[humanser] Assessments with children with disabilities

[Kaiti Shelton]

Will do.  I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the assessment tool for
use with my slightly older students, but this is because I am used to
working with children who are elementary and early middle school age
already, and those groups are much smaller.  Groups for music therapy
are ideally not supposed to be super big anyway, but my one class of
little guys is 9 kids strong, which is on the bigger side, and they
are more significantly disabled than any of my other groups as well on
the whole.  The good thing is that I will be with them for the whole
school year whereas I see the kids at one of my schools for only a
semester, so I'm sure it is just going to take some time.

I should add that this is an inclusion classroom, so three of the
children are typically developing peers inserted into the
self-contained class specifically to serve as models for social skill
development for the other kiddos.  I'm very excited to see this
classroom model in action throughout the year.

On 9/10/17, Justin Williams via HumanSer <humanser at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I certainly interested in how you do that, please keep me posted.  Your
> opportunity sounds great.
> Justin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: HumanSer [mailto:humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Kaiti
> Shelton via HumanSer
> Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2017 10:30 AM
> To: humanser at nfbnet.org
> Cc: Kaiti Shelton <crazy4clarinet104 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [humanser] Assessments with children with disabilities
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm 2 weeks into my clinical music therapy internship now, and I'm loving
> it
> so far.  I've met most of my adult clients and all of the students I will
> be
> working with, and have several group sessions as well as individuals at 4
> local schools.
>
> In my group sessions, I will be using an assessment tool called the Music
> Therapy Social Skills Assessment, or the MTSSA. It is specifically designed
> to assess social skill development in group settings for children with
> neurodevelopmental disorders.  As the vast majority of the children in my
> groups have Autism, most of our goals are either social or
> communication-based.  I have yet to see this assessment tool myself, but my
> supervisor has explained that different elements such as reciprocal
> behavior
> and level of engagement are rated on a scale from 1 to 8, with 8 being the
> most engaged or socially developed.  The tool also takes stock of the type
> of play each child is engaging in, such as solitary, parallel, onlooker,
> etc.  I know my work is different, but I was curious if anyone else working
> with children might need to gather similar data.  Groups of children this
> young in this population are new for me, so I am trying to explore ways I
> can accurately gauge things like type of play and engagement independently
> before I have to get started actually documenting.  My supervisor is
> wonderful and he is going to be guiding me through the assessment process
> in
> the first half of the internship before I assess in January and February on
> my own, but if I could get feedback from another blind person to aid in my
> learning and to come up with some possible adaptations for myself it would
> be useful.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
>
> --
> Kaiti Shelton
>
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-- 
Kaiti Shelton