18: Strategies for Pushing In
Some ideas for pushing into the classroom to support self-advocacy, listening, and language skills!
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transcript episode 18: STRATEGIES FOR PUSHING IN
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Hello welcome to the TOD POD, a podcast to support itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing, SLPs, and other deaf education professionals! I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fun and today we're going to talk about strategies for pushing into the classroom to support our DHH students.
I do think this is one of those things where people are going to have different styles and personalities and that’s going to impact their comfort level with this. Also, it totally varies on the student’s comfort level with you being there. So this is coming from a place of here are some ways this has looked for me in the past, what’s worked, what hasn’t - take what you like and leave the rest.
First, most important I think, I almost always write my Teacher of the Deaf Service in the IEP as location flexible. I know all districts like to word things like differently but however you can put it so that sometimes you can pull out individually and sometimes you can push into the classroom, I find that to be the best situation. I’ve seen this question in the TOD Community facebook group - how do you know if you should put a service as individual pull out or push in? And I feel like most kids could really use both. You don’t know like what's gonna make sense for that student until you see them in their classroom with that particular dynamic, how their doing, there's a lot of factors, so if you can write it as flexible I would highly recommend doing that. And a lot of my suggestions are of kind of based on that being the case.
It also gives you the flexibility for pushing in for part of the session and pulling for part of the session and I think that just makes everything a lot easier. So that’s like my most helpful tip.
OK let’s start with pushing in to elementary classes first- because I think these are the easiest. They're not embarrassed by you being there yet, and there’s probably lots of adults in and out anyway, so it's a little more low stress.
I usually offer to the teacher that I can be available when I am in the room to take a small group, especially if they are doing any type of reading or math center. That way I can lead the small group with my student in it and support them, but I’m not singling them out. It’s also good for them to see me supporting other students in the same way I support them, answering questions, clarifying vocabulary, scaffolding their skills, etc. It’s a good way to check in on any vocabulary that needs to be reviewed, maybe at our next session that I’ll pull, um that's why I like the flexibility, and when you’re in the class for a whole period, usually it gives me a good sense of what is coming next and then I can also preview vocabulary. Sometimes I think pushing in and figuring out for myself what is coming up is just more efficient than always asking the teacher for a list of vocabulary to preview. I can do that too, but I think they do appreciate when I take a little initiative and just figure it out because I'm in the classroom and I generally know what comes after each skill.
Another thing I like to do in groups, during group work, or during lunch activities is to model communication repair strategies. So if someone says something to me, I can model saying, “What did you say about the book?” or “Can you look at me so I can hear you better?” This works really well if you’re working on those communication repair strategies with your student during your individual sessions and then you can reflect on it next time. So I like to model the skill when I'm in a group.
Let’s say I’m there during a whole group lesson. I can’t actively be teaching my student because the teacher is talking. For students who need a lot of vocabulary support, I like to have a little whiteboard on my lap and write down words that I think we might need to review before my student moves onto the next step. Usually the teacher like speaks for a little bit and then the students have to do something, so in that transition I can go over the words or the directions, using the whiteboard as a visual, before my student starts the activity. It’s a way to check for comprehension and also provide an extra visual for the directions or the content, using my whiteboard it's very flexible.
If there is a challenging activity, or an activity that I think I can embed other listening goals into, I might push in for the mini lesson and instructions and then pull to the back of the room or to a different room if possible to work on the activity with the student individually. I find it really helpful to be there for the preceding lesson so that I can use the same words as the teacher, make sure I actually understand what they are doing, and provide support that’s relevant to the classroom. So this is where I think that flexibility is really key because it makes sense for me to push in maybe for the first half of the period and then pull if I think they're going to need more support than I can provide in the classroom.
Alright let’s talk about older students now.
