By Sara Finegan

In my tenure as a special educator, I’ve taught kids in a Special Day Class setting as well as those who would be classified as Resource and kept in the general education environment.    I’ve taught almost every subject area in separate classroom and general ed classroom, in grades 4 through 12.   I’ve taught kids with mild to moderate learning deficits, and even a few with more moderate to severe disabilities.

The more I work with these wonderful kids, the more I am made aware that it is not the content of the lessons, but the manner in which we teach them that makes the difference in learning.    Direct, explicit instruction, customized to the child’s individual learning style and need, is the key to the door that accesses, for the child, the material.    Even the best teachers using the best practices for instruction, may need to tweak how they do things to accommodate our learners’ deficits.

Let me give some examples:

Avery was born premature and since early childhood has exhibited difficulties with memory, particularly sequential memory.  He is now getting ready for middle school.  He does not know the months of the year in order, or the seasons in which the months belong.  He just learned his phone number.  He has difficulty memorizing multiplication tables.  He has significant deficits in the area of auditory processing, and may have receptive language deficits.  He certainly displays difficulties with expressive language – he has difficulty at times retrieving even the names of long-time friends.  He is friendly, funny, athletic, and popular in his class.

Justin is an upper primary student who has an anxiety disorder.  He has trouble falling asleep at night, is fearful of the dark and strange places, and desperate that nobody know when he doesn’t understand something in class.  He is shy, but friendly, and has a good sense of humor.  He masks his terrible fear of exposure with a feigned carelessness.  He refuses help at home from his parents and peers, which makes homework and remedial learning difficult.    Justin, like Avery, does not process what he hears, and tries to model his academic behavior after what he sees his peers doing, without understanding the concepts  being taught.   A popular kid, Justin’s learning is impeded by his internal anxiety and his processing deficits.

Shayna has ADHD and needs to be constantly moving in order to function at all in class.  She’s tried a variety of medications, all of which has side effects that made it impossible for her to continue.  With preferential seating and lots of visual cues, she can manage in class for the most part, but has frequent episodes of panic when, after emerging from a short episode of inattention, she realizes that she missed something important and doesn’t know what to do.    She is sloppy and careless in her work, but is motivated to learn.    Her writing skills are very limited; spelling is atrocious, punctuation non-existent, and she often skips words, writes run-on or incomplete sentences, and never, unless prompted, uses detail to support her ideas and flesh out the text.

Toby is a high-functioning autistic learner.  His expressive and receptive language deficits make understanding what the teacher is saying, including directions, difficult, so he does a lot of watching and copying what others are doing.  He thrives where there’s math calculations to do, but in terms of setting up problems, navigating through word problems, or showing mathematical reasoning, he is far below grade level.   Toby is a good mechanical reader, but his comprehension skills are limited to the surface, literal meaning of text.

All of these kids are in a general education class of 30 students, with a fabulous teacher who provides differentiated instruction better than anyone I’ve ever seen:  Every lesson includes kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and musical and/or artistic segments designed to address every type of learner.    She knows her stuff, and she knows how to make learning fun, energetic, and successful.   Everything is color-coded, rhythmic, and well-spaced so that kids aren’t overwhelmed by the material.

            And yet……….our four friends are falling seriously behind.    

Walk into the classroom, and take a seat in a corner.  You will see a dynamic teacher leading kids through a fun lesson.  There are pauses for movement, there are funny accents to keep your attention in the right place, open-ended questions, modeling, and cooperative learning activities.  Kids are active, engaged, and working together.

Look at our four friends.  They are smiling.  Eyes are glued on the teacher when she’s providing instruction.  They copy everything she does.  They are well-behaved. 

But when it comes time to work with partners or independently, they are helpless.  They look at what their partners are doing and try to follow along.  Ask them what they are doing, and they can’t really say.  If they’ve followed the modeled lesson and copied the info into the graphic organizer, using colored pencils, just like the teacher did, they don’t know what to DO with the information when left to their own devices.  They let their partners do most of the work and strive to look busy.

Avery needs 45 more minutes than anyone else to finish a task.  Justin doesn’t finish, but does enough to get by.  Toby copies exactly what his partner wrote.  Shayna walks over to the teacher eight times in 35 minutes to show her what she’s done so far and ask if it’s right.  It isn’t very good, but at least she’s trying.

