Someone's URSA Experience 2022

This week I wanted to get a full lesson plan out for one of the first four lessons that I have drafted. I wanted to go over the design lesson (lesson 2) because there are easy and fun activities for all of the students to understand and have some fun with after the lesson. This lesson goes over the design processes engineers go through in their jobs and how products and technology are created. The lesson also goes over the evolution of a design.

Lesson 2: What is Design?

Objective: Learn about all parts of design and how engineers create products and technology. Learn about the different mediums of design and the use of different tools to help engineers design their projects. Students will be able to describe different techniques and their uses. Students will learn the basics of CAD modeling and will practice their skills. Students will be able to talk and know about the process and the steps for design. Students will practice the engineering design process and come up with their own design using the process and present their design and talk about its features, etc.

Learning Activities: Quick lecture on different modeling and design techniques and what uses design has in the engineering world. The lecture will cover different techniques of design and how engineers use them. Slides will be used as visual aids with print-outs for accessible learning. Students will then work on two separate worksheets on the engineering design process and work in the CAD modeling program TinkerCAD.

Student Evaluation: Students will be evaluated by their worksheets and the TinkerCAD build they make on the site after the lesson. The students can make whatever they want but what they make will have to fit into certain requirements such as: the build must have 3 or more components, the build must be less than 3ft in length, the build must have a function, etc. The worksheets will be graded on completion, not correctness.

Timeline: The lesson all together will be 30 minutes. A typical class period is in between 45-60 minutes, so the rest of the class will be spent working on the student practice and the fun activity of basic CAD modelling through TinkerCAD online where the student can build what they want. The lecture itself will be about 15-20 minutes with some breathing room for questions and deeper explanation on certain topics if necessary. The rest of the time on the lesson will be used with either videos of engineers explaining the process further with examples or will be used with a Kahoot quiz on the process and other bits of engineering design.

Student Practice: Students will practice content with design worksheets. The first worksheet is a simple write-in-the-answer practice on design and the design methodology engineers follow. The worksheet will also have a short answer piece where they can explore their own design and follow the engineering design process like an engineer. They can choose what topic they want to use the process on. An example of what this would look like is here. The second worksheet will be where they draw out their design and explain what it is and how it works and what problem it solves. The worksheet will again ask them about the engineering design process and would like something like this. The students will also get some practice with the CAD program TinkerCAD, which is a great introduction to CAD modeling and is relatively simple to use. The students can attempt to make their design on TinkerCAD but are free to choose whatever they would like to model.

That is my lesson plan for that day, later I will add the other lessons when I have time. This is the second to last week of URSA. It has been a long and wonderful journey that I am greatly appreciative for. I have learned so much, and I am so happy that I did this research. It has also helped me confirm one of my passions-teaching. So in light of that, I added the education minor to my degree, and I will eventually receive my teaching certificate and be able to actually be a teacher and maybe even teach this class.

More to come next week,

-Chloe

This week I got a couple of things in terms of work. I finished reading Dr. Temple Grandin’s “Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets for Helping Kids on the Spectrum”, which is all about looking at a child for who they are and removing the stigma and labels that we put on autistic children. I also was able to put together a lesson plan for a week of my class. I decided to go for the robotic and engineering week, with the project being building ‘robotic’ hands out of cardboard, straws, string, and tape. I chose this specific project because it is easy to set up, easy to teach, and a fun introduction to engineering and design.

First, let’s go over the last chapters of “Navigating Autism”. Last week we went over the first three chapters of the book, which included removing the label of ‘autistic’, understanding a child, getting together a team of professionals and informing everyone, and keeping the team updated on any changes to a child’s medical changes or otherwise. The next two chapters were very similar in the fact that they went over what conditions a child might have in conjunction with ASD. Some of these might be GI issues, ADHD, insomnia, and mood disorders such as depression. Children with ASD also might develop PTSD due to bullying or other stressors in their life. It is very important to catch the signs early on with any of these conditions and luckily most symptoms are easy to spot and recognize. The next chapter goes over preparing children for success in the real world. This means teaching children with ASD more social skills, and safety skills, and teaching them hobbies or leisure skills. Hobbies and other ‘unnecessary’ skills are often looked over and most attention is on other skills for the child’s success. However it is important to be balanced and have something you enjoy doing, and this is always going to be the same for a child with ASD. Hobbies can also let a child gain more motor skills depending on the activity. The chapter also says that teaching kids awareness skills and self-advocacy are extremely important, so they can communicate their needs and recognize others as well.

The next chapter goes over-focusing on the strengths of a child rather than their weaknesses. This also includes trying to limit a child’s weaknesses that might affect their ability to do well in life, such as a lack of physical comfort, lack of trust and awareness, and lack of communication skills. The chapter also mentions using a child’s interests to deter and minimize negative behavior. By making something they enjoy a part of their life or using those interests to distract or take focus away from negative things the child can function much better. The last part of the chapter goes over refocusing what may seem like a negative trait into a positive one. The chapter uses the example of Andre, a child with ASD who is extremely interested in the space shuttle. Instead of seeing how focused he is on the shuttle, a teacher can use his strength of knowledge on this topic and form learning to that trait. The other example with Andre is that he has poor handwriting, but instead of looking at this as his fault or that he is sloppy/not trying hard enough, we can look at it as that he may not have enough fine motor skills and then he can be referred to physical therapy to resolve this.

