Itinerant assitive technology referral at David and Mary Thompson

Our Assistive Technology referral process is underway and in full swing! Itinerant Resource Teachers (IRTs) have been working with Special Education teachers in a variety of settings providing job-embedded learning opportunities through the co-planning and co-teaching of lessons using assistive technology. In one example, Etienne Mercieca, IRT in the East collaborated with Gosia Lizon, teacher of high school students with developmental disabilities (DD) at David and Mary Thompson. Together, they developed a social skills lesson for Gosia’s students using the Promethean Interactive Whiteboard.  

The lesson was tailored to suit the interests of Gosia’s students by incorporating images of Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, and Rihana, into the ActivInspire flipchart pages.  The lesson also made use of several of the Interactive Whiteboard’s tools such as the sound recorder, containers, and hiding of images. By using the technology to differentiate the lesson, students were immediately engaged and were able to access the knowledge and information that was presented.

See below for some screen images of the activity that was created.

Words to use at school to explore the hidden curriculum such as social communication at school: Thank you. Excuse me. etc.

Students were given engaging images to examine and refer to when determining appropriate social cues at schools, 

Our itinerant referrals are happening throughout the TDSB in both East and West Region schools. See a past A.T. blog post highlighting another referral in a D.D. class (also known as Low Incidence classroom) in a primary class at Clinton P.S.