400 to go! Not that I will leave my internship at the end of them, I'm there until June. It will just be nice to have one more requirement done for this program.
Classes for the final semester have started and I am quickly finding out that this semester I won't be going to class very often. Most of the classes meet at most once a month! I've returned to my previous thesis plan, with some tweaks. I am going to present my intervention kids data at my Thursday/Friday sights instead of my other school. So that will mean I need to adjust my previously written lit review a smidgeon as the intervention curriculum is different. No biggie.
My internship class is meeting pretty infrequently too, which I love. When I was doing practicum we had to meet weekly - dumb because most of us were only doing 1 to 2 days of practicum a week and so we really didn't have much to say. When we started internship we were still meeting at least every other week. The Prof would stare at us and expect us to come in with stories or problems that needed to be dealt with. Problem was there really wasn't much to say! We'd end up sitting and staring at each other for the couple hours we had to warm the classroom seats!
I oddly enough don't have much to write about this week. Having Monday off kinda threw off my entire schedule, so I've been just trying to get some things caught up this week rather than starting on anything new as I knew I wouldn't be able to get too far.
Showing posts with label Thesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thesis. Show all posts
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Christmas Break
This is just another reason to add onto my list of loves of the world of School Psychology: Christmas Break! It has been a fabulous, rejuvenating, and relaxing two weeks. Got to go out of town for five days with Mr. Z and my fam to play in the snow, then I still had so much time when I got back. I have watched at least 15 movies, read 4 novels, and taken a bunch of naps! Awesomeness. Mr. Z tells me that Christmas break for him is the half-way point. It's like a reward to making it through the first half of the year. Whatever it is, I like it!
Tomorrow I head back to internship. I don't know if I can say I have reached the level of competency that I had hoped to be at this point of my internship. I think I am close though. I had hoped to be a higher level of independence, but perhaps I had too high of expectations for myself (it wouldn't be the first time.) I am lucky to have the supervisors that I have, and I am getting another one this month as my horizons spread to include junior high as well as elementary. I am looking forward to it, and not trying to overwhelm myself with all the things I have coming up. But as in 17 weeks I will be graduating, there is quite a bit of stuff to do. I need to figure out what exactly I am doing for my research project: I have 3 ideas, but I wont pick one until I get the syllabus for my class that starts next week. I want to know what the specifics are for the project before I start any work on it. But I have in my mind 3 easy research projects, 2 of which I was going to be doing anyway (case study on my BICM kid, and a social skills group) so that would just mean I would need to collect data and figure out a pre and post test/measurement for my social skills kids, which is totally doable. My problem is that I need to know if I will have to do the whole IRB thing, which, if so will mess up my 17 week time table to complete the task. If that is the case I think I will just come up with a survey of some sort... but maybe I have to do a IRB with that too?? I am uncertain. But I am trying not to freak out about it all just yet.
So I've got school to finish: which includes 2 classes, a research project, and completing my 1200 hours. I've got an idea of what to do for my research project, so that is a good start. My hours are solid at the moment, I am over 100 hours ahead of schedule so I should have no problem getting the 1200 finished before May. So at least on the school front I am ok.
The internship should start heating up in the months to come as there are a whole bunch of three year reviews coming up at both of my sites - and as I mentioned - I will be starting at a new site this month with a new supervisor, Mrs. B. I am also going to be starting a social skills group at one of my elementary schools, and I've still got a handful of individual counseling kids that I need to see.
Then there is the whole BICM thing. I am beginning to think it might have been a mistake to jump into this at this time in my school life. BUT I will try my best to get it done. I have decide that this certification falls at the bottom of my list of things to get done. If I can complete it, that'd be awesome. But if not, I am not going to get upset about it. There is always next year when I wont have as many things going on.
Tomorrow I head back to internship. I don't know if I can say I have reached the level of competency that I had hoped to be at this point of my internship. I think I am close though. I had hoped to be a higher level of independence, but perhaps I had too high of expectations for myself (it wouldn't be the first time.) I am lucky to have the supervisors that I have, and I am getting another one this month as my horizons spread to include junior high as well as elementary. I am looking forward to it, and not trying to overwhelm myself with all the things I have coming up. But as in 17 weeks I will be graduating, there is quite a bit of stuff to do. I need to figure out what exactly I am doing for my research project: I have 3 ideas, but I wont pick one until I get the syllabus for my class that starts next week. I want to know what the specifics are for the project before I start any work on it. But I have in my mind 3 easy research projects, 2 of which I was going to be doing anyway (case study on my BICM kid, and a social skills group) so that would just mean I would need to collect data and figure out a pre and post test/measurement for my social skills kids, which is totally doable. My problem is that I need to know if I will have to do the whole IRB thing, which, if so will mess up my 17 week time table to complete the task. If that is the case I think I will just come up with a survey of some sort... but maybe I have to do a IRB with that too?? I am uncertain. But I am trying not to freak out about it all just yet.
So I've got school to finish: which includes 2 classes, a research project, and completing my 1200 hours. I've got an idea of what to do for my research project, so that is a good start. My hours are solid at the moment, I am over 100 hours ahead of schedule so I should have no problem getting the 1200 finished before May. So at least on the school front I am ok.