Next scene:  math class.  The kids are working on multiple-step problem solving.  Avery and Justin are confused, and are using the wrong operation to solve equations.  Shayna loses track of what she’s doing and has to start over again three times.  Toby is sitting, staring at a word problem, unsure how to set up an equation.  He shuts down completely until the teacher approaches and writes an equation out for him, at which point he quickly solves it in his head.  He writes the answer without showing his work. 

You get the picture.  You’ve probably seen each of these kids somewhere in one of your classes.

            So what is missing?

            I think that what is missing is direct, explicit, step-by-step instruction. 

Instructional trends have been moving increasingly to the exploratory learning module, where kids are given open-ended questions and work together to explore and reason through answers using grade-level materials.    Understanding the concepts behind mathematical operations is given the same importance as being able to use the operations properly.  Experimenting with concepts and ideas and giving kids time to try on and try out different ways of writing, thinking about the content of the textbook constitute a good part of the day.    We want kids to be able to reason, not just answer by rote, right?  Absolutely. 

But there’s a problem with this.  If our kids can’t really understand the language, can’t process it or use it, if their processing deficits impede the reasoning needed to do the work at grade level, or if their reading and writing skills are below grade level so that they struggle just to make sense of the textbook, all of the exploratory learning in the world is not going to achieve anything at all.  In fact, it is going to confuse the kids and get them more tangled up with feelings of inadequacy and confusion, frustration and anxiety, than they need to be.

These kids need coping strategies, problem-solving strategies, and to be taught, shown, and given multiple opportunities to practice, the step-by-step process for doing the work.

• They need to have those steps provided to them clearly, in writing, on charts displayed in the room, and in their binders.  They need to be shown, over and over, each step, in isolation.  Practice just doing Step 1 ten times.  Then do Step 2 ten times.  Then practice Steps 1 and 2 five times.  And so on.
• They need to be told what you are looking to see them do.  “I want to see you reading the question, and underlining the key word.”   “I want to see you scanning the text, line by line, looking for the key word.”  “I want to see you lining up your problem one number right underneath the other.”  “I want to see you highlighting the operations words in the math problem.”

• Give them templates.  Give them checklists.  Give them small group supervision as they practice, without making them feel that they are being singled out because they’re dumb, or “special”.    Send them home with the step-by-step instructions and five practice opportunities as homework, with a reward when they bring it back. 

What does this require of us, the teachers?  It requires that we be willing to break tasks down into smaller bits, and to create clear, concise, and easy to remember explanations or instructions for each.  It requires that we be creative enough to find mnemonics, songs, goofy slogans, and pictures of the key elements of the lesson.  It requires that we  be flexible enough to create small group opportunities, DAILY,  to help guide our students with learning difficulties, in the general education classroom, not as a pull-out where they are singled out as “special”.  It requires that we be sometimes willing to go against the teaching modules that our newer textbooks and educational programs dictate , to include the older-fashioned direct instruction that these kids need.

accommodations · differentiated instruction · direct instruction · directions · explicit instruction · exploratory learning · Inclusion · learning · learning disabilities · learning styles · repitition · resource · rote learning · Sara Finegan · special education · teaching strategies

By Sara Finegan

I think that somewhere between one third and one half of the problems kids with learning disabilities have in class are related to the way the adults in the classroom talk.  I have absolutely no scientific evidence to back this up.  I just have a gut feeling.  It might be more than one half, actually.  It’s a lot.

If you’re a teacher, visualize yourself in the class with your students.  Visualize teaching a lesson, giving instructions for independent or group work, and yourself roaming the classroom, observing and intervening as necessary. 

Listen to yourself. 

Listen some more.

Now, step back out of your visualized classroom and think about what your lesson was about.  What was the purpose?  What did you want the kids to learn?  What did you want them to be able to do in independent or group work?  How did you anticipate that they would demonstrate what they learned? 

