Training Series
2014-2015 Special Education Paraprofessional Training Series - Supporting All Students Across the Curriculum
To complete each session watch the video presentation and complete the review questions. The review questions will be made available once you have watched the full video presentation. The review questions are in multiple-choice format and you will receive immediate feedback.
Pennsylvania's System for Assessment for Accountability
This session will provide participants with a description and supporting details of the assessments that are administered in Pennsylvania to all students. Each assessment has unique qualifications that define who is eligible to be assessed and the content that will be tested. This session will examine these qualifications and provide participants with tips for supporting students during the assessment.
Standard #3: Individual Learning Differences: Cultural Considerations
This session will focus on the skill and knowledge areas contained in Standard #3 of the Special Education Paraprofessional Checklist: Individual Learning Differences, as well as Cultural Considerations concerning the child, family and educational professionals. This session will provide insights regarding the role of paraprofessionals as they support students in culturally diverse classrooms.
Standard #5: Learning Environments and Social Interactions: Creating Positive Classrooms
This session focuses on the skill and knowledge areas of Standard #5: Learning Environments and Social Interactions. Discussion will include ideas for classroom management (i.e., use of routines, use of choice, promotion of positive relationships, and use of reinforcement systems). This session will also present strategies to promote student self-advocacy and use of appropriate social skills.
Supporting Instruction for Students Who Are Deaf-Blind: An Introduction to Combined Hearing and Vision Loss
This training will help paraprofessionals understand combined hearing and vision loss and how this impacts the education received by students who are deaf-blind. This session will review the unique challenges that students with combined hearing and vision loss experience, as well as present strategies for instruction and more effective communication.
Supporting Students in Mathematics Using the Concrete-Representational-Abstract (CRA) Approach
Concrete-Representational-Abstract (CRA) is a sequence of instruction that has been proven to pro-mote the conceptual understanding of mathematics. This session will demonstrate how to use concrete materials and representations to support students’ use of the abstract to represent mathematical concepts. The session will include demonstrations of elementary and secondary mathematics concepts.
Supporting Students with Vision or Hearing Loss
Students with sensory impairments have unique learning needs, which require the staff supporting them to have a clear understanding of both the disability and the individualized supports for each student. Paraprofessionals will be presented with an overview of the types of medical conditions related to sensory impairments and the educational implications of each. In addition, participants will learn specific strategies for supporting students with sensory loss in the educational setting.
The Paraprofessional's Role in Supporting Students in Reading for Meaning
To gain meaning from text, students must be able to determine what information or message the author is trying to convey. The process of interacting with text at deep levels of understanding presents challenges for many students with disabilities. This session will provide paraprofessionals with strategies they can use to support students in building the skills needed to reach deeper understanding of fiction and nonfiction text. Strategies will support concepts addressed in the PA Core Standards for English and Language Arts (ELA) across all content areas and grade levels, including determining main idea and details, citing evidence in text to answer questions, and summarizing key information.
Using Technology to Support Reading and Writing
This session will explore available technologies that can help students who struggle with reading text and writing tasks to engage in those activities in nontraditional ways in order to make progress in the general education curriculum. This session will describe universally designed accommodations built into modern operating systems and the role paraprofessionals play in supporting students towards greater independence through the use of technology.
