Book Review: The Out-of-Sync Child

Title: The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Integration Dysfunction
Author: Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A.

Review:
I had been teaching for 19 years before I ever heard of Sensory Processing Disorder, which is called Sensory Integration Dysfunction in the book (copyright 1998). That is a sad commentary on the press that SPD gets.

Have you ever had a student who grips the pencil too tightly?
Have you ever had a student who is clumsy?
Have you ever had a student who is overly sensitive to sound?
Have you ever had a student who appears to be withdrawn or seclusive in large groups?
Have you ever had a student who is too rough with other kids during recess?
Have you ever had a student who didn't have an inside voice?

There is a chance that student has SPD. Basically, a child who has SPD has one or more senses that are either over-sensitive or under-sensitive, but it goes beyond the five senses we all know and love. Balance, body awareness, and skin are all tied in too. (Technical words: vestibular, proprioceptive, and tactile)

I finally found out about SPD because I had a student whose mother made it her mission to educate his teachers. Sadly, he was on sensory overload all day long at school.  The stress was too overwhelming for him and they had to withdraw him to be homeschooled -- where he is thriving.

SPD can manifest itself a lot like ADHD, but they are two separate entities. Medication does not work with SPD.  A child's best solution is to get connected with an occupational therapist who can help create a sensory diet to give the child coping techniques.

This book is written mainly for parents, and is something of a Bible to those whose kids have SPD. I highly recommend it to teachers so you can better understand some of your students. (It is estimated that up to 16% of all children have some sort of sensory disorder.) A great partner book to this one is The Out of Sync Child Has Fun.

Brian and Friends

I was standing in the atrium of my church, putting on my jacket and looked across the large room. "Is that Brian?" I thought to myself.  With that, I saw him mouth, "Mr. Dunlap?" and he ran across the room to give me a big hug.

Brian was my student 10 years or so ago. (Let's just say he wasn't the easiest student to work with.)

I met his four year old son and we chatted about life. He's an insurance salesman and loving it.  We told stories and laughed. After a few minutes I realized he left behind a gaggle of friends, some of whom also spent time in my room.  Cam and Brian (yes, a different Brian) came to join in. 

It was a great ten minutes or so of telling stories of yesterday and laughing our heads off:

• Cam accidentally walked into a porn site in the computer lab once. Not that I want this to happen to a student, but the whole scenario is a funny story to tell now that it's over.  Immediately, Cam interrupted me. "I'm glad you remember this story too. I've told it a thousand times!" I've never heard it from his perspective. "I was sure I was going to jail!" Hilarious!
• We laughed about how Brian (#1) could always get out of trouble with a wide smile and a goofy excuse. ("Sorry. I'm just really excited to go to Eli's house after school today.") I admitted to him that I would send him to the office with a note that said, "Brian needs to take a walk."
• Brian (#2) told us how teachers would skip sending him to the elementary principal's office.  Instead we would send him straight to his dad who was our high school principal (and a very intimidating man, I might add).

I've been fortunate that my entire teaching career has been in relatively small schools.  I've been able to watch kids grow up to be adults. I've taught their siblings. I get to know their parents and call them friends. We've been to weddings and held babies and now call many of those "kids" our friends.

It's definitely rewarding to see a former student "make it" in the career of his or her choosing, but it's also equally rewarding to get a hug and share some laughs as equals with those "kids" too.

Call of Duty

I work with fifth graders at my church. As I sat in a circle with five boys (two of which were new to the group), can you guess their common ground? No, it wasn't the love of Jesus or basketball.

It started when Silas started talking about playing Call of Duty over the weekend. Very quickly the conversation started spinning around teleporting hell hounds and how best to knock of guys with riot shields.  And I was lost.

While I don't advocate 10 year old children playing first person shooter games, I couldn't help but think that we're missing something in our education system.  I haven't gotten on the gamification bandwagon, and I am fairly certain I will be run out of town chased by torches and pitchforks if I suggest it, but I got to wondering.  If we asked our students to honestly tell us what their favorite thing in all the world, what would it be?  Studying history? Reading a fiction book? Doing math problems?  Sure. There will be a few who lean that direction.  However, I daresay that the vast majority will answer with video games or sports.

All this to make me ponder... How do we meld the two worlds?

A Quarter of Innovation

My middle school technology wrapped up their latest Innovation Projects this past week. Since this is a semester course, it was their first round of innovating.  Since I love to showcase student work on this blog, please click the links as you are interested!

