By Sara Finegan

         I post on a lot of message boards about learning disabilities and autism, and I also get a lot of emails from people who are following my blogs.  One of the most frequent topics is:  how a teacher told a parent that a student “doesn’t have reading comprehension.”

         Naturally, the parents want to know what to do. 

         The problem, of course, is that reading comprehension isn’t something you “HAVE” or “GET”, as in purchasing at a store or obtaining through a tutor.  You can’t put it on and take it off like a sweater, and you can’t keep it in the fridge until you need it.

         Reading comprehension is all about a reader’s relationship to text, and is based almost entirely on his or  her engagement and interaction with the piece being read.  It’s the relationship.  Relationship, relationship, relationship.

         Thinking of it in terms of a relationship leads me to the next step, which is to ask whether, when a friend discusses  a relationship that is flawed or failing, we simply let him or her  say “it’s not good” and leave it at that, or whether we start probing and asking questions to try to piece out what’s going on (or not going on).

         If you’re the kind of person who runs a demanding classroom, that’s exactly what you do.

What is this relationship with text made up of? 

         What behaviors does one see in a good relationship with text?  I’m ready to talk about a few, and will post more at another time.

         We’ll start with fiction and narrative.  (The relationship a reader has with informational, non-fiction text involves some different behaviors, so that will be the topic of another post.)  Research has shown that good readers of fiction do a number of different things when they read: 

• They visualize what they are reading about.  Like a movie in one’s head, a good reader sees what the text is describing.  This helps the reader enter into the world of the story, and leads to all sorts of other behaviors we like to see.
• They make inferences based on what they’re reading.  Good readers know that, in the best stories, the author shows you what’s happening instead of telling you directly, and they are able to infer ideas, feelings, and motives, not to mention facts, from what the author does with words.
• They ask questions as they read.  Lots of questions, knowing that they will find the answers in the story as it moves along.  This is done especially when they are trying to figure out what is going on, but also when they are thinking about things like character motives, and the conflict in the story.
• They use their background knowledge (personal, and from other stories they’ve read, as well as knowledge about the genre) to make predictions.  A good reader is going to know in a fantasy novel that there is going to be a struggle between good and evil, and that magical or fantastical creatures are probably going to play a role in the battle.  A good reader is going to use her personal knowledge of what it’s like to be the youngest in the family to predict how a baby sister may react during a family holiday. 
• They make connections between their own experiences and feelings and those of characters in the book.  They also make connections between world events and issues and people and events in the book.  And they make connections between stories, comparing one character in a book to a character in another book, etc.
• They check for understanding, pausing periodically to make sure they know what’s happening, and going back and re-reading if it’s unclear to them.

         It is our obligation as teachers to investigate, when a child clearly isn’t understanding what she or he is reading, what behaviors the child is engaging in, and what reading behaviors are weak.  It is based on this information that we can devise interventions that work, supports that help the child begin to make meaning from text.

         In a demanding classroom, the staff pays attention to each reader, keeping notes or logs about conferring sessions, guided reading interactions, and other data that will help them determine what skills to teach next. 

          In a demanding classroom, the teacher can, with pretty good specificity, explain to parents and colleagues what particular areas of need the child has with regard to his or her relationship to a book or story. 

          And in a demanding classroom, a report at a parent conference that “Johnny doesn’t understand what he’s reading” is followed immediately by  “and I have observed him and conferred with him, and I think here’s what’s going on and what our next steps should be.” 

For more of my posts on reading comprehension teaching strategies, see our other blog, Readers With Autism: http://readerswithautism.com .

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By Sara Finegan

         I’m a big fan of homework, but it has to be meaningful homework, and it has to be customized to fit your learners and their current skill levels.  Here are my thoughts about designing home practice in a demanding classroom:

It must be purposeful.

         Homework for the sake of homework is detrimental to a struggling learner. Kids aren’t stupid, and they know on some level, no matter how old they are, if you are just making work for them because you think that’s what teachers are supposed to do.

         The purpose of homework in a demanding classroom is to:  

• give the child additional practice in a newly-learned concept or skill and
• to provide a structure for a task they should be doing on a regular basis.