The next chapter goes over what Temple calls ‘the growth zone’. This means helping the child become a functioning person and making sure they have the necessary help and support they need in any part of their life. This also means getting a child out of ‘the fear zone’ where they cannot function happily and healthily. The other zones before the growth zone are the comfort zone and the learning zone. These two may sound good, but a child could very easily get stuck in the same routine and never progress in their comfort zone if everything around them is easy and the same. The learning zone is when a child is learning and adapting to new things or new skills. A child can get to the growth zone when they are able to learn new things and aren’t overwhelmed or distracted by internal or external stressors. This chapter also talks about teaching a child in the way that they think, which they went over briefly before, and is what all of my research so far has suggested. The very last chapter is all about envisioning a successful adulthood for a child with ASD. This basically means getting them to where they need to be for them to be contributing members of society and that they can hold their own and be successful in everything that they do. This also means using all of the mindsets from before and helping a child reach their full potential. The chapter didn’t go over anything that wasn’t mentioned or talked about before, but just wrapped everything up in a neat bow.

Next, let’s look at the lesson plan that I have drafted for the Robotics and Design segment of our class. In this plan, I have tried to draft out all pieces of the multiple lessons that would be taught during the two weeks that the class would theoretically take to finish this topic. I planned out 3 days of lessons and videos on the topic of design and engineering practices, with an extra day afterwards for just careers that are related to engineering and the field in general. The lessons get more in depth each day, but each one lasts no longer than 30 minutes, with extra time at the end of the class period for questions, work, or other activities if a child is all caught up in the classwork (which will be minimal).

As I mentioned before, the first day will just be purely an introduction to the world of engineering. Students will have very minimal notes to take and the majority of the lesson will focus on videos and famous engineering projects and engineers from history. There will be no assigned work on the first day. The second day will focus on design only, with a look ahead piece at the end of the lesson for the next day. The lesson will show the different medias of design, different applications of design, and a small design method worksheet, with the different ways that professionals model and produce ideas for products or otherwise. The next day will have engineering methods as a focus, with videos and information on how products are made, different engineering processes, and the scientific/engineering method. The worksheet for this day will be on road-mapping and designing a product. The students can design a product of their choice and will have to explain in written word what their product is, how it works, and how they designed it. The final fourth day of lessons for this week will be on engineering careers. Now that the students know what goes into engineering and design, they will watch and learn about the different types of engineers, what their job is, and how they got there. The worksheet for this day will be on careers and connecting the job title to the engineer and vice versa. The worksheet will also have a section on what their dream engineering job would look like, and what they learned from this week in the class.

That’s all for this week, and as always, more to come soon.

-Chloe

This week I decided to read and review Dr. Temple Grandin’s book, “Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets to Help Kids on the Spectrum”. I began reading this book instead of the others that I got also written by her because I thought it would be immediate help to both my research and my own way of learning and my outlook on life right now.

As you may know, Dr. Grandin is a celebrated animal science researcher and animal advocate who has written over 60 scientific articles/papers on the humane treatment of livestock and farm animals. She is a very successful person and also has ASD. Her book resonated with me greatly, and I will be taking her advice in my own life, especially when I am thinking about and writing up my lesson plans and my curriculum going forward. The chapters of this book are each of the mindsets that we should use and consider in terms of ASD. The first chapter is all about removing the label of ‘autistic’ from a child. This chapter goes over the harm of thinking of the label of autistic first before thinking of the child. We tend to group symptoms and a child’s personality traits to their ASD, and when we do that we forget that this child is not just ASD. We overlook other things about the child and attribute all of their traits to their condition and we then look at them very critically which leads us to leave out important things. Another tendency that is listed in this first chapter was that we try to explain away data or traits that make us uncomfortable or that are difficult to understand. If a child acts out or does something out of the ordinary, a parent or teacher may tend to group that to something completely unrelated like sugar intake or stress, when the symptom is actually attributed to their environment or something else completely. Removing these ideas and looking at who the child really is will be so much more beneficial. This whole chapter was about recognizing that labels can lead to perceptual errors, and what we see is maybe not the full picture.

The second chapter is about looking at a whole child and their environment. This chapter also looks at making sure a child is healthy and looking at any other possible medical problems. This can include physical and observing them in a natural and comfortable environment. We also should consider how the child presents themselves to you, and how do they talk to you? How are they dressed? Does the child have other tics or vocal abnormalities? Does the child understand gestures? Do they look comfortable? What relaxes them? Are they easily distracted? You should always add as much context as possible as well. Review the data that led you to your conclusions and state that clearly. Every child should have assessments customized uniquely to that child, and the child should be seen in all types of environments and data should be taken from all sources possible. Ask the parents how the child reacts to different situations or stimulants, maybe even ask and see how relatives outside of their normal family unit make the child react. Test scores and percentiles are only a piece of the entire equation, looking at a whole child and making observations on their speech and actions is going to be far more beneficial.