I can create a one-page, bulleted mock-up of a lesson that looks like this:

• What I want them to know/learn/be able to do: 
  • identify key vocabulary in a math word problem that indicates the type of operation to use to solve.
• Why this is important: 
  • Helps make word problems easier to decipher
• How I will teach it: 
  • On overhead, several word problems
  • Work to highlight the key vocabulary 
  • Model, model, model. 
  • Then, kids write words in graphic organizer 
  • Then, partner work
• How I will know they got it: 
  • I’ll see their graphic organizers completed 
  • I’ll see partners working to underline or highlight key vocabulary in practice questions and create the correct equations

I’m very clear on what I want them to learn how to do, why, and the steps involved in the lesson.  Putting the lesson into place, however, can result in instruction that is far less clear. 

The difference between an effective lesson using this lesson plan, and one that is not effective rests not on the plan itself, but on how it is delivered. 

Delivery of a lesson involves just about everything we are doing.  It involves our physical presence in the classroom:  where we stand or sit, and where, when and how we move.  It involves the visuals that we provide:  charts, overhead or document camera, Promethean board.  It involves the environmental surroundings in the classroom:  light, other sounds, movement, interference.   It involves our attitude:  are we energetic, frenetic, goofy, light-hearted, serious, stern, bored, frustrated? 

And, most of all to some students, it involves the words we use.  In particular, the number of words we use.

To those of us who are good with words, who understand them and use them effectively, the amount of teacher talk in a lesson doesn’t seem very important.  I can listen to a professor who intersperses, in his lectures about contemporary art, anecdotes about his experiences with famous and not-so-famous artists, lame jokes, and tangential diatribes about public funding for art.   I track him while he paces back and forth between the podium and the window.

While I’m listening, I am sorting through his words and identifying the most important concepts, writing down, in outline form, the notes that I am going to need to study for the test, and filing away some of the stories he’s telling to repeat to my husband someday.  If I get distracted by the mutterings of my seat partner or the note that she passes me asking if I want to meet for coffee on Saturday, I can easily come back to the lecture, filling what I missed using my background knowledge, or, in  a pinch, glance at my partner’s notes and copy.

There are other people in the class with me, and kids in the classes that I teach, who will not be able to do what I’m doing, and won’t get much, if anything, out of the lesson.   I’m referring to people with auditory processing deficits (or APDs).

For them, dealing with the words spoken by the professor, or by me, is a struggle not just for meaning, but for discernment, sequencing, associating, and storing.        

Some of the brightest people I have ever known have auditory processing deficits, and most were considered stupid when they were in elementary school, because they  could sit in class, pay attention to the teacher, and  not come away with any meaningful grasp of what was taught.

What are auditory processing deficits? 

Here’s what they’re not:  they aren’t hearing deficits.  People with auditory processing deficits hear just fine.  Their brains simply don’t process the sounds properly.  Think of it as having extreme near or farsightedness with sounds.  Or partial paralysis of your legs while you’re walking. 

There are a variety of types of auditory processing deficits.  I will cover those in another post.  But regardless of the particular form of APD, you need to know that no matter how clearly you speak, what you say in class to your students may be incomprehensible or, at the very least, extremely difficult to understand by many students.

Let’s take a couple of scenarios. 

• Here, the lesson is about a book the kids need to choose for their next book report:

“Ok, kids, I just finished grading the last book report and I’m really pleased with how everyone did.  I saw a lot of really excellent thinking and writing and by the way, some of your artwork on the book covers was outstanding!  I’m going to put some of the best reports and book covers on the bulletin board so that y’all can see them and celebrate the excellence.  Nice job.   Now, it’s time to get started on next month’s reading assignment.  The book report for next month is going to be a little different.  Instead of writing a plain report, you’re going to write it in the form of a newspaper, with feature articles, interviews, even an advice column, and of course, pictures. 

“I’m going to pass around some examples of exemplary work done by last year’s students.  You’ll see that they used really creative headlines and that the newspapers looked very professional.  It’s okay to have your parents help you if they have newsletter or other software that will help you layout the materials you type in, but they can’t do the writing for you.  Ok, so, your book choice this month is going to be the life story of an important person in American culture.  You can pick a biography or autobiography or memoir.  Who knows what a memoir is?  Sandy?  Yes, it’s the life reminiscences of a person.  How is that different from an autobiography?  John?  Right.  An autobiography is in sequential order, from birth onwards.  Memoirs can move around between ages.  Good job! 