         When it comes to additional practice, a demanding classroom teacher designs a set of practice problems or questions that address what was worked on that day in class.  Examples might be: 5-10 addition problems; a set of similar word problems that require the child to set up an equation; comprehension questions that pertain to one or two plot features; practice making inferences based on short pieces of text.

         There are some excellent workbooks available in stores and online that provide practice problems in many content areas.  There are also some awful ones.  I remember a child I worked with in an after-school program who had a reading homework packet that was obviously written in the 1960’s: it was dry, pedantic, and completely uninteresting to me and the student.

A goal should be to establish a sense of competence.

         I do not want my students to have their parents do their homework, spend hours with their child struggling to get it done, or to leave the kitchen table feeling utterly drained and unskilled.

         I want my students to leave the homework table feeling like they get it, or are on the way to getting it. I want them to feel able.  Now this is not going to happen all the time, particularly when we’re learning new skill sets.

But if, over time, the student is confident that in general, he or she is going to be able to master the skills, or retain the information, or do the task fairly well, most kids will be willing to struggle a bit from time to time at home.

A homework routine should create study habits.

         Almost every school urges children to read for 30 minutes or more per day at home.  Thirty minutes is a lot for a child who has little reading stamina, or who struggles mightily with decoding or comprehension. This kind of assignment, without any other components, isn’t going to help a child with learning disabilities as much as it could with a few modifications.

         If a child is not able to read for 30 minutes in class without losing focus or melting down, do not require it at home.  Build stamina slowly.  A student who can only read for three minutes should be given a 3-5 minute reading assignment for home, followed by a book on tape or a story a parent is willing to read out loud. (Reading homework is not always just about reading skill, but also about our relationship to text and how we think about stories – books on CD, tape or read aloud can do just fine.)

         At a certain age and stage, kids can be taught how to write a reading response.  This is an extremely important skill and needs to be built in layers, slowly, with lots of practice.  The practice can be done at home, provided that you give the child examples to follow or a formula to use in the initial practice stages.  In early grades, a reading response can be an illustration with two or three sentences about a character or your opinion about the book.

          My fifth and sixth graders are currently, in the fall of the year, writing three-paragraph responses: a summary of what they read; a description of a character or the problem; a connection that they are making to the story or to a character.  By the end of the year I hope they will be doing deeper thinking and writing, but we are taking it one step at a time. Right now, their daily reading homework includes writing the response (yes, daily, though at least one child dictates to his grandmother because the act of writing is driving him crazy) because I want it to become an automatic habit for them in preparation for middle school.

As much as possible, coordinate, communicate, and negotiate with your partners: the parents.

         We don’t want parents doing the homework, but we want them to support it.  Nobody knows a child better than his or her parents, and we need to be responsive to them with regard to the work we send home.

          Right now, I have a couple of students who have major difficulties with attention.  One of them has autism and ADHD; the other has ADHD.  Both of them have parents who are excellent about notifying me when homework is just too much.  In these kinds of cases, we need to make accommodations and reduce the amount of homework in one or more ways.

• We might limit the number of problems to solve on a math set, or require less reading.
• We might change the type of work to be done.  Multiple choice or short-answer, fill-in-the-blank homework works better for these kids than other kinds of comprehension or social studies assignments.
•  We might change the way the homework needs to be done.  Both of my students are allowed to dictate their reading responses to a parent or grandparent, because getting them to sit down and write after school, when meds are wearing off and the brain is tired is not going to be a pleasant experience.
• We might give choices.  One of my students, who has moderately-functioning autism, fought homework at home for a long time.  When he came to my classroom, I provided three to four tasks to be done at home – and instructed him to pick two.  This gives him the power over the work, not me over him, and has made him voluntarily do his homework, without difficulty, when he gets home.

A goal should be to build internal drive and the self-discipline to get the practice done.

         I don’t want my students’ parents to spend hours fighting with their kids to get work done.  I also don’t want students neglecting their home practice.  Home practice needs to become a routine, a habit.

          In a demanding classroom, this is done with incentives as well as consequences.

          An immediate, automatic, small reward needs to be given to kids with learning disabilities when they turn in their homework.  As homework is checked in, kids can receive a sticker, a punch on “daily work index card”, a raffle ticket (dollar store prizes at a drawing once a week or every two weeks) or some other desired privilege.  It should be automatic and not served with effusive praise unless the child has a history of not turning in homework, in which case positive comments are a good re-enforcement.

