Here is another post following up on the all-important retrieval practice – a learning strategy where the student tries to recall information from memory. It’s effectiveness and variations have been explained in this book Make It Stick by Peter Brown, et al. See this previous blog post for more information.
Rule the School’s mission is to foster the independence of students with hearing loss through self-advocacy. To that end several products have been developed in the format of bingo or tictactoe games to use as a brain-based way for kids to learn and practice this highly functional vocabulary. They can also serve as retrieval practice.
Students with hearing loss are guaranteed the right under IDEA 2004 to have the same access as their typical hearing classmates to their school environment. One support to achieve that is through the use of amplification. But what happens when the amplification is not working? Does the student know what to do? Does the student know how to troubleshoot her amplification to help maintain that access? Does the student know how to inform an adult of amplification difficulties? Many, many professionals assume that a student automatically knows this information. However, that is not the case. I have had the following same answer from many new hearing aid users. When I ask what he should do if the hearing aid is not working, he responds “Tell mom when I get home” because he has no other ideas of what to do. These skills must be explicitly taught.
Each product teaches the names and functions of the parts and includes directions and variations on ways to play for a multitude of forms of retrieval practice!
Each of these games will be on sale in TeachersPayTeachers for 20% off October 11-14th.