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June 19, 2015
Issue 24, Volume 8
It's All About the Choices!
Greetings and Happy Friday
Please enjoy our weekly newsletter!
News Items:
- Training Teachers for Deaf Children Gets a Robotic Helping Hand
- Dopamine Signals the Value of Delayed Rewards
- New Autism Research Outlines Gender Differences in Social Interactions
- Disability Claims Mounting Against Disney
- Success Story - A Boy, A Therapy Dog and an OT
- Cancer Drugs May Hold Key to Treating Down Syndrome and Other Brain Disorders
Hot Jobs
- Featured Job - School SLP - Hermiston, OR
- Hot Job - Special Education Teacher - Santa Cruz County, CA
Therapy Activities, Tips and Resources
- EI Activity: Ribbon Box - Baby Play Activity
- Summer Activity of the Week: Giant Bubble Wands
- 20+ Road Trip Activity Ideas
Articles and Special Features
- Special Ed Corner: Nearly 40% of Students with Disabilities Don't Graduate
- Autism Corner: Why "High Functioning" Autism Is So Challenging
- SLP Corner: The Power of Words within the Speech Therapy Setting
- OT/PT Corner: The Challenge of Incontinence for Kids with Challenges
- Professional Development Corner: Summer Reading List: 5 Books on PD
Feel free to contact us with any questions about our openings or items in these pages. Have you discovered our RSS feed? Click on the orange button below to subscribe to all our openings and have them delivered to your Feed Reader! Don't have an RSS Feed Reader set up? Sign up at
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Have a great weekend and Take Care!
Heidi Kay and the PediaStaff Team
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| Training Teachers for Deaf Children Gets a Robotic Helping Hand |
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[Source: Science Daily.com]
Deaf education lecturers at The University of Manchester are using the Swivl robot in school classrooms in a UK first for teacher training.
Swivl is a robotic turntable onto which is placed an iPad or other tablet. It is positioned in the classroom and turns to follow people talking. It then uploads video to a secure cloud for streaming or later viewing.
The University of Manchester team has been using Swivl to help assess classroom placement training for students on its deaf education course. This programme requires the trainees to be assessed in the classroom, but the wide geographical spread of students on placement, led the team to consider whether technology could help ensure high quality supervision irrespective of a student's location.
Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
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| Dopamine Signals the Value of Delayed Rewards |
| [Source: Medical News Today]
Dopamine is the chemical messenger in the brain most closely associated with pleasure and reward. Recent scientific advances now shed light on precise roles for dopamine in the reward process. A new paper published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry implicates dopamine in a person's ability to be motivated by delayed rewards. People like immediate reinforcement and tend to devalue rewards that are substantially delayed in time. As a result, people will often opt for smaller immediate rewards as opposed to larger delayed rewards when given a choice.
Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
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| Autism Research Outlines Gender Differences in Social Interactions |
| [Source: Education Week]
Boys and girls with autism spectrum disorder may share difficulties in communicating, but how those problems manifest themselves differs between the sexes-an important element for educators to remember, according to new research examining children with autism and their peer interactions.
For example, because boys tend to play more structured games, it's easier to spot when a boy with autism is being excluded. Socialization among girls tends to be more fluid, so a girl with autism may appear to be fitting in with her peer group-but a closer look might reveal less-obvious rejection.
Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog |
| Disability Claims Mounting Against Disney |
| [Source: Disability Scoop]
More families are taking legal action against Disney, alleging that recent changes to theme park access for people with disabilities are discriminatory.
Fourteen new families filed suit this week in Los Angeles Superior Court against Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, arguing that the company's disability access program violates California's Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Already, 44 families are part of a federal lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida claiming that the disability access policy at Disney parks violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog |
| Success Story - A Boy, A Therapy Dog and an OT |
| [Source: Your Therapy Source]
Grab a tissue and watch this heart warming video about how a special dog helped a 6 year old boy during his therapy sessions. Watch The Video on our Blog |
| Cancer Drugs May Hold Key to Treating DS and Other Brain Disorders |
| [Source: Science Daily]
A class of FDA-approved cancer drugs may be able to prevent problems with brain cell development associated with disorders including Down syndrome and Fragile X syndrome, researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute have found.
The researchers' proof-of-concept study using fruit fly models of brain dysfunction was published today in the journal eLife. They show that giving the leukemia drugs nilotinib or bafetinib to fly larvae with the equivalent of Fragile X prevented the wild overgrowth of neuron endings associated with the disorder. Meanwhile, the drugs - both tyrosine-kinase inhibitors - did not adversely affect the development or neuronal growth in healthy flies.
Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog |
| Placement of the Week: Pediatric Clinical OT - Maine |
Congratulations to Kristie N., on her new job in Maine!