         If you have other students check in homework, kids will be far more invested in getting it done. It’s hard to face a teacher or aide and explain why homework was not done, but for some reason it’s even harder to face your peers when all of them have been working hard.  This can be especially true if there’s a class-wide reward for 100% homework turned in, a ploy I use every now and then ($5 pizzas from Little Caesars work every time).  In general, the incentives should be small and cheap.

         Consequences are more complicated.The traditional “you miss recess” consequence is not a good idea in most special education classrooms, where kids need to get outside and move around as a kinesthetic break from the intellectual activity you’re piling on.

         I’ve been experimenting with a form letter that goes home, filled out by the student, for parents to read and sign.  It’s on bright orange paper, and can’t be missed by anyone coming even close to a backpack, and it requires the student to acknowledge work that wasn’t done and ask for help creating a plan to do it.  I keep all of them in my students’ portfolio folders, and it’s a great visual – neon orange is eye-catching.

         Restriction of free time until the homework is made up is a pretty good consequence, though again, many students, particularly those with autism or who have sensory issues need to have some minutes of free time between tasks in order to keep their minds working well.

         I’m inclined to use restriction from weekly class-wide fun activities as a consequence for not doing homework.  If the last ½ hour of class on Friday is reserved for cupcakes or a great game, kids who didn’t do homework during the week can sit in another classroom or in the office to make up their work.

         The combination of incentives and meaningful but not devastating consequences in a demanding classroom helps students learn good work habits at home and in school.

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By Richard Finegan

         What are the qualifications of a good special education paraeducator, especially one working with children on the autism spectrum?

         Abby Twyman has a masters in education and publishes a blog called Autism Community.  She wrote a few months ago about her experiences in hiring a new paraeducator for her classroom:

http://www.autism-community.com/paraeducator-qualifications/

         Here’s Abby’s bottom line:  education, experience, motivation, and creativity are good qualities in a para, but are not sufficient…

…the person also must have HIGH expectations of children with autism no matter how impacted they seem to be, they must be SELF-ASSURED and assert themselves with the child in a kind and caring way, they must be overly ORGANIZED and have a plan before working with a child, and they must know how to ADJUST to the ever-changing demands of children with autism and public school.

         I could not agree more.  You should expect  the child to achieve just as much (if not more) as the child beside him who does not have autism .  You must be self assured in dealing with the child (who will quickly recognize any uncertainty or inconsistency).  You must also be self assured in dealing with other adults in the classroom, including the teacher(s).  You should be organized and help the child to become organized.  And you should be able to adjust, on the fly, in the heat of battle as it were, because the world of a child with autism is dynamic and ever-changing.

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By Sara Finegan 

         I’m all in favor of worksheets, as long as they are challenging, require the students to write complete thoughts with detail as opposed to one-word answers, and as long as they are designed for a purpose other than just seat work. 

         The danger of using worksheets in a special ed classroom is that you will inadvertently or through ignorance keep the kids at the most basic levels of  intellectual behavior. 

          We want the kids to move up, not remain static.  This can be done when the information and concepts they learn are re-enforced at ever-increasing levels of intellectual demand.

          I use worksheets in social studies and science to teach and re-enforce students’ independent thinking and learning.  They are designed to get kids thinking, finding information that they’ve learned already, and using it appropriately.  When the system works well, it creates a ladder upwards for kids to move through the critical thinking levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy:

         In many special ed classrooms, students stay at the Knowledge level and never proceed upwards.  In others, Knowledge and Understanding are the sum total of the instructional plan.

         Such limitations will re-enforce student reliance on adults for learning. 

         Such limitations will teach kids that learning is all about knowledge, not what you do with it.

We use charts, and more charts 

        In a typical unit of Social Studies, we will create 5-10 charts of information about a culture, civilization, or era.

          I like to create “thinking maps” (also known as “mindmaps”) while we’re studying, and use different colors of marker to delineate the categories of data we are taking in. 

         We also create mindmaps that have a standard organization; for example, kids know that “Lifestyles” is usually on the right hand side of the “spider,” and time periods and locations are in the upper left and upper middle of the map.