If a student is really embarrassed about me being there- I just won’t push in, like it's not that big a deal. I will just set up a system with them to pull them to a location to work with me independently and privately. You know that's fine. The other option is to let them know I will, I can observe their class on certain days but I won’t talk to them [laughs]. I will set aside that time specifically to observe the class. I am observing them, but also the classroom acoustics, making sure the accommodations are being used. And I always let the teacher know that if anyone asks, I am just a teacher observing the class for the period. I don’t get into more specifics, I mean obviously the teacher knows who I am, but I tell her to just say that I'm a teacher. The other children, the other students don't really need to know more than that because its not really any of their business, and our students have a right to their privacy regarding their services. I can also email the student after so if I observe something then we can talk about it via email if they're more comfortable that way. Or if our next session is a pull out, then I can just take notes then at our next session and reflect on it together.
Sometimes for my once a month students, depending on how much support they need, I might alternate between observing them and meeting with them- that way I can see a few different classes, and then we have the chance to reflect together as well. It really depends on the student and their schedule. Sometimes I feel like having some time just to observe is a good way to look at their generalizing of skills without embarassing them. So just an option to think about.
I feel like in middle school it's kind of a middle ground between the two things I've talked about so far. For some classes, I will ask the teacher if it’s okay if I walk around and help. Sometimes I will get into the routine of pushing into certain classes regularly, if the student needs the extra help in that class. I have had students with higher service frequencies, like two or three times a week, where I can push into ELA every Monday, for example, and still be able to push into other classes at other times. So if I can set up a familiarity with that class and teacher, it makes it easier to join the class more organically. Sometimes I may sit near my student if they’re cool with that, other times I walk around and help other students. I almost always take notes on my observations of the student, how they interact with the teacher, their peers, their level of participation, their ability to troubleshoot equipment, if they ask questions when they are confused, all that good stuff.
Ok, next I wanted to give some examples of things I have done in the past to support different types of goals. If a student has a vocabulary goal, I can pull words straight from the classroom activities. I try to pick the most functional words- either from the directions or the words that are necessary to understand in order to complete the activity. So for example, I had a student who was working on like a webquest type of activity about natural resources. The students were allowed to work in pairs, so I had the opportunity to sit with them and a peer and a table and talk about the activity. I said- before we get started- have you heard that word “resources” before? And the three of us had a brief conversation about the word resources, where we saw it in the activity, and came up with a basic definition of “things that can be used”, and then we established that natural resources are “things from nature that can be used” and then they began working on the activity. So yes this took a little longer than if we just jumped right in, but I just had a feeling that my student who needs regular vocabulary support, did not understand that word resources and was going to have a hard time doing that activity without that pre-knowledge. So I was able to support this in the activity, in the moment, so that she could do the activity with less support from me because I kind of like front-loaded the vocabulary instruction.
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Alright the next scenario- a pragmatic language goal. I personally see these mostly in preschool students, but also sometimes older students too. For younger students, I like to push in during centers. It’s the easiest time to work on pragmatic language it comes up like naturally you can just join a small group pretty easily. You don’t even need to set up situations, they just come up as kids play and work together, and you can support them through it, model appropriate language, and identify peer language models. For example, if the student tries to grab something from another child, I will intervene and I'll model appropriate language to ask for it, and then I'll help them navigate that peer interaction. If the other child says sure here, we can say thank you. If they other child says no, then we respect their no and we work on waiting our turn. So lots of work to be done there [laughs].
For older students, I sometimes have pushed in during specials like library or art. Anything that is not too loud but also allows for a lot of peer to peer conversation. Not gym. I hated gym in school and I hate gym now and the acoustics are terrible anyway so... If they are in an engineering elective, or something like that, those are great because they’re almost always group projects so lots of pragmatic language there. Science labs can be great for this too. Just like thinking about if you cycled through the classes - ones that have a lot of group work. Pragmatics for this age, like older students, might look more like, not interrupting another speaker, staying on topic and making appropriate comments, just generally being kind to others, voicing disagreement appropriately, etc. I feel like pushing in will give you an idea of what pragmatic skills the student needs help with specifically. I don’t usually correct them in the moment like I do with preschoolers because that would not be pragmatically appropriate for me to do- unless of course they are being really rude and I have to say something as an adult. But generally I just keep some notes and then in my next session, individually, privately, we can go over some specific strategies, maybe role play it, practice it, maybe come up with some type of signal for when I want to remind them to do this in the classroom, kinda depends on the student and their age, and then when I push in again we see if we can apply it. I find the back and forth flow between pushing in and individual sessions to be really valuable in balancing a student’s privacy and dignity and the ability to practice these skills in real life.