The third chapter goes over what steps should be taken first before an intervention or therapy can begin. Getting a team of doctors and professionals, including parents, teachers, neurologists, or whatever a child may have/need and getting all of these people on the same page and track is the first thing. Its extremely important to keep educators in the loop, and to let them know as much information about ASD and the child as possible. Most educators don’t know the ins and outs of ASD or even the different symptoms. A study in 2017 found that most people (66.7%) knew about autism through a friend or family member who knows about it, and only about a third of teachers had participated in walks and awareness activities. The most shocking number was that only 23% of teachers had obtained their knowledge through formal training or coursework/workshops, and 3.4% of teachers said they had no knowledge about autism at all. They also studied how teachers could identify symptoms and recognize characteristics, with the highest scores being in recognizing basic characteristics at 70%. With questions about interventions, almost 75% of teachers responded ‘I don’t know.

I will be back later this week with the rest of the chapters, I am very excited to see where this book goes next and to have all of these mindsets in my arsenal. I have started the next chapter and so far it is going over the other conditions that are often mixed up with or in conjunction with ASD. There are often other conditions that can mess up treatment or make it more difficult for treatment to succeed well. Some of these can include insomnia, gastrointestinal issues, epilepsy, and other sleep disorders. Because children with ASD can have a hard time communicating pain or other things that may bother them, it is important to recognize the signs that a child may be in distress or discomfort. The next chapter will go over psychological conditions that are also associated with ASD. These may include ADHD/ADD, dyslexia and depression or other mood changing conditions.

More to come soon,

-Chloe

This week I needed to further how the classroom should be run and how each section of the class should be taught and specifically what and how I can change the content to help neurodivergent students succeed in this STEAM-oriented class that I have been working on. Last Friday, I was lucky enough to go to an elementary school here in Corvallis and observe how classrooms are run today and how these kids respond to STEAM activities and notice what I could change in this system to make it better for all of the students. I was also lucky to get 4 amazing books from Dr. Temple Grandin, an extremely successful animal scientist and a person with autism. I started reading her book, ‘Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets for Helping Kids on the Spectrum’. Her books resonated with me in a way that I haven’t had before, and her words were very inspirational to me for this week and for the rest of my time working on this project.

Let’s start with the classroom setup. The goal here is to make a comfortable and warm environment where students can learn without added stressors. A corner or separate closet if possible should be sectioned off as a relaxation area where all students can go a take a break from studying or can go to destress and relax when necessary. This is more of an area for neurodivergent students, so the area should be lit gently and have comfortable seating and toys/gadgets of all sorts for kids to pick up and just play with. This area is not made for students to go play in, however, and is made for students who need breaks. Some good examples of toys to have in the relaxing area are fidget cubes, squishmallows or soft stuffed animals, poppers, and squishy things. These will help students destress and calm down so they can succeed in a safe and comfortable way.

We briefly went over teaching in last week’s post, but let’s get further into the way content is taught. As previously stated, all class materials should be as accessible as possible. This means that any presentations or lessons should have a printed and typed transcript of the lesson. The lessons should be relatively short, lasting less than 30 minutes with extra time in the end for questions and concerns. The lessons also should be taught with as many visuals for examples as possible. Everything should be backed up with examples and whenever possible, the lesson or chapter should end with applications in the real world or career paths that are related to the topic. I found that during the presentation I helped give at the local elementary school here in Corvallis, relating the topic and the content to something tangible, something more than just the product or equation got the kids more interested and let their curiosity wander. After showing them the applications of the drones that we were talking about, they wanted to know about more careers and more things that we could do with the drones. They became utterly fascinated by it. I also found that the kids really enjoyed the example we brought to show them the motion of the forces of drones and the centripetal forces that keep the drone stable while it is in flight. All of the kids wanted to go and I noticed more than a few of them trying to get a second go at the example. While I was there I also noticed that a particular table was the most interested in what we were saying and showing. They seemed to me like they were all neurodivergent in one way or another, and that got me really excited because they were by far the most vocal and focused group out of the entire class. That told me that examples and tangible learning were very useful tools when teaching neurodivergent students. The workshop also showed me that music was also very useful. My mentor played a song on his ukulele and also played some parody songs from YouTube and this got everyone very excited, they seemed like they wanted to hear more songs and I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked their teacher after we left to play more of his songs. I can recall to my own education that music and interactive teaching made the topic, whichever one we were focusing on, much more enjoyable and most of that information that I learned through music or interactively I still remember. This tells me that this class that I am building should have more interactive lessons than anything else. This means songs, videos, tangible examples and more should be used every single day in class.

All in all, this class should feel comforting and fun. We know that play in learning is extremely useful, and we know that feeling comfortable and safe is also conducive to a perfect learning environment. Teaching kids in simple, fun and tangible ways will be better for the children and easier to teach, where there is more room for error and more room for fun for everyone involved. This will be easy for neurodivergent students to understand and get involved more, and it will help the other students have more fun in class and because of this, they will retain the information for longer.

More to come soon,

-Chloe