12: Implementing Group Sessions
Kimmy talks about the benefits of group sessions for students. She answers questions, gives tips, and talks about the logistics of making group sessions work.
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episode 12: Implementing Group Sessions
Transcript
Intro: Welcome to the TOD Podcast, or as we like to say, the “TOD POD.” We chat about all things Deaf Education while you drive around. I’m Kimmy from The Hard of Hearing Teacher and I’m Deanna from Listening Fun, and let’s get started!
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D: So today we're going to talk about doing group sessions with your students. If you've never done group sessions or it’s something you've thought about doing, we're going to talk about what it can look like. I haven't been able to do this logistically with my students, but Kimmy has. So I'm excited to hear about how she uses groups to help her students.
K: I LOVE group sessions for all ages, I think there are so many benefits for the students and honestly there's a few benefits for the TOD too. So I'm really excited to talk about this today.
D: Let's start with talking about what kinds of students you would group together. If you've done groups with like a big age difference, what was the age difference? And like how do you decide if a group is worth it with the big age difference? Like I just want to hear like the logistics of how you make this work.
K: Right. So the biggest age gap I've worked with in a group that was just a hearing service group, because I've done collaborative groups too, but that's a whole separate thing. For just a hearing group, the biggest difference was one grade level apart. But honestly, just because that's how it worked out like those were the students that I had. I would do a bigger age gap if it worked out that way. But students can be a couple of grades apart. It really depends on the students' personalities, their levels, their needs. If you have multiple students in the same school that are roughly on the same level, that can be grade level, language level, listening ability, if they're working on similar skills, they may be great in a group together. And if the students are a little bit apart in age, you can have like one student be a model for the other student, you can differentiate. So it's okay, if they're not exactly the same or if they're not working on exactly the same skills, you can still make this work in a few different ways.
K: If you're having the older student or like the more advanced student be a model sometimes just exposing the younger student to those skills can be really beneficial. You're exposing them to an older student who has hearing loss too and that can be really great for their self-esteem. And if you're doing it this way, using one student as a model, it's also a great way to see that student apply their knowledge and informally assess their progress, see where their gaps are when they're trying to explain something or when they're showing the other student, um, how to do whatever you're working on. And as a general rule of thumb you want the students to have just something in common so that they're all able to get value out of the same activity. So I would suggest deciding on groups on a school-year basis and letting the IEP team know that the service duration is through the end of the school year, that's what everyone would agree to and that's also contingent upon there being an appropriate group available that year and the next year.
D: When you have students in a group, what kind of skills do you work on typically?
K: Group sessions are great for working on multiple skills at once. I've worked on social skills, expressive and receptive language, self-advocacy, and listening skills all at one time, you can pretty much hit them all in a group session. Also we had the whole episode on teaching versus testing. And if finding a balance feels challenging for you, if you feel like you spend too much time taking data and not enough time modeling or teaching skills, group sessions kind of force you into a teaching only mode. In my experience, it's harder to take data during group sessions. I use group sessions pretty much only for teaching and for anecdotal notes. I had one exception because there's always an exception. I had a student who we were very explicitly working on communication repair with peers. This was something I noticed in her observations that was lacking. So in our group sessions that was one of their goals that I tracked data on. And I used group sessions to do that and it was listed in the IEP that way that I would be tracking that data during group sessions. But that was kind of a unique case and because that data was, it wasn't trial based, like "how many right out of this list of words" it was "if there's an opportunity for communication repair, did the student attempt to repair the situation independently or with support" and tracking that goal and progress worked really well with a group because there are plenty of opportunities for me to observe the student and take data but also use some of those opportunities to model and give the student a chance to practice in a safe space. But mostly I used group sessions just for that teaching aspect. So for all the other students, this was where we really worked on practicing those skills in a safe space and it's okay if we have to go back and try again because everyone in the group is working on different things and also going back and trying again.
D: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially working on like those self-advocacy skills like communication repair in a group because it's kind of a nice middle ground of individually just like role playing and whole class doing it in real life like it gives you an opportunity to practice with like real peers but peers who understand why you're doing what you're doing. So…
K: Exactly.
D: …I kind of like that middle-ground area. Um, could you tell me about some more specific activities that you would do in groups?
