Blogging would be a great Start in an Alternative Ed Program!

I enjoyed this week’s blog prompt because it made me think about what I would do if I was back in the classroom!  I would love to try blogging with my students who have specialized needs utilizing Google classroom to facilitate this.

The project that +Jessica Hodsman and I are working on is geared toward students who are in the Vocational Alternative Program (VAP).  Students who qualify to participate in this VAP program are students who are unable to meet the learning objectives of the secondary level regular education program even after the adaptive dimension has been applied extensively.  The student must also be diagnosed with an intellectual disability and/or be four or more grade levels behind peers academically.  Students in this particular cohort have a great deal of difficulty with expressive and receptive communication so this particular blog prompt made me think about what type of student/student-instructor interactions would best fit.

I think I would be comfortable starting with blogging because it is similar to journaling.  When I was in the classroom, I would journal with students in the morning and at the end of the day.  This journal would typically start with a prompt and depending on the level of the student, I would have to adapt to the students’ needs.  For example, I would start a prompt that was fairly general and then with each student I would adjust to where they are at.  Some prompting could go as far as a whole sentence and then leaving a blank so that the student would have to come up with one word to finish off the sentence.  The range of students is our program is so wide – we have students who cannot write a word (non-verbal) or who may use their own assistive technology to communicate.  Basically, we have to adjust everything we do in our classrooms which we can do because we have 12-15 students and therefore can adjust.  However, i think students would love the opportunity to blog as it seems whenever they get the opportunity to use technology, they really enjoy it!!

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