For self-advocacy goals- I use push in time to observe the student and gather data on their advocacy skills - you can see last week’s episode on using rubrics to gather self-advocacy data for a in depth review of that but I find it really helpful similarly to like teach the skill and then practice it in the classroom and then use the rubrics to collect data.
When it comes to equipment, I find it really valuable for teaching students how to troubleshoot their devices. You can help them in real time learn how to deal with various issues that pop up. And then you can even ask them- if I wasn’t here, what would you try first. And then after we figure it out, maybe they write down the steps in their phone or a notebook so they can refer back to it next time. So it's not so much about me being there to fix it, it's how can I use this time to teach them to take ownership of this the next time it happens.
Sometimes I can also push in at the beginning or end of the day to help the student start to take more ownership of their equipment, like setting it up and putting it away, learning to put their receivers on- if they still have those- learning to connect the HAT system, plugging it back in at the end of the day, that kind of stuff.
I also use pushing in as an opportunity to model the self-advocacy behaviors I would like to see them do. So if I am listening to the teacher talk and I can see on my student’s face that they're perhaps a little puzzled, I can raise my hand and ask- “Can you repeat that last part again- I am not sure I understood it?” Something like that. Usually the teachers know the student has a self-advocacy goal so they are not surprised that I am doing this. But it's good for them to see an example of what it looks like outside of just talking about it.
For listening goals- these are the ones I address while pushing in the least. That is because most of the time, I am wanting to work on new listening skills in quiet and that’s just not possible a lot of times in the classroom. Sometimes if I am already pushing in, I'll incorporate some little listening activities here and there. A few things I've done in the past into classroom activities. A few things I’ve done in the past- during a math activity I told the student I will tell you the numbers and you write them in your notebook- and I worked on chunking the numbers so they could increase their auditory memory from 4 to 5 numbers, something like that. Works really good if they're working on place value cause the numbers are really big. In ELA, if it’s not a reading comprehension activity specifically, I might read the passage aloud to the student and then we discuss it verbally so that it adds some listening comprehension practice in addition to whatever skill the activity is actually targeting. I’ve also given silly directions during breaks like- pat your head and touch your nose at the same time, and then they can give me a silly direction back.
The only listening goals I have pushed in for specifically are listening in background noise goals. There’s levels of listening in background noise. Ranging from quiet music, louder music, music with lyrics, conversation, etc. so loud conversation in a classroom is pretty hard, and I wouldn’t go like straight to that from quiet, but if they have worked their way up and it’s appropriate, I might push into a class specifically to practice conversing or following directions in background noise. When I have done this, I have used the HAT system as like a crutch, so that I could speak to them clearly and then mute it when I purposefully wanted to work on listening in background noise. I never recommend the teacher do this, it’s specifically for us to practice the skill of listening in background noise. And I never challenge listening skills with new content. So you can't challenge listening skills AND have challenging content, because it's too much for the brain to process. So I like to do it during more like low key class periods like art is usually a good one cause it's usally pretty loud and you can have conversations and practice listening in background noise but they're not learning new vocabulary necessarily.
So yeah- that’s usually what I do when I am pushing in! Long story short- I regularly alternate between pushing in and pulling out so I can target skills and reflect on things I notice in the classroom; I integrate myself as much as possible or I be totally hands off and just observe; I work on language and vocabulary, pragmatics, or self-advocacy and sometimes listening. I’ll put the link to the rubrics I mentioned for observing self-advocacy skills in the show notes. And I’d love to hear what you guys do when you push in- I’ll make a post in the TOD Community facebook group so we can discuss, please feel free to share any ideas there, or DM me on Instagram @ListeningFun. And I’ll talk to you next week, have a fantastic day! Bye!
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