5. Personal Demographics I’m a Junior at UCF majoring in English Language Arts Education I’ve had minor experience working with students with disabilities before. This was my first formal experience
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7. Participant Demographics The participants ranged from age 8-21 Evenly split between boys and girls All of the Students spoke English with the exception of two Spanish speaking student Student who speaks using ASL Whole range of exceptionalities including cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism, speech delays, developmental delays and vision and hearing impairments.
8. Engagement Activities Arts and crafts activities Leprechaun homes Letters to the Troops Paper Airplanes Mobiles Masks Once a week Leprechaun homes
11. Reflection Intimidating when I started Easy getting to know the students Biggest impact was working one-on-one with the students I will take away different strategies Patience
Editor's Notes
Hi, My name is Lori Pyatt and I did my service learning project at the Loch Haven Neighborhood Center which is in downtown Orlando and I did arts and crafts projects every Friday afternoon from 3-5pm. My email is loripyatt@knights.ucf.edu and this is for EEX 4242.
This here is an image of the front of the building. The facility has a game room, kitchen, large ballroom, dining hall, and a courtyard with basketball courts. I predominantly worked in the dining hall. And we did all of our projects at the table. There was one week where we made paper airplanes and we flew those in the ballroom and kind of ran around and played with balls and all that fun stuff. That’s about it for the setting.
These are just a few of the students that I was working with. The picture to the left features several of the boys that I worked with. Usually the boys would bow out sooner than the girls would. The image on the right, that’s Cheyenna, she was very sweet. I only saw her the one day though. She was there during her spring break.
These are few more of the students that I was working with. On the left is Nick and I worked with him twice. And on the right, that’s Taja. I worked with her twice as well. Altogether, I worked with about 15. It wasn’t all at the same time, usually, I would start with anywhere between 4-8 students and we would work on a project and when the first group was finished, then some more students would come by and start on a new project.
This is me, I’m a junior at UCF and I’m majoring in English Language Arts Education. I want to teach middle school. I’ve only had minor experience prior to doing this project. When I started in the college of education I was tutoring downtown at the New Image Youth Center. There I worked with a boy, Jake, who had autism. With that exception, this was my first formal experience.
This is the pie chart of my interests. I think I had a little too much fun making this pie chart actually. I like singing and watching zombie movies, or just movies in general. I like going to the beach and reading and hanging out with friends. The thing about pie charts is just a joke.
The demographic for the participants…The ages of the participants ranged from 8-21 years old and everything in between. It was evenly split between boys and girls. I believe it was 8 girls and 7 boys by my count. They all spoke English with the exception of two students. One spoke both Spanish and English and the other student spoke using American Sign Language. There was a whole range of exceptionalities. Some students had cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism, speech delays, developmental delays and vision and hearing impairments.
As for the activities, we did five projects since I went for five consecutive weeks. We made leprechaun homes, wrote letters to the troops, made paper airplanes, mobiles, and masks. The image on the right is of the mushroom houses we made for the leprachauns, out of construction paper. The letters to the troops is self-explanatory. I brought in cut-out images from clip art of American Flags and little sayings like, “Come Home Safe,” and etc. The students were able to write whatever it was that they wanted to. For the paper airplanes, I brought in models and worked with the students step-by-step to make different plane models. Then we tested to see who’s would fly the furthest. For the mobiles I made spirals out of foam circles and cut a whole on both ends. Then I took a pipe cleaner and connected it through both ends. The students got to decorate their mobiles and I attached rope on the end so that it could be hung up.
The image on the left is of the supplies that was used. This was for the mushroom houses, but most weeks looked about the same as far as crafts supplies went. The center had most of the supplies on-site; there wasn’t much that I had to bring in. The image on the left is of the boys writing their letters to the troops.
These photos are of the masks that the students made. We cut out the masks using a template and decorated the masks anyway that they wanted. Then I cut out holes and tied string so that the students could actually wear them. I think this was the funest project that we did together. It got the most kids involved.
I was very intimidated when I started. I wasn’t really sure what to expect and was afraid that I would be over my head. But all those fears and butterflies went away as I got to know the students. They were very easy to get along with. The biggest impact was being able to work one-on-one with the students and getting to know them all personally. I learned a lot of different strategies for working with students with disabilities. And I learned a lot of patience!