         These charts are posted all around the room or pulled off of hangers to display when we are doing content-area work.  They are used for a variety of activity types, all designed to promote ever-increasing critical thinking among the students. 

         The purpose is for kids to learn where to find and retrieve information that they learn. I don’t require them to memorize historical information.  They will, of course, by the time we’re done with a unit, but the goal is actually for them to be able to apply the facts to ongoing themes of understanding and analyze these themes as we continue to learn.

          I create worksheets several times per week throughout the course of a unit.   When we begin to study a topic, the questions are all knowledge-based: 

• When did Menes unify Upper and Lower Egypt? 
• Where did Homo Habilis live? 
• Which tribes lived in the southeast region of North America?
• Who paid for the Mayflower Pilgrims’ passage to America? 
• List two grains grown by colonists in Virginia.

         Students are encouraged to get up and move around the room looking for the answers to the questions.   (See related topic, “Moving into Learning.”)   They quickly learn in my classroom that they can predict where they’ll find information, using the color-coded organization of the mindmaps. 

I repeat questions using different forms and formats, because I do want the kids to begin to really internalize the facts.  Thus, in almost every worksheet on the Ancient Maya, I’ll have similar questions about religion, clothing, food, and government.  Similar, but not identical, because I want kids to see that we can think of the same information in different ways.

         As we progress through the unit and the kids do more and more searching for and finding facts, the information begins to embed into the kids’ memory banks.  As this happens, I want them to start using the information they have more readily available, and I want them to  think more deeply about the information.

         My questions become more complex or demanding.  I might begin to ask: 

• What did Menes do to symbolize his control over both Upper and Lower Egypt? 
• Why didn’t Homo Habilis eat a lot of meat? 
• Why did many tribes in the southeast region have separate villages in the summer and winter? 
• Why did the  Virginia Company agreed to lend the Pilgrims the money to travel to America?  
• Why didn’t the colonists in Connecticut grow rice?

TIP:  One of the first things we decide in my class at the beginning of the year is how to answer questions. 

We decide what constitutes knowledge and what shows that someone is a smart thinker.  We decide that one or two word answers do not show either knowledge or smart thinking.  We determine that all questions should be answered in complete sentences, unless I specifically state otherwise. 

         We also decide that the use of appropriate word choice is important.  This is something that we work on strengthening throughout the year, and expectations raise as we go.  Within a few months, kids know that verbs such as  “were” and “had” need to be abandoned in favor of more specific ones, such as “resided,” “lived,” “created,” or “contained.”  “Many” and “numerous” replace “a lot.”  “Crafts,” “artifacts,” “tools,” and “belongings” are used instead of “things.”

         Later questions are more open-ended and require the kids to utilize the facts to come to and defend conclusions.  I might give a short paragraph describing an archeological excavation in Spain that uncovers a small settlement used by prehistoric peoples.  Archeologists find remnants of a campfire with animal bones, and a hand axe.  The time period in which they were used is approximately 1.5 million years ago. 

         The kids are asked to identify the probable species of early human who used the settlement, and explain their reasoning.   I will expect them to discuss the use of fire and tools as well as the time period to substantiate their conclusion that it belonged to Homo Erectus.

          By the middle of the year when we study Ancient Civilizations, my students are expected to answer the following question: 

If you were an archeologist wanting to begin an excavation in Ancient China looking for the remnants of the earliest settlements, what points would you look for on a map and why?

         I would expect all of my students to be able to articulate that one would look near a fresh water source, because people needed water to drink and to water their crops. 

         By mid-year, I expect my students to be describing  the types of information they are going to learn when they open to the newest unit in the textbook, and to make predictions using their considerable bank of background knowledge about what each culture or civilization contained as it grew and developed.

         In a demanding classroom, kids are expected to retrieve and use information, not just have it.

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By Sara Finegan

         I’m teaching a general education math class this year that includes many of my own kids with learning disabilities as well as kids who do not have IEPs.  We’re  about six days behind the other class at the same grade level, and both of us finished the first two units well before the district’s first math benchmark assessment. 

