Someone's URSA Experience 2022

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