To celebrating our wonderful Thanksgiving in school, we put on a play for our Kindergarden reading buddies.

But first we had to prepare, we made our scenes, we made our costumes and then we had to practice, practice, practice!

Being an EHI (educational hearing interpreter) I also help with some of the things around the classroom.
When the students, I assist, do not need my help, I get
to help other students. What a great class!

In the first picture you can see the students at work on the scene.
The second picture you can see that we had some really cute costumes.

In the third picture we are working on yet another costume.

The last picture, students STILL hard at work!

On Friday, Mrs. Egli's class celebrated the end of the "Arthur" series with a publishing party. They had hot chocolate and cookies and took turns reading their stories...how wonderful! As an interpreter...it is so fun to get to celebrate right along with the students...they are so proud of their hard work. In this picture you can see some of the students finished work! WOW!!!

THE FIRST REAL SNOW

Our first real day of snow...the students were so excited about going outside to get their picture taken as a memory of "The First REAL Snow". Mrs. Egli's class is making scrap books of their second grade year...What a great memory the students will have! It started this Monday off with great expectation of what is coming up...Thanksgiving and Christmas!!! We can hardly wait!

On special Fridays we have Mystery Guest readers come to the class and read one of their favorite stories, from when they were a child, or read a story that their family loves. This is a fun way of practicing interpretation for the hearing interpreter...you have no idea WHAT is going to be read and it's just off the top, as soon as it is read... you interpret! Sometimes the students enjoy watching some of the expressions and excitement and interpreter adds to the reading. This is a really great way of practicing for the up and coming EIPA! WOW...the stories are really great, it is fun to see who our MYSTERY GUEST is and what they are going to read!
WHAT IS NEXT???

Math is fun to interpret at this level, you can use visuals and manipulatives along with signs. This was a very fun project with counting money...you were allowed $3.50 to by an ice cream sundae. As you can see we used quarters to represent the $3.50 and then we crossed off each quarter as we spent it. This is a great way of spending money and learning to count quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies. The students built their sundaes to their liking and the only problem we had, the students didn't want to stop when their money ran out...of course Math is before lunch and so we were hoping to have ice cream sundaes for dessert!! This project was a success!

Mrs. Egli's class is enjoying yet another "special", Library. This class LOVES to read! Curious George, Junie B. Jones and Arthur are amoung their favorite books to choose from. As an interpreter with a younger student or students I go with that student to all special. I interpret all insturction. I am also there to help with communication between the students and teacher etc. These times are less structered and allows some freedom for the student. During this down time I catch up on notes to the family (of theses students), a diary of what the students did that day. This is a great way of logging what I have done that day as well. Keeping a daily log is great because if any question accure about a certain day... you have your diary to help. (Great tool to have! I encourage any para professional, aide, interpreter ect. to have something like this.) At library the students get to pick two book to take home and read. Then they have some free time to read and listen to a story or watch a video of one of their favorite books!! Library is alway so fun!

What a great Friday!! We had a "BAT DAY" and learned many new facts about our scary friends...first of all they are not as scary as we thought they were. We learned that some Bats can eat up to 1000 mosquito in an hour, and most bats have one or two babies that are called pups (this makes them mamals). They use echo location to see in the night. There are bats as small as a bumble bee and bats that have a wing span as large as 6 feet. Wow and if that wasn't enough to learn...we had "Bat Math," read a story about bats and saw an educational video, on the many bats around the world. We topped off our fun and educational day with our bat hats!!! HOW CUTE!! This day was fun packed and for an HI very intense!!! You are always on!! The student or students are very stimulated with all the visuals and are full of questions and want to engage in conversation through the whole learning process; days like these are very challenging but, so rewarding!!!

Our class it starting a great project with the PBS Arthur series. (Parents, check it out on my link.) We are creating a story and modeling Marc Browns writing techniques. We are using the characters in the Arthur books and coming up with our own stories. This is an "Arthur Study". In this study, the students will come up with a problem and a solution. This encourages the student to become independent at solving his or her own small problems. We are very excited to work with this program and the students love it. My job as an HI is to help the student understand each story we read in class. Then, help the student pick out the characters in the story, set up a rough draft with sequence, pictures and small captions that will get the story started. Then the student signs what he/she want the story to say and... the learning begins!!!


What a wonderful project! Second Grade is so fun!!!

Every day we work on reading and writing...we have a Readers Workshop time and then a time to reflect on what we read ... maybe make a text-to- text connection or a personal connection using schema. My job here is to read with the student ... the student uses sign to show that he/she knows the words in the story. We then discuss, if the story reminds him/her of another story or something that has happened to him/her. The student then draws a picture or answers questions that are given for that days lesson. Always EXCITING!! In this picture you can see that Mrs. Egli's students are hard at work.

Mrs. Egli's class has many visuals that are needed to help encourage learning. Here you can see that some of her visuals are very self explanatory, a student can learn about his/her classroom just by looking around and seeing the visuals...This is very helpful for all students. Visuals are a great way to encourage learining skills and boost students self-esteem!

To stay current with the state laws, an Interpreter needs to apply for a EIC certificate and earn points by going to workshops and classes that give ceu's. These ceu's need to add up to 4.o units and you must have these 4.0 units within the 2 year period given to achieve this goal. In the following pictures you can see that we work together to achieve the goals set before us.

~(2008 Indiana Deaf Educators and Educational Interpreters Conference)~

Please take a few moments and look at the web links I added to the Blog. As you can see we are linked with Mrs. Egli's class page, a Cochlear page (that can take you in to many informational sites), The Hearing Jounny which is a link that is very educational and gives you activities you can do with your student/child.and ASL Pro that shows you how to learn sign language. ASL is short for American Sign Language. In this picture you can see that this school system uses SEE or Signing Exact English which is a form of signs that add the ing, s, 's,ed er, ect. to the words. (This helps in reading). We also have a computer disc with all the signs, that we can print out when needed. During our class poem, that we do each week, I make a print out of all the signs it take to say the poem, Then the student can sign and say it along with the class. We also use an Erase board to help with visuals, both the student and myself use this board...He truly enjoys drawing pictures of his super heros and writing words he knows, it can be a reward when the task at hand is finished! Work of the student is always rewarded, you can see in the left hand corner a Sticker Book, that the student adds to after each succesful task. To help keep things organized and easily at hand I have a carry-all (with folders for all paper work) and a pencil box where I can keep things organized and tidy. This helps make all transitions smooth for me and keeps all my things right where I need them! What a Challenging and rewarding job!

Mrs. Egli's class enjoys many "specials", these are PE, Computer Lab, Music, Library, and Art. Many students are enjoying todays lesson on Picasso and how he drew the human face. My job here was to help the student understand that these pictures were not monsters, but Picasso's way of seeing the world, in a very different way! The assignment was to creat a face that was NOT balanced. The student enjoyed the assignment after being given a mirror and allowed to create a picture of himself! In this art class you can see that the visuals use were very beneficial for all the students! What a wonderful and fun assignment!

Welcome to Hearing Interpreters...and how we work!

Welcome to a place where you can see what hearing interpreters do. What our role within the classroom is and how we work with the student or students who need our services. Please join me and Mrs. Egli's class as we go through a very exciting and educational year!