          Greg Roy, my general education colleague, has, as I have said before on this blog, taught me a great deal about math and math instruction.   He and I disagree about mastery, by the way, but that doesn’t impair our ability to collaborate.   He moves at his speed, and I move at a different one,  but we’re both moving forward.

          Anyway, Greg’s a proponent of math routines, and he does them at the beginning of the day as well as at the beginning of a math class.  Routines are great, for several reasons. 

          • First, they provide kids with ongoing practice of previously-learned skills.  My routines always have problems from lessons we have worked on since the beginning of the year – usually types of problems the kids struggled with mightily, so that the skills will become firmly embedded. 

(A recent math routine had a word problem involving adding negative numbers, 2 fraction simplifications, 1 changing from mixed fraction to improper fraction, 1 changing improper fraction to a mixed number, and 2 dealing with multiplying decimals by 10, because my kids bombed that area on the last unit test for some reason, as well as a problem from yesterday’s lesson.)

         The kids get to use their notes and math encyclopedias on the routines, and we go over the results really quickly.  The whole thing takes about 15 minutes each day. 

         • The second benefit of a daily routine is that they give you a snapshot of each student at that moment.  This is particularly helpful as you plan your instruction.  I can tell at a glance how many of the kids in my class have mastered yesterday’s lesson or skill, and what the next steps might be.  Because I make my kids show their work on each routine, I can pinpoint where in the process of problem-solving they are struggling. 

          • Finally they give kids a terrific sense of competence.  As they experience over a series of weeks and months the increasing ease of solving problems using skills they’ve learned, they realize that they can do it, that they are actually good at it. 

         The other day, a parent of one of my general education math students told me that her daughter, who has always struggled with math, is coming home saying “hey, mom!  I’m smart at math!”  This student is the first to raise her hand in my class, the first to want to show the class how she solved a problem, the first to ask questions, and the first to finish her work these days.  It’s not because of me; it’s because every day, when she starts learning math, she is reminded that she’s already got terrific skills.

          Many special educators neglect daily routines, or don’t make their routines as comprehensive as they should be.  We need to recognize that our kids should have multiple opportunities, over a long period of time, to practice newly-mastered skills, or those skills will evaporate like steam after a shower. 

          We need to challenge our kids daily, while at the same time reminding them that they have ability already, or they will never challenge themselves, and never remind themselves of how far they’ve come.

          We need to push, push, push our kids, using all of their strengths, innate and learned, or they will never catch up to their general education peers. 

          In a demanding classroom, mastery is not something to be admired and then ignored; it’s about skill sets we use, reuse, and apply in newer ways on a regular basis.

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By Richard Finegan

         I am a para-educator; specifically, a Spec Ed Tech; a special education classroom aide whose job exists only because of a legal document (the Individualized Education Plan or IEP) that says one or more special education students in the classes to which I am assigned need additional classroom support. 

         That is, they need more help than can be provided by the classroom teacher alone.

         In my particular case, I “shadow” one student to all his classes.  He’s in general education 100% of the time, because his difficulties are not academic.

         We used to be called one-on-one aides but our school district, in its infinite wisdom, declared “There are no more one-on-one aides!”  This was loudly announced in a large public meeting of para-educators I attended two years ago, even while I was assigned full time to one student, which continued until the end of that year. 

          For most of last year, I was again assigned full time to one student.  So far this year I have been assigned full time to one student.  And the person who loudly declared in a public meeting of para-educators that “There are no more one-on-one aides!” is still working as some mid-level administrator for the same school district. 

         Go figure.  She doesn’t even know what the hell is going on in the classrooms of the schools she administers. But she knows the party line!  Bet she’s a Republican. (Did I just say that?  Sorry.)

So anyway, where was I.  Oh, yes…

         I don’t really care what they call me.  Or whether the principal of the school I’m assigned to even recognizes me as a member of his or her staff.  (I’m convinced more than one thought I was a substitute teacher which is why they kept seeing me on campus.)

         Now in my seventh year, at my fifth school and almost all in general ed classes, I pretty much operate under the radar, usually reporting infrequently to one vice principal (we have three in our high schools) and otherwise being left to fend for myself.

