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Knowing Survival Skills

Martha Lynch
Muncie Elementary School, Kansas City, Kansas

Subject: Special Education
Grade: 1-3

"... we were able to determine that one child has unusual ability hidden under a severe language handicap....By demonstrating the use of photographs and labels, he was also able to convince a school psychologist, principal, social worker and educational coordinator of his ability."

Purpose and Description of Project

Because safety is a priority in the classroom, this project was designed to increase the handicapped students' knowledge of safety procedures they would need to follow at school and in their daily lives. Photos that were taken in conjunction with the safety training unit were then used in class to strengthen oral language, vocabulary, and reading skills. Most of the 6- to 8-year-old students had some type of language handicap.

Activities

The first stage involved trips to all of the students' homes where the educational coordinator for the trainable mentally handicapped photographed family members individually and as a group, the home, and the telephone. Because transportation and scheduling visits proved to be a problem, the students were not able to go along on all these visits. However, they all visited the fire station where pictures were taken of the fire truck, police car, and Care unit.

When the photos were developed, they became the basis of short learning activities. A bilingual program was also developed for her one Spanish-speaking student. The students were assigned to short tasks according to skill level, which made individualization easy. Since the tasks were short, Lynch could involve individuals or small groups of three or four students, thus providing ample opportunities for all to participate.

Among the many activities were these: matching classmates' pictures with the actual persons, matching printed first and last names with pictures, identifying parents and other family members in family group pictures, matching printed family first names with pictures, selecting their own homes from a group of pictures, selecting their addresses to place on their home photos, recognizing their own telephones and placing the correct telephone numbers on the phone pictures, stating their phone number on request, identifying the three types of emergency vehicles they had seen, learning to dial "911" on request, using role-playing to learn to answer the question "What's your emergency?" and sorting the photos of people into categories-e.g., mothers and fathers, men and women, boys and girls.

Materials, Resources, and Expenses

"The families themselves were the main resource for the project along with the emergency vehicles."

While the entire school was supportive, several staff members were actually involved in the project: the educational coordinator, the English as a Second Language (ESL) consultant, and the media center staff.

Outcomes and Adaptability

Each student was given a pre-test at the beginning of the training to see what skills he or she could perform. The list that eventually grew to 104 skills became the basis for the curriculum. Lynch was able to identify a student whose unusual ability was previously hidden under a severe language handicap. The photographs proved to be a highly motivating factor, and the students who usually had short attention spans were very attentive during the training sessions so they wouldn't miss their turns to respond.

Lynch finds her type of curricular activities minimal in cost, easily adaptable to many areas of special education, and very suitable for kindergartners. The program also has potential for use to improve written language skills.

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