Social Stories

     Many articles we have read this week have read this week have given examples of and implementations of social stories.  Polyxo.com stated "social stories provide an individual with accurate information about those situations that he may find difficult or confusing."  This statement actually tells the reader what social stories are.  Social stories as well as digital social stories are used to help students with disabilities understand different aspects of education that they may have difficulties understanding.  Social stories must be accurate to what you are trying to convey to a the students.  For example, if you are trying to teach your students how to properly take a test, I would not use something fictional like monsters in my example because that would be incorrect and possibly cause confusion to students.
     According to Cartledge,"Teachers must learn about diverse cultures, avoid stereotyping, and talk to families to learn about values and cultural practices".  This shows the reader how important it is for teachers to consider the history of each student and that we should not assume that all students will be interested in the same thing.  For example, I cannot have a social story about eating dinner and say that you must say grace before you eat.  This is because not all families say grace before dinner, and not all families even eat dinner at the same time together.  By talking to each family about their daily life, it would be easier to create a social story that all of the students can relate to.  
     Social stories can be very beneficial to students because they can help students understand how to handle certain situations.  Digital stories can be beneficial as well because they can give students a visual depiction of how to behave in different social situations.  Social stories I feel should be done in a way that can make students better understand the social situation.  If a social story is only related to one student, then it doesn't help any other students.  

Using MS Publisher and Sign Up Genius

    I really liked using Microsoft Publisher.  I have used it before for projects back in middle school and high school so it was not a completely foreign program to me, but since there have been updates to the program since then, the layout of the program was slightly different.  I really liked using Publisher for the newsletter.  I feel that this program is a wonderful tool for teachers.  I would be very interested in using it for newsletters for my future classroom.  I think that monthly or weekly newsletters are a wonderful idea because it can help teachers keep the parents involved in what is going on in the classroom.
     I also really liked Sign Up Genius.  I think that it was so easy to use and it prompted you every step of the way to make the process easy.  I thought it was cute that there were different layouts to choose from because it made the page look fun and exciting.  I would definitely consider using this in my future classroom because it is easier than printing out 20-30 copies of sign up sheets to hand out to parents.  I think that this website is a wonderful idea!