Waite used his Lego skills to create a Star Wars stop motion video. He admitted to me in the proposal stage that he was familiar with stop motion, but he wanted to learn how to edit and insert sounds.  

Kate wanted to learn about the Revolutionary War and presented that knowledge in her first ever blog. She did a great job of including pictures, quotes, and her own narrative. 

Connor has taken my class before and his first Innovation Project was a web site displaying his graffiti art.  This project was another web site about another hobby -- knife flipping.  He included videos of his tricks plus lots of text about the tricks and the history of the knife brand he uses. 

Daniel started this project with the goal of creating his own video game using C++.  It wasn't long into the project that he realized he was in over his head and we shifted the focus. He is now enjoying teaching himself Java and will eventually grow into the bigger stuff. He created a video to show off his newfound skills.

Dom is sports monster. I would not be surprised if you hear his name in college and pro ranks down the road.  He took his love of sports and created a highlight reel of our school's middle school football team.  

Drew has also taken this class. Last year, he created his own song on Garage Band.  This year, he wanted to try his hand at MineCraft. Actually, he used an app called Eden that I'm not familiar with and recreated MetLife Stadium, where the New York Giants and Jets play football. 

Sam wanted to learn MineCraft and did so by creating a pyramid with a maze inside to hide the treasure.  He ran into some troubles, mainly because he built the pyramid in the air. His final project include a few smaller pyramids around the main one, and I must say it looked great overall.

Justin also wanted to learn MineCraft and attempted to build the Empire State Building. Sadly, he learned a lot about MineCraft crashing on him.  He wound up with no final product to show us, but talked about the things he did accomplish and learn.  I tried to encourage him that sometimes bad things happen and what counts is how we learn from them. 

Jacob has had some MineCraft experience but really wanted to branch out.  He created his own working amusement park. (Keep in mind that I had a group of four students do this project last semester.)  His final presentation was a video taking us through the amusement park. The video is awesome, and I'll link it here when I finally get it uploaded to YouTube. 

Cooper walked us through a video game called Killer Instinct. Obviously, with a name like this, I was concerned about promoting violent video games within the school context. We agreed on a T for Teen version and to keep the violence to a minimum. Cooper did not want his work posted online, but he talked us through the history of the game and some playing tips, then presented a video showing us how to play the game. 

Matthew did something similar playing a game called Skyrim. His final project was to talk to us about the history of the game, show some playing tips, and walk us through a video of how to play the game (keeping the violence to a minimum).

Overall, I'm quite proud of these students for the hard work they put into these awesome projects. I hope you enjoy them.  Feel free to drop them a note on their product, or send me a message, to tell them how awesome they were!

Photo Dictionary, Spring 2014

About a year ago, I was lesson planning for kindergarten and ran across an online photographic dictionary, and I realized that this was a project my middle school students could do.  I've tweaked it a bit since then, but we've done it three times now.

Here is the task:

• Get into groups.
• Create a series of web pages to form a "book" that is easily navigable.
• Each page needs a letter, word, picture, definition, and sentence.
• The picture had to be taken by a group member. 

Here are three of the final projects. What do you think?

• Daniel, Justin, Kate
• Connor, Drew, Matthew
• Dominic, Jacob, Waite

Help! My #MineCraft Project Disappeared!

Justin has been working merrily on rebuilding the Empire State Building on MineCraft during his Innovation Project time. With one week before the due date, he came to me to tell me it's gone.

I know nothing about MineCraft, so I can't help him.  I have questions. Can you help me with answers?

• Is this typical? 
• How does this happen?
• Is it possible to retrieve his project?
• How do we fix it?

Thanks for your help! Justin thanks you for your help!

Could You Please Generate Me an Exercise?

On three separate occasions this past week, I heard some very odd words from students.  "Could you please generate me an exercise?" In essence, these kids were telling me, "I think I need a bit more practice on this skill before I can master it."

When was the last time one of your math students asked you for an additional six problems on their homework?

I spent some time in third grade, helping the teacher learn the ropes of Accelerated Math, and couldn't complete a sentence. The kids kept bringing their iPads up to her to show her their score. "Look! I got a 5 out of 5!"

There is something about AM that just works. Maybe it's the instant feedback or the individual pacing. Maybe it's progression toward a goal. I don't know. 

What I do know is that I'm seeing some great student motivation grow out of Accelerated Math. It's a good thing!