“Ok, so you need to pick a book in the next few days.  The book should be a least 150 pages long, so nobody had better pick up one of the easy-peasy readers that we use with our reading buddies in the first grade!  You can use a book on tape, too, if you like. A  lot of people, like my mom, love to listen to books on tape instead of just reading the text, because it seems more alive to them, and that’s just fine.  Your choice.  We’ll go to the library tomorrow morning and you can look there as well as in our classroom book bins.  Remember, it has to be an American person, not someone from Europe.  So could you pick a biography of King Henry II of England?  No, you could not, because he wasn’t American.  Could you do a biography of Levi Strauss, who invented blue jeans?  Sure, because he lived in America.  Ok, he wasn’t born here, but he moved here and he became an American.  Back then, it was easier to become a citizen.  Are we clear? 

“You are going to have three weeks to read the book and I will be giving you a packet with the instructions for each type of article or whatever that you need to include in the book report newsletter.  You can write it by hand but it will look a lot nicer if it’s typed, and if you don’t have a computer at home you can go to the computer lab during lunch or literacy time to do the typing, or even stay after school if Mrs. Sainz will allow it.  You have to ask her.  I think she usually has one hour of c omputer time available on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but you’d better ask her.  Are we clear?  Good.  Let’s look at some of these examples.  Pass them around, pass them around.”

The students who were listening to this teacher had to do a lot of things at once.  They had to look at the examples she passed around… identify and then keep track of which parts of what she was saying were important to know for the book report… remember the different requirements for the book choice… listen to the questions she asked and the answers… file away the information about the computer center…identify the time period in which the book (a) needed to be chosen and (b) needed to be finished… and discard extraeneous information.

That’s a lot to do.  If this teacher was moving around the classroom while she was talking, the student also had to both look at the materials in front of him or her and track the teacher.  If the teacher turned away from the students, and kept talking, the student had to listen harder to make sure he or she got all of the words.   If the student stopped listening or tuned out even briefly while looking at the examples being passed around, he or she would have to fill in the blanks missed from the teacher’s speech.

• In the following example, the kids are learning about totem poles:

“Kids, Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest had some unique arts and crafts.  They used the natural resources of their region – who can tell me what one of them was?  Jane?  Right.  Wood.  Another one?  Danielle?  Right!  Whale bone.  Jack?  Ivory, yep, that too.  All right.  Let’s turn to page 178 and start learning about what they used those items for besides tools and other implements.    I said open your book, David.  Open.  The.  Book.  Turn to the page.  I said page 178.  Ok.  No, not 176.  178.  EIGHT.  Good. 

“All right, let’s look at the page.  What text features do you notice?  Alex?  And what does the title say?  Totem.  Prounced like Toe, Tem.  Totem.  Totem poles.  Right.  So what is this part of the chapter going to be about?  Totem poles.  What other text features do you notice?  Ricky?  Picture?  What is the academic word for the picture in the textbook?  Starts with ill……right, illustration.  What goes along with the illustration, who knows?  Kim?  Caption.  The caption describes the picture, tells you what it is.  In this case, what does the caption tell us?  Roxanne?  Read it, please.  Good.  Ok, so let’s start reading.  Kim, read the first paragraph, please….

(Later).…”Nice job.   So now we know about the totem poles.  Who can raise their hand and, in your own words, tell me what a totem pole is?  Ralphie?  Good!  Yes, it is a piece of sculpture made of wood that the Indians used to represent important animals spirits, or totems, in their clans or culture.  Write that down.  In your social studies notebook, write totem pole, and your definition.  Then, write, in bullet form, at least 3 animals that were commonly used in totem poles.   Next to each animal, write the attribute or characteristic of that animal in the Pacific Northwest Indian culture.  I’ll come around and look at what you’re doing.”

Here, the students had to retrieve academic vocabulary in the form of text features…remember the page number…take notes…listen while their peers read from the text out loud… recall important parts of the reading…identify the important parts… segment or organize the different types of information…remember the sequence of certain details… multi-task visual and auditory…fill in any blanks using background knowledge..recall important information.

There are kids who cannot do any of these with ease, and there are kids who can do only a few of them with ease, and there are kids who can do any one of them with ease but not combinations of them. 

These are the kids who are going to become completely entangled in your words and, in so doing, miss most of, part of, or some of the lesson. 