K: In groups I try to use activities that give students natural opportunities to interact with each other. If all the students are working on or in need of practice on a particular skill, I might mix it up and throw in some targeted activities. But overall I'm focusing on language in social settings, building vocabulary, and adding to our toolbox of self-advocacy skills. I found that board games, science experiments, and crafts are all really great for elementary age students. And honestly I feel like I could do a whole episode on group activities. So maybe I'll save all the details for later but, for the most part the activities should be highly interactive among the students with less teacher involvement.
D: What about for older students? Did you find groups worked for them too or is this something that mostly worked well for your younger students?
K: I also use groups with my older students. For me it just worked out that my middle schoolers could have a group and my high schoolers couldn't just where I was. But I talked about this a little in the engaging middle schoolers episode, using groups with older students. My middle schoolers who were in a group together were both working on similar self-advocacy skills. They are both quiet and a bit self-conscious about their equipment, and some of the things we would do in our sessions especially early on were play games. So kind of similar to the elementary but just on a higher level. We played all sorts of board games, group games, get-to-know-you games. In the beginning, it was just to get comfortable with each other. And I would play the games with them too because these students also needed to get comfortable with me in their awkward middle school phase. So we played easy things like Uno, Two Truths and a Lie, Sorry!, Trouble. And then we started moving into things that involved more targeted skills. For middle schoolers, I've talked about Gimkit before, but it's a really good one. I can type in the word self-advocacy or Hard of Hearing and the games, they can play the games together like they both log on kind of like Kahoot but they play the games together that way. And after they got comfortable with each other, we played these skill-based games more or did workbooks and packets that were focused on particular skills and they could talk about what worked in their classes and what didn't and give each other advice and it worked out really well that way.
D: Yeah I can see a lot of like how this would be beneficial but my overwhelming question is like how do you put all this in the IEP? Like I could just think of like so many like issues related to putting in like such a specific group because there's probably like at most like one or two other people who could be in the group and I guess they all have to agree to be in the group and then you have to get your supervisor to agree to have extra services in a group. So like I'm totally on board I think it's a great idea. How do you write these group services in the IEP? Like how does that impact their service times?
K: So when I added a group service, for my students, it usually didn't mean that I was replacing sessions and I definitely wasn't replacing like all of their sessions with group sessions. Usually, it was more I'm adding on, like once a month we're adding a group session. Or if I had a few students that had weekly sessions and they were doing- they're making a lot of progress in their individual sessions, they were in the same school, in similar grades working on similar skills, and we were able to take one of their weekly sessions and replace it with a group session. So they still had three individual sessions a month and one group session. But it was adding so much value that we weren't taking away and it didn't make sense to like pull them out of class for a fifth time during the month. So I always included it as a separate service line. If a student has group services and individual services, those are on separate lines in their related service section so that the service times don't affect one another they're like completely separate services just both provided by me or by the TOD. And I would never do a push-in or observation during a group session. Even if they're in the same class unless I'm regularly doing push-ins, and group pullouts, and individual pullouts. But that only happens if it's really high frequency like if they're in, for me the students that were in a program in the same school, but like we've talked about in the past if they're getting that much service time, placement really should be a consideration and this was a special placement.
K: Anyway, using group sessions for push-ins kind of defeats the purpose. So the students should be interacting and building community. That's the purpose of being in a group. If the students are in the same class and I do a push-in or observation in that class for one of the students, if that's part of their individual services, I can still bring that up, like whatever I observed, whatever vocabulary they were using, if there was a situation that occurred with the other student, we can still talk about that in our group sessions because it's something we all had in common, we all saw it, we were all there for it, and it can be kind of a discussion starter.
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K: This episode is brought to you by the Itinerant Caseload Planner from The Hard of Hearing Teacher. If you're looking for a way to manage your crazy caseload, I have a time-saving, auto-calculating, all-in-one solution just for you. My digital planner will help streamline your planning process and simplify your data collection. With all of the student's sheets linked together, you can find information quickly. Get started organizing your caseload at the link in the show notes and at listentotodpod.com . Now let's get back to the show.
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D: What about on the parent end? I've had parents pushback on like in an IEP meeting on the group speech, for example, wanting individual speech instead. So have you ever had a parent pushback saying they want individual and not group for TOD as well?