Kristie will be working with gross and fine motor delays, as well as sensory difficulties in a variety of settings. Thank you Kristie! |
| Featured Job of the Week: School SLP - Hermiston, OR |
We are seeking two ASHA certified speech therapists for contract assignments located near Hermiston, OR! In the first position, you will work with children ages 3 to 5 in classroom settings. The second position is a school based position treating children in grades K-12. Both positions offer the opportunity to supervise and partner with a speech assistant. This assignments begin in mid-August, 2015 and end in early June, 2016. Secure your job for the fall now, then relax and enjoy your summer!
Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog |
| Hot Job of the Week: Special Education Teacher - Santa Cruz County, CA |
PediaStaff is now hiring an Adaptive Physical Education (APE) Teacher in Santa Cruz County, California. This is a Full-Time Contract position for SY15/16 beginning in August 2015.
Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog |
| EI Activity of the Week: Ribbon Box - Baby Play Activity |
| [Source: Teaching Mama]
My baby is really into grabbing and pulling things...especially drawstrings on my jackets! Since he loves things that dangle, I decided to create an ribbon activity box for him to play with! Learn More About this Terrific Activity for Babies Through a Link on our Blog |
| Summer Activity of the Week: Giant Bubble Wands |
| [Source: Inner Child Fun]
These giant bubble wands are easy to make with just a few items you can find at your local hardware store. Older kids can help tie on the string, and younger kids can help measure out how much string to use. The kids may even enjoy decorating these giant bubble wands with paint, glitter glue, or decorative duct tape. This would be a great weekend project for families to do together!
Here's a step by step video tutorial and handy supply list for how to make giant bubble wands! Learn How Through a Link on our Blog |
| Therapy Activities of the Week: 20+ Road Trip Activity Ideas |
| [Source: Childhood 101]
If your children are anything like mine, you are just 5 minutes into a three hour road trip and they've already eaten half the car snacks and are already asking, "Are we there yet?!!" If this is the case (or you suspect it will be!), check out this great collection of road trip activity ideas just right for kids. - See this Great Collection of Car Activities Through a Link on our Blog |
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| SpeEd Corner: Nearly 40% of Kids with Disabilities Don't Graduate |
[Source: Disability Scoop]
A new report is sounding alarm bells about lagging high school graduation rates among students with disabilities.
Some 85 to 90 percent of kids with disabilities are estimated to be capable of completing the requirements for a high school diploma. Yet, just 6 in 10 of these students graduated in 2013, the most recent year for which figures are available.
Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog
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| Autism Corner: Why "High Functioning" Autism Is So Challenging |
[Source: The Temple Grandin School via About.com]
By Lisa Jo Rudy, Autism Spectrum Disorders Expert
The autism spectrum is very large. If you think of it as a rainbow (or a bell curve), you'll note that there's an awful lot of the spectrum that is at neither one end nor the other - but somewhere in the middle. At this point in history, we don't have good information to tell us whether MOST people on the autism spectrum are "somewhere in the middle," but it is clear that the lion's share of media attention goes to folks at the high and the low ends of the spectrum - that is, the profoundly disabled and the very high functioning.
Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog
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| SLP Corner: The Power of Words in the Speech Therapy Setting |
[Source: Erik X. Raj]
As a speech-language pathologist, I would say that I was trained to be very much in tune with words and how words have a lot of strength to them. The average person usually just talks and uses words without really thinking too much about them, but not us SLPs. We analyze every word that we write and we always take a few extra moments to choose our words wisely during oral communication. Why? Because we truly know that words matter. We get it.
Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog
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| OT/PT Corner: Challenge of Incontinence for Kids with Challenges |
[Source: HeartSpace PT]
I am honoured to work/teach with Julie Wiebe, PT.
I'm very excited about this application of Dynamic Core for Kids and I am grateful for her permission to re-post her recent blog.
Because I talk about incontinence, I often get pegged as the pelvic floor lady. Sometimes I get flack because some say I think "it's all about the diaphragm". But really... I am all about the system. I am suggesting a new approach to central stability that the pelvic floor just happens to be a part of. Its interaction with the diaphragm (and a lot of other moving parts) is critical not just for continence, but central stability, postural control, movement support, efficient function and optimum performance.
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| Prof. Development Corner: Summer Reading List: 5 Books on PD |
[Source: Edutopia]
The summer is almost here. If you are like most educators, this is when you find the time to read your "teacher books" and learn about all those exciting strategies and resources that will give your classroom a fresh look in the fall.
Here are five books that are worth a look.
Something Fun: Total Participation Techniques by Persida and William Himmele, is a book that I had been eyeing for a few years, and I finally decided to take the plunge when it received praise from one of my colleagues. When walking into a teacher's classroom, I generally first and foremost notice whether or not the teacher has established an environment of respect and rapport. My attention then turns to the students' opportunities to respond. I ask myself, "How long does each student have to be actively engaged in order to 'make it through' the current lesson?" The authors suggest something along the lines of Think-Pair-Share
Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link on our Blog
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