It’s not their fault.  It’s not your fault.   But one of you needs to change, and it’s not going to be the child. 

Auditory Processing Deficits are not something you can really cure, though some remediating work can be done.  They are things that we have to accommodate.  And accommodate we must.

What follows are some suggestions, if not concrete rules, for how to deal with auditory processing deficits in your classroom.

You, your body, and what you do with it.

• If you are a wanderer during instruction, i.e., when you’re giving the lesson, consider becoming more of a stationary speaker.  If you can’t do that, and many of us just need to move, then consider limiting the area in which you are moving.    We can teach kids to track us while we’re talking, but too much movement can be difficult.
• If you are standing or moving in front of a window or light, pay attention to whether the glare or shadow impedes a child from seeing your face.  If the light from my classroom windows shines at a certain angle behind me, my students to my left cannot really see my face.  They need to be able to in order to get the most from what I’m saying.
• Make sure that no matter what, you are facing the class while you are talking.  Again, the kids need to be able to see your face while you speak.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Rephrase.

Most of us are adept, in the classroom, at rephrasing the same information or directions several times, perhaps in a variety of ways.  This is an excellent skill and we shouldn’t stop using it.  But kids with certain types of auditory processing deficits actually need us to also repeat the exact information we said earlier. 

• Repeat the page number five times.
• Repeat the instructions two or three times. 
• Repeat the words the kids are learning at least three times.
• When you want kids copying things down, repeat it several times.

Chart the important stuff.

Kids who struggle to identify, sequence, and organize the important information in a lesson need to have visual re-enforcement.  I sometimes use both chart paper and a graphic organizer under the document camera. 

On the chart paper, I record the step-by-step instructions the kids need to follow.  On blank paper under the document camera I write the key concepts or important vocabulary that we are learning or talking about. 

• Chart the step-by-step, sequential information and leave it up during the entire lesson.
• Chart the important vocabulary or key concepts the kids need to know.
• Post clearly what you expect to see the kids doing or what the completed work should contain.

Provide note-taking assistance.

Effective note-taking involves reading or hearing information, narrowing it down to the most important facts or concepts, organizing it, and writing it in a way that can be easily read.  Kids with auditory processing deficits have a really hard time with this.

• Share your own notes our outline with the students with APD.
• Have peers share their notes or take notes for others.  (If you make this a matter-of-fact thing, nobody will think it’s odd or that the receiving student is “special”.)
• Create templates or fill-in sheets for kids to use to take notes.

Choose your own words carefully.

You may need to speak less in class, and choreograph the times you do speak.  If you’re like me, this can be a painful thing to contemplate, but contemplate it we must.  But consider the following:

• What if the teacher in the book report example had first given the kids an opportunity to look at the examples of the newspaper-style book report and then started talking about the assignment? 
• What if the teacher had charted the essential points she needed to convey about the new book report assignment, and, pointing to each one, ticked them off?
• What if she’d given everyone kudos for the previous book report, then allowed everyone to get up and go look at the best ones on the board, and only then started talking about the next one?
• What if she had charted the key info about the genres (biography, autobiography, memoir) when the kids answered her questions?
• What if she saved the information about typing and computer lab for another occasion, perhaps after she’d handed out the assignment packet?
• What if, in the Totem Pole example, she’d modeled the note-taking with the kids, showing how she went back into the text to find the information to copy into her notebook?

By spacing what you say and when you say it, combining your words with visual supports, and eliminating extraneous words or postponing them, your lessons and instructions will become more purposeful, succinct, and easy to understand by all of your students.

accomodations · auditory processing · auditory processing deficits · charts · classroom language · determining relative importance · differentiated instruction · hearing vs. listening · Inclusion · learning disabilities · lesson planning · listening · repitition · Sara Finegan · sequencing · sequential memory · special education

By Sara Finegan

I’ve written about what inclusion most definitely isn’t, and about what special education most definitely should be, and even made some comments about what special education instruction in a general education environment is supposed to look like.

That’s all well and good, if you’re looking to get a taste off of the menu that is Special Education, but it doesn’t constitute a meal, nor, more importantly, does it give you the recipes with which to create one.

What we all really want to know these days is what “Accessing Grade-Level Standards” looks like, whether it takes place in a separate classroom or in a general ed class.