         I learned early that the very last person from whom to seek advice about what your role is as a para-educator in the general education classroom is the general education teacher.  They will frequently think:

• You’re there to make their copies.
• You’re there to accompany kids to the office when they give them a referral for some misbehavior.
• You’re there to take attendance.
• You’re there to post grades.
• You’re there to keep the “special ed kids” quiet so they can teach the other students.

         While this is not a universal attitude by far, it is certainly common.  Here’s my advice if you are new to this and don’t exactly know what you should be doing: 

1)  Never forget that you only have a job because a certain kid (or kids) in that classroom have IEPs.  Get copies of the IEPs  to learn precisely what additional supports which children need.  If they aren’t routinely provided to you, insist on them.  You cannot do your job if you don’t know what particular support you are supposed to provide to each child.

2)  Once you have identified those kids with IEPs and what they need, then you proceed to help any kid in that class who needs help.  You do not unnecessarily segregate your kids from the rest of the class and single them out (unnecessarily) from everyone else.  Ideally, the kids without IEPs should not know who you are there to help, or perhaps even why you are there at all.

3)  Remember that you are not the teacher’s personal assistant.  Sometimes easier said than done, but if a general ed teacher is treating you like a “girl Friday,” then you should contact your supervisor and express your concerns, always in terms of what you are not able to do for your kids because of what you are being asked to do for the teacher.

         We may not be certificated, but we are professionals with a legal role to play (much like the speech pathologist or the occupational therapist) determined by the students’ IEPs. 

         We deserve to be treated as co-workers in the classroom, not as go-fers.

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By Sara Finegan 

         My colleague, Laurie Vierra, is a Special Education Intern this year with a special day class of third and fourth graders, having taken advantage of our district’s offer to pay for general education teachers to move into and obtain a Masters in Special Ed.  

         A background in the general education standards, pacing, and instructional methods are great assets in the special ed classroom.  Laurie knows what her students need to be able to do in order to function at grade level, and she’s interested in lifting them up to that level.  She has no sense of comfort with student dependence or any belief that a learning deficit is a static thing that can never be repaired. 

         She certainly isn’t under the impression that a learning disability prevents anyone from doing grade-level work.

         This was, at first, a little bit disconcerting to the students in her class and some of their parents, who are used to the program of the teacher she is replacing: 

• Gone are the days when the teacher and the teacher aide (para-educator) will go into student backpacks to retrieve homework:  she will not accept assignments turned in by anyone other than the student.   
• Nowhere in her classroom does the aide sit with students and follow a written script for instruction and support. 
• Students don’t get candy for behaving or finishing their work.   
• Students in Laurie’s class have homework every day, including weekends.  And parents can’t do it for their kids.
• Kids have to get their own pencils and paper; the aide is no longer running across the room to bring the students supplies.
• The work the kids do at home and in class is meaningful; there’s no such thing as “sponge work,” and every lesson and assignment is directed toward a reachable educational goal.  

         I’m interested to see what will happen as the year progresses, and Laurie alters her students’ IEP goals to better reflect state standards.   Almost all of the kids in her class had identical goals during the past couple of years, regardless of what their needs and strengths were.  

         I have a feeling that Laurie is already redesigning and reworking the expectations for each child; I know for a fact that she’s got a clear idea of what each child needs to learn in order to reach higher objectives.  If I know Laurie, she will be custom-creating goals that will actually move her students toward grade-level work.

         That class is moving, kicking and screaming perhaps at first, but more and more confidently into demanding, high-quality work.  I’m delighted, because it means that when the kids come my room for fifth and sixth grade, I won’t spend a year working to develop independent learners.

It was not always this way… 

         A few years ago, I opened my classroom to five new fourth graders, three of whom were GATE (gifted and talented) certified and all of whom, the teacher told me, were proficient in math, reading, and writing. 

         They’d scored high on the state’s standardized tests the previous spring and were just wonderful kids.  She advised that they should all be mainstreamed for math, and that four of them could attend a general education social studies or science class. 

She was right that they were wonderful kids.  I adore them.  But they were not wonderful students, not yet.

