Volunteer Workshop 18/3

(author - benedict)

This entry will be about our trip to Grace Orchard School during the March holidays to participate in the workshop they had organized for student volunteers.

Scheduled to start at 2.00pm, the workshop started late at 2.30 as the presenters were not ready to begin yet.

Full attendance, Benjamin & I reaching GOS at 13.30, Isaac at 14.00, and Wen Ye the latest at 14.49.

There was a lot to be learnt from the various presentations which could be used in our lessons themselves, most of which will be addressed later in this entry. In summary, the workshop was mainly comprised of Powerpoint presentations by various speakers, the most prominent one being Ms. Esther Kwan herself. There were a few activities for the participants here and there, though.

Let's begin.

First, Ms. Kwan started us off with icebreakers. She had 18 slides, each differently colored, with letters and numbers (e.g. Red slide with 14C written on it). Her first activity was for the participants to name the order of colors the slides appeared in. After that, she asked us to name the order of the letters.

Ms. Kwan had said that the slides contained much information about the school, but the only thing we could see was that the 18 letters spelled out "Grace Orchard School". She carried on with her presentation without elaborating more on this activity.

Following which, Ms. Kwan spoke a bit about the school's information, such as the amount of students/teachers, et cetera. Much of this had been covered previously in her RES-L presentation back in RI, though.

Next, she went through some developmental disabilities that the students in GOS may possess. She went through a rather long list of disablities and medical conditions, which weren't really relevant to our student group as they didn't possess those symptoms.

More relevant to our choir was the next few presentations by different speakers about Mild Intellectual Disability (MID), Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The speaker for MID covered a section on IQ. She mentioned that the average IQ of the general population was 70 - 130, the "Mensa-type" people >130 (yay), and the people with MID at 55 - 70. She mentioned that these students would have learning difficulties, such as short attention spans, and such.

(actually, I can't remember much of the specifics she gave, so I'll jump straight to the implications and all)

Basically, the group of children that we're working with in our Choir fall into the MID category. Some of them learn faster than others, but that would be natural anyway. So, we would have to vary our lesson outlines and the like to fit in with their learning capacities.

For example, one of the speakers mentioned that these children would learn best through visual aids. These could come in the form of handouts, utilizing the whiteboard, etc. We should be using these things more often in our lessons so that the children can follow us better.

Also, a major issue would be the routines factor. People with autism tend to need a fixed routine to learn well. As such, our lessons will have to have a fixed order which we stick to every week. This was discussed previously in the meeting we had with Ms. Kwan & Ms. Phoon. If there are new elements we would like to bring into our lessons, we'll have to ease the children into them slowly.

To end off, there were a few things I took note of during the presentation(s) - basically things that we could use in our lessons to teach better.

One of the teaching methods was like this:

Revision of Background Knowledge > Discussion > Modelling > Memorizing > Supporting > Independent Practice

... which we will basically be using to teach them new things. Ideally, "Independent Practice" would mean that they can practice what they've learnt on their own, without us beside them to guide them.

Also, a few things that I'd like to mention - points to take note of when we're actually teaching them. These should be common knowledge by now, but there's no harm in repeating it again, right?

Firstly, we have to attract their attention. As our children have rather short attention spans, if we want to teach them anything then we'll have to get them to listen to us first.

Next, we'll have to speak clearly & pause between sentences. From what the speakers have said, the children aren't really into sensory stimuli - they won't understand if you talk like a bullet train. So, enunciate your words clearly and speak slower.

Then, we'll have to monitor their understanding of what we've just taught. Simply put, see if they know what we're talking about - and whether they can put it into practice. After that we repeat the instructions many times, as these children learn better through repetition (correct me if I'm wrong).

That's about it for the workshop - all the learning points.

Lastly, there's also the handout on Volunteer Guidelines that I feel we should all refer to once in awhile to remind ourselves.

Okay, end entry.