Let me give it a shot, via a hypothetical set of students with IEPs.  Let’s follow this mythical cohort through the fourth and fifth grades, not because those grade levels are the most typical or constitute a more crucial pair of years than any other, but because that’s what I’ve been looking at for the last month, and unless there’s an offer of chocolate, we’re all going to look at things for the next few pages through my eyes.

The Cast of Characters

We begin with the diverse mix of students, whom we encounter at the beginning of the fourth grade:

Matt is a cheerful, restless student with mental retardation.  He knows 50 sight words, can count to 30, and likes to listen to stories.  He has limited social skills, and needs a high level of structure in order to be able to participate in any large-group activities.  Matt, who has limited verbal skills, loves to identify and label things and has an excellent memory for the names of things he’s learning about.  He can copy words and sentences, but does not construct sentences of his own without a great deal of support.  Matt is easily frustrated in a large-group environment and often disrupts class by knocking objects off desks and chewing on other students’ zippers and hoods.

Alex is a highly-functioning student with autism and ADHD.  He has difficulty with visual tracking and this, combined with his attention deficits, makes reading extremely difficult.  He reads reluctantly and is easily distracted from the text.  He has an enormous vocabulary and can dictate complex paragraphs, but the mechanics of writing is difficult for him due to dysgraphia.  Alex has excellent cognitive and reasoning skills and can apply what he’s learned across multiple subjects.  He is easily overwhelmed in large groups, needs a lot of repeated drill and small group, guided work in order to learn new skills, and needs to keep moving.  If he sits for more than five minutes, he begins to “zone out” and gets lost in his own world.

Freddy has moderate-functioning autism and mild mental retardation.  He perseverates on whatever he was watching on television while he ate breakfast.  He is anxious to please adults and, while he enjoys being with his classmates, has few friendships and doesn’t show much interest in others’ needs or likes and dislikes.  He remembers every new word he learns in his reading, and as a result, his sight words vocabulary is enormous.  His decoding skills are less strong, but he is currently reading at about the beginning second-grade level.  Fred loves to take the morning survey in class, and carries his clipboard around to each student, tabulating their responses to the day’s questions.  He can write a sentence describing the results of the survey.

Ben is an English Language learner with expressive and receptive language deficits, auditory memory deficits, and working memory deficits.  He has many friends, encourages people to do their best, but is also easily distracted and can disrupt his table by making faces, tossing paper wads, and chatting when lessons are going on.  Ben’s writing skills are very limited:  he struggles to be consistent with singulars and plurals as well as verb tenses, and uses very bland, generic vocabulary.  His thinking is not particularly organized and he jumps from topic to topic in conversation and writing.  Ben reads at the second grade level and has good literal comprehension.

Martina is the class artist.  She spends hours working on craft projects and can be found drawing and making costumes for paper dolls in her spare time.  She works extremely slowly at academic tasks, which in the past frustrated her general education teachers, and, as a result, caused her to lose confidence in her own abilities.  She reads at the third grade level and has excellent critical thinking skills.  Her writing is less strong, as she lacks organization and structure, and her spelling is poor.  Like Ben, Martina’s primary language is Spanish.  Martina takes three times as long as anyone else to complete assignments, but is thorough and methodical and neat, and rarely makes mistakes.  She excels at social studies and invariably wins the class Jeopardy! Games.

Toby is an excellent reader and thinker who lacks executive functioning skills.  His desk is a mess, his work is all over the room, he loses everything, and he forgets his homework four days out of five.   He is three grades behind in math and reads at grade level.  He rushes through most assignments and pays attention to about 45% of what is going on during instruction.  He is articulate, uses powerful vocabulary in speech and in writing, and participates actively in class discussions.

Amanda is  a very bright kiddo with a bubbly personality.  She struggles with multiple-step tasks and her working memory is extremely limited.  She has low numeracy and, despite years of work, doesn’t know what makes ten, cannot remember her multiplication facts, and cannot do grade-level math.  She reads at the third grade level and, although her spelling is atrocious, writes descriptive pieces about topics that interest her.  When it comes to narrative writing, she exhibits less skills – her tendency is to skip details and important parts of the story, leaving the reader to try to figure out what’s going on.  Amanda is very emotional and struggles with friendship skills – she prefers to play with kids who are 2-3 years younger than she is.  She has severe ADHD and medication helps a bit, but not as much as for some other kids in the class.