• During the first week, one of them spent six hours in the classroom crying because she wanted the lower-grades special day class (SDC) aide to come and sit with her. 
• During the first week, all of them failed the beginning of the year math inventory which reflected what they had learned the previous year.  Only one of them demonstrated anything close to mastery of some of the math modules for the previous year.
• During the first month, I discovered that they had no idea how to talk or think about what they were reading:  their idea of reading comprehension was to parrot back what the text said. 
• When I administered an On-Demand writing assessment that asked them to describe their favorite experience the previous summer, none of them wrote more than three sentences. 
• Three of them lasted less than two weeks in a general education math class because they weren’t able to follow the lessons.   
• None of them were able to participate in science or social studies, because they couldn’t get accustomed to the concept of active, engaged learning.  They sat passively through instruction, and waited during independent work time for someone to tell them what to do instead of reading the directions.
• I discovered on their first benchmark test that they were used to having all assessments read to them, even though four of them read at the third grade level or higher.  When they did in-class assignments, they expected me or our aide to sit with them and tell them what to do next.

The children were shorthchanged…

         Their previous teacher did them a grave disservice.  She sent me five very intelligent kids who hadn’t a clue how to learn.  It wasn’t their fault; they’d never been taught how to think or had thinking skills modeled for them. 

         My former colleague never worked in general education, never entered a general education classroom, and felt safe only in her cocooned Special Day Classroom, where she could nurture her students and coddle them.

         Laurie’s work is already showing results, and it’s just the beginning of November.  She’s participating in a fourth-grade team with two other general education teachers:  she took on social studies, and has a reverse-mainstreaming thing going on in her classroom; she teaches a rigorous math class to her students and some of the lower-scoring kids in general ed (and three of my students, fifth and sixth graders who are still needing support with basic math skills in a very small group situation). 

         When you walk into her classroom, it’s student work you see, not artwork done by her or her aide. 

         Laurie and I can finish each others’ sentences when we discuss rigor and independent learning.  This shorthand is based on a mutual understanding of what special education is:  a service designed to bridge the gap between ability and capacity, not an educational system to protect kids with special needs.

         When we smother kids with support and don’t teach them how to think for themselves, even the brightest of them will atrophy as learners.

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 By Sara Finegan

           Way too many Special Education classrooms are quiet rooms where kids remain at their desks and do seatwork, supervised by staff who either sit at the front of the room monitoring behavior or roam the room, monitoring the student work. 

           I believe this teaches kids to be passive receptors of information, regurgitating facts on demand. 

         I believe this enables kids in their expectation that learning is when someone gives you knowledge.  There’s no impetus to go and get knowledge, or to use it other than to show that you learned a fact.

           Passive learners are not successful students.  Productive lives do not get lived by people who wait for things to come to them.  Critical thinkers do not develop from children who believe that a teacher’s job is to give them information.  

         In a demanding classroom, the teacher is the facilitator, and the kids are the ones doing the work.

         In a demanding classroom, there’s movement.  Kids are asked to physically get up and go find information, and to physically gather facts and evaluate them or apply them.

         There’s engagement in this way with the world they are studying, and the concepts they are mastering.  They perceive a relationship between themselves and knowledge that involves action on their part.

          We create not just the opportunities for movement in learning, but requirements for it in a variety of different learning formats.

• Kids have to get up and move around the room to read charts and find information with which to answer worksheet questions. 
• Study and reading or writing groups are assigned to different areas of the room to congregate for cooperative learning activities. 
• In math, the kids look forward to me creating equations all over the two room white boards and allowing them to come up and choose one or two each to solve. 
• We have centers set up for kids to revolve through, fifteen minutes at a time:  a table with history sorting cards to organize; one with paper to create a mindmap or analogy list from a set of listen facts; a table with scenarios for them to respond to using knowledge they have learned about a civilization or culture. 
• In math, we study multiplication facts on the playground by bouncing a ball to one another as we skip count or recite numbers. 

         We see great intellectual growth when our students are required to move through learning, not absorb it.  In a demanding classroom, intellectual movement is often accompanied by physical activity.

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By Sara Finegan

         There has long been a debate about the issue of teaching to mastery.  When districts and states set up learning modules on a schedule, or a series of standards to meet each year, the inclination of many teachers is to get through as many of them as possible. Some schools and districts place a great deal of pressure on teachers to move forward, and to keep moving through the year.