The internship should start heating up in the months to come as there are a whole bunch of three year reviews coming up at both of my sites - and as I mentioned - I will be starting at a new site this month with a new supervisor, Mrs. B. I am also going to be starting a social skills group at one of my elementary schools, and I've still got a handful of individual counseling kids that I need to see.
Then there is the whole BICM thing. I am beginning to think it might have been a mistake to jump into this at this time in my school life. BUT I will try my best to get it done. I have decide that this certification falls at the bottom of my list of things to get done. If I can complete it, that'd be awesome. But if not, I am not going to get upset about it. There is always next year when I wont have as many things going on.
Monday, December 13, 2010
RtI = The Killer
I had been pre-warned that upon entering a school you would be attacked by virus after virus. But I thought to myself, I'm all good. I worked with foster kids for 6 years. Uh no. I have now had 3 horrendous colds. Being the crazy worker bee that I am I have pretty much barreled through all of them and come to internship with a box of kleenex and a bottle of hand sanitizer, but the last one was a doozie and I ended up staying home on a Friday to recuperate! I really hope that was the last of them. It is, right? Pretty please with a cherry on top? I have pretty much been sick on an off for a month now, ick. I guess all those pre-warnings were true. Vitamin C will be my new best friend.
I really feel that RtI is to blame for all of this. I mean, RtI, what did I ever do to you?? All these grade level screenings are going to kill me. In the last two weeks I have probably read with around 200 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders. It's like, how big of a germ pool can I expose myself to? Those kiddos are adorable little germ carriers though. I actually enjoy doing the screenings - I know, I know - I'm weird. Although I must say that I MUCH prefer the 1 reading prompt method over the 3 reading prompts. I know that the 3 gives you more reliable results, but to me it would be much more efficient to do 1 for all grade level and then due 3 for follow up for the bottom 25 percentile to make sure you've identified the kids who need to be identified or if a couple of them just had a bad day/were scared/were asleep the day they were initially screened.
In altogether unrelated news: I think I am changing my thesis to research social skills. I think it would be interesting to do a social skills group and do a pre and post test with the kids as my project. That way I wouldn't have to rely on someone else to do the work (like with my previous thesis idea) and I would also get some group counseling experience. It seems like a good idea to me. Supervisors #2 seemed open to the idea when I emailed him today, so we will see how it goes. I started researching curriculum this morning and I am really intrigued!
I really feel that RtI is to blame for all of this. I mean, RtI, what did I ever do to you?? All these grade level screenings are going to kill me. In the last two weeks I have probably read with around 200 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders. It's like, how big of a germ pool can I expose myself to? Those kiddos are adorable little germ carriers though. I actually enjoy doing the screenings - I know, I know - I'm weird. Although I must say that I MUCH prefer the 1 reading prompt method over the 3 reading prompts. I know that the 3 gives you more reliable results, but to me it would be much more efficient to do 1 for all grade level and then due 3 for follow up for the bottom 25 percentile to make sure you've identified the kids who need to be identified or if a couple of them just had a bad day/were scared/were asleep the day they were initially screened.
In altogether unrelated news: I think I am changing my thesis to research social skills. I think it would be interesting to do a social skills group and do a pre and post test with the kids as my project. That way I wouldn't have to rely on someone else to do the work (like with my previous thesis idea) and I would also get some group counseling experience. It seems like a good idea to me. Supervisors #2 seemed open to the idea when I emailed him today, so we will see how it goes. I started researching curriculum this morning and I am really intrigued!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
So many questions!
It seems that as soon I start to understand something, the questions begin to pour into my mind. Today I followed around Mr. H. I went to the school site I will be working at with him, met the staff and saw our tiny office. Although it is a tiny space - it is perfectly placed. It is situated right in between the SDC and RSP rooms. That will make it really easy to get kids in that you need to speak with. We also went over the tests that they have there, and how he qualifies kids for SLD without cognitive testing using RTI. With that he gave me a brief over view of RTI (again) and I looked over some of the data that Fairfield collected last year regarding their reading interventions. The data is so impressive. It appears that most of the children who receive intervention services do make impressive gains and are eventually exit from the intervention.
My new question was, what happens to the kids after they are exited from tier 2 to 1? Do they then progress as well as their peers? Are they able to keep up then? Or do they revert back to what previous levels? If they needed extra help before - I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see them require intervention services again... I think this could be another good possibility for my Thesis project! So many possibilities. Since they have already collected data pre intervention and during the intervention, I could follow up with some of the kids who have been exited and see how they are keeping up this year. An amazingly easy ABA design. I really like this idea, I will have to think about it some more.
My new question was, what happens to the kids after they are exited from tier 2 to 1? Do they then progress as well as their peers? Are they able to keep up then? Or do they revert back to what previous levels? If they needed extra help before - I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see them require intervention services again... I think this could be another good possibility for my Thesis project! So many possibilities. Since they have already collected data pre intervention and during the intervention, I could follow up with some of the kids who have been exited and see how they are keeping up this year. An amazingly easy ABA design. I really like this idea, I will have to think about it some more.
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