Categories of Disabilities

This week in class we talked about the 13 categories of disabilities which include: OHI, emotional, mental, physical, language/speech, vision, hearing, ASD, Deaf/blind, developmentally delayed, orthopedic, traumatic brain injury, and multiple disabilities. I had no idea that there were so many different categories that disabilities could be categorized under. It was interesting to see what disabilities fell under which categories.

This weeks reading was about responding to student behavior. The reading taught me how I can/should respond to major and minor behavior problems. For managing minor problems it is important to catch them being good. Often times children act out because they aren't getting enough attention. If we as teachers catch them doing good things, we need to make sure that we acknowledge that and tell the student that we are proud and recognize his good behavior. For major behavioral problems I think the most important thing to do is understand why the student is acting in such a way, and then kind of go form there with how to respond depending on the situation. Peers can be a great way to help better student behavior in the classroom. You can have the students work in pairs and you could pair the student who has behavioral problems with a very well mannered student.