         I’m not averse to having a set of outcomes to work toward and achieve each year for each grade level. I am against moving forward before our kids really have become proficient at new skills, strategies, and knowledge.

         In a demanding classroom, we don’t get stuck in a routine of doing the same work over and over, and we don’t adhere to other people’s schedules about when learning should be accomplished. Instead, we focus on cementing new skills, step-by-step, concept-by-concept, so that when the foundation of math, science, and other learning is complete, there are as few weak spots as possible.

         If you think about it, if we move kids forward before they really get the previous unit or skill, you are building a house of cards on quicksand. Nothing is going to really stick and the child is going to be aware on a pretty consistent basis that he or she is missing something.

         And what are we teaching kids about learning if we do it this way? It seems to me that we are saying to our children: Learning isn’t about mastering information and strategies; it’s about zipping through lessons to completion rather than to skill.

         Given that one of the major issues for kids with special needs is that they rush through work, getting it done rather than getting it right, aren’t we re-enforcing their own poor learning habits when we teach to completion over quality?

         Many will argue that teaching to mastery takes too much time, and that we don’t have the extra hours or days to ensure that all of our students become proficient at each new lesson.

         I disagree. It isn’t necessarily so. It all depends on how we teach the new information or skills, and what kind and what quality of practice we give our students.

         It also depends on the manner in which we release responsibility back to kids as they work. If we jump too quickly from “I show you” to “you do it,” mastery will take much longer than if we move, increment by increment, from “I show you,” to “I show you again,” to “we do it together,” to “we do it together more,” to “you and a partner do it,, to “try it again, and I’ll be right here,” to “hey, try it and I’ll step back a bit,” to “hey, you can do this!”

         All of that, by the way, doesn’t take place in math, for example, for weeks and weeks; it’s really a matter of days.

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By Sara Finegan 

         The other day I was reminded anew of the most powerful inspiration and teaching tool in the classroom:  peer sharing.

         We’re still at the early stage of learning how to write a paragraph describing a character that is the second part of our standard Response to Literature.  We’d done a lesson on the “how-to” where I modeled and charted the steps.

          We’d done a guided lesson  on the first several steps:   collecting facts about the character from our reading; organizing them by numbering them in the order we would write them.  For the purpose of this activity, we were all writing about the same character.

         Once kids had organized their data, I sent them off to try their hand at writing the paragraph.  They were thrilled when they realized that the writing part was soooo much easier if you had prepared the list and put numbers next to it – all they had to do was turn the jotted notes into actual sentences.  As their writing continued, they felt better and better.

They found two partners to share out with

         Since we had time left over before the bell rang, I asked them to find two partners and share out their work.   I didn’t think this was going to be particularly powerful, since everyone was using essentially the same facts about the same character.  But even in a demanding classroom there are those dead moments when things have gone faster than you’d anticipated, and there’s still instructional time left. 

         Boy, was I wrong

         Within about 7 minutes, every single one of my students was back at his or her desk, writing furiously.    As I passed by him, Robert raised his head and asked “Is it ok if I write more?  I read what Drew wrote and I realized I had more to say.”

         Was it okay if he wrote more?  I gave him the “DUH” look and a thumbs up.

         At the other end of the room, Antonio was reading his own piece, pausing to think, and then drawing arrows down to free lines on the page and adding more sentences.  “I forgot that I could write about an inference I have about the character,” he said.  “That’s what James did.” 

         Now, we all know of groups of kids with limited independent thinking skills whose interaction with the work of their peers pretty much involves copying each other, or copying off each other.   In that stage of the learning process, peer sharing is still valuable, but perhaps in a different format.  (For example, showing the whole class one student’s work at a time on the document camera and having discussions as a group about the writing often works to show kids that many styles of writing are good writing, or how one of the students handled a particularly difficult writing task.)

My guidance wasn’t needed! 

         In this case, it was perfectly fine to allow the kids unstructured time to gather in small groups and share out without my participation or direction.

         This worked because the kids are confident in their ability to learn and to improve, and their understanding that opportunities to enhance their skills exist all over the place.  They trust one another and allow themselves to be inspired by each other in ways that teachers cannot emulate. 

         In a demanding classroom, the kids sometimes demand more intellectual work of one another than the teacher!

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