide whether that script went on the happy face or the sad face tray. So the children learned to differentiate. And I'm running out of time. Okay, I want to just talk about one more evidence-based practice for promoting literacy, dialogic reading. 

Dialogic reading  was something that was, I want to say invented, or whatever, noticed, by a Grover Whitehurst a long time ago. It really involves interactive reading between an adult and a child where an adult prompts the child to answer questions, to engage in a dialog. And this gives the adult the opportunity to expand children's responses, encourages retelling stories, and children benefit by having their, it reinforces expressive language, children expand their vocabulary, they increase their understanding of what print on a page looks like, and it helps them understand stories, how story components are sequenced. And the questions that dialogic reading involves are close-ended questions, who, what, and where, and open-ended questions, such as what happens next, why, and how. And those questions require more thought to answer. So, I'm going to just give you a little...  I don't know why I can't learn this. What? [INAUDIBLE] >> No, I'll just do this one. This is the story Goodnight, Gorilla where a zookeeper is letting animals inadvertently out of their cage. And dialogic reading is not just reading straightforward through a book, but you'll see, in these next two examples that will be brief, what it involves. 

And I call this the cool dad one.  It's just not moving.  >> [INAUDIBLE]  [LAUGHTER]  >> Okay. This is an example of another dad reading to his children more dialogic reading. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> He's not real gentle. >> [INAUDIBLE]  >> And you can hear how the kids are just imitating his intonation, the words. >> [INAUDIBLE]  [APPLAUSE]