K: I've never personally had this happen. When I was proposing to add a group session to an IEP, I always led with why I thought it would be beneficial for the student. And like I said before, rarely replacing any individual services with a group session unless it's like that once a month out of their weekly services. But I've never encountered any issues with this either like that one replacement. I think you have to feel the parents out if you can. If you really feel a group session will be beneficial, but the parents don't want to replace any sessions with a group session and that's what you proposed, you can discuss with the team about adding a group session for just that student. Because you don't have to add it for both students because their services are still completely separate. And group sessions are also more effective, cost effective for school districts. So I've never had an issue there either. They're very unlikely to argue a group session. It's just really beneficial for everyone involved if there's a need for the student to be in a group if that's going to be beneficial for them which, in my opinion, almost all students receding TOD Services who can use expressive and receptive language, can benefit from group sessions because they're able to apply skills with their peers and you're kind of moderating and supporting the use of those skills in a safe space like those communication repair and self-advocacy skills. And every child can benefit from community and not feeling alone, especially with such a low-incidence disability. So I feel like when you bring up all of that to the parents, there's really no negatives involved, you're really just trying to add more value for their child. And I've never had pushback on that.
D: Yeah, that makes sense to me, but just playing Devil's advocate here's another question for you, because I can just I can just picture some of the admin I work with like asking me these things, so I just want to like flesh it all out with you here so we have all the answers. What happens if the student or a student leaves the school, and you no longer have a group, like now you're out of compliance, like what do you do then?
K: In this case, you have to regroup with the IEP team immediately, of the student who's still there, and you have to take it off the IEP. So when I add groups to an IEP, I always make sure that everyone on the team, the parents, my supervisor, the district, that everyone knows that the group sessions are contingent on there being another student, at least one other student, available for the group. So as long as we have enough students then we'll do the group. And if not then we have to take it off the IEP and I always make sure we talk about that when we add it so that if we have to take it off, it's not like a big surprise like everyone knows that that was part of making that happen. I've never had anyone on the team have any issues with this and I have had a take a group service off of an IEP because one of the students moved up to the middle school from the elementary school and we just made that change at the end of the school year. Made sure everyone knew it was happening. I think communication is just really important and being transparent.
D: And what do you do if a student is absent? Does it now count as an individual session? How do you do make-ups? Like what about that... Sorry I have a lot of questions.... [laughs]
K: No, that's a good one. That's a good one. Uh, that's a little tricky because you do need at least two students in a session for it to count as a group. Because you can't have a group if it's an individual. Um, for the times when I only had one student available, if I had to do a makeup session with that student great like they're already on my schedule, they're there. We can do our individual makeup session. Totally cool. If not, I do suggest prioritizing group makeup sessions because they're obviously trickier to schedule because you have multiple schedules. But honestly, I didn't have this happen too much, especially if the students are in the same grade or back-to-back grades. They're typically unavailable for the same like special events or holidays. So if the students are just unavailable, most of the time they both are or they all are so I don't really have that come up that much. But if a student is absent and there's only one student available for the group, you do need to make it up. But I would just prioritize it because you want to make sure that you get that in as soon as you can.
D: Got it. Okay, last one. If I want to convince like my supervisor or my admin to do this, what language can I use to describe the benefits of group sessions for TOD services?
K: So in addition to everything we just talked about [laughs], groups give students a sense of community. Groups are used often in speech therapy because it can be helpful for students to have language models, build social skills, feel less alone, and work on natural skills in the context of actual interactions with their peers. So I feel like if you're bringing this up to your supervisor you can use that speech model as an example of how it works. And, honestly, if you're not trying to reduce a student's services for your own like scheduling benefit then there's really only positives. Like if you can lay out the positives for the student or students involved, I don't really see why there would be an issue.
D: Awesome! Thanks so much Kimmy for sharing all about groups. I think it's really interesting because it's not something all of us have done or been able to do. But we're very curious to hear your thoughts on groups, if you've done them, if you've tried them, if you want to try them. You can share your thoughts with us on Instagram @ListeningFun and @TheHardOfHearingTeacher. Show notes and a full transcript for this episode can be found at listentotodpod.com. Have a great week!
Both: Bye!