Sam has Asperger Syndrome (which is now considered a mild version of Autism Spectrum Disorder) and ADHD.  He also is a profoundly anxious child with limited social skills.  He is easily frustrated by academic tasks and has difficulty paying attention and understanding what is going on in class.  He loves science and sports, and will listen to anyone read stories for hours on end.  Sam needs repeated review and drill on a daily basis in order to master new skills or understand new concepts.  After 20 minutes or so in a large-group, fast-paced setting, Sam often has a melt-down, and either tantrums or cries, which causes his peers to make fun of him.

Grant has moderate-functioning autism with accompanying hyperlexia. He can decode any text but doesn’t understand much of what he reads.  He loves Sponge Bob and The Doors, and marching to his internal beat.  Grant doesn’t do well in groups or cooperative learning activities but is an excellent sight words and spelling coach.   When it comes to auditory processing, you can forget it:  Grant doesn’t process much of what he hears, but has amazing visual perceptual skills and remembers everything he sees.

These nine students can and will learn grade-level science and social studies in the fourth and fifth grades.

Fourth and Fifth Grade Science and Social Studies Standards:

Minerals

In California, fourth grade science includes a unit on Magnets and Electricity, one on Rocks and Minerals, and one on Biomes and the Food Chain.  Social Studies focuses on the history of California.  Fifth grade science involves learning about the human circulatory, digestive and respiratory systems, water and the water cycle and the weather.   In Social Studies, students learn about American history, from the Meso-American civilizations to just before the Civil War.

Whether the kids are in a Special Day Class or mainstreamed into a general education class, they will need differentiated instruction and assignments.  This is what the fourth grade science class might look like:

Rocks, Minerals  and Erosion Unit:

Types of Rock:

• The entire class sings the Rock Cycle Song every day at least once.  The lyrics, sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, provide an excellent way of memorizing the facts about Sedimentary, Igneous and Metamorphic rocks.
• All of the kids have the opportunity to work on three hands-on projects:  Make your Own Sediment; Sedimentary Rock In A Bottle; and  Make a Metamorphic Rock.
• Matt, Freddy and Sam read easy-reader books such as “Rocks”, and “Crystals”.  Grant, Alex, and Ben participate in a guided reading group to read “The Rock Family” and “Digging for Dinosaurs.”   All of them gather with the class for a read-aloud of “Dinosaur Hunters” and Martina and Toby serve as table leaders when the class discusses fossils.
• The teacher has prepared two sets of sorting cards with photos of different kinds of rocks (limestone, sandstone, slate, agate, quartz, etc) and cards with the names of rocks.  Every day, kids get together with a partner to match the words to the photos, or to use the cards for a Memory game.  Students use a classroom chart or, in the case of Toby, Ben, Alex, Martina, Amanda and Grant, their “rocks and minerals journal” in which they’ve filled in graphic organizers about different types of rocks and minerals.
  

  Sorting cards

• Freddy, Sam, and Matt like to take the teacher’s collection of small rocks and minerals and sort them, putting them in labeled squares on a 3×3 piece of wood.   Amanda and Martina and Toby often supervise, prompting the three boys to speak in complete sentences about at least three of the rocks they sort.  (ex: “This is a piece of quartz.  It is pink.”;  “Sandstone is a sedimentary rock.”)
• Matt, Sam and Freddy complete a sequencing activity based on the text “A Rock Collection”, which the teacher has copied, cut up, and laminated.  After listening to a peer or an aide read the story, they work independently or together to put the story parts in the proper order.  In the meantime, Martina, Amanda and Toby, having read the story, write a summary of it.  Alex and Ben also write a summary, but they use a word list provided by the teacher and a sentence starter for each paragraph.

Erosion and Changes to the Earth’s Surface

• All of the students listen to several read-alouds by the teacher using picture books about glaciers, volcanos, and earthquakes.
• Freddy and Sam sit with an aide and read “After the Flood” together.  The aide helps them make a list of things that floods and water do to the earth’s surface.
• The kids watch a short film about the San Francisco Earthquake.  A peer or aide reads from the textbook to the kids about earthquakes and the earth’s surface.  The higher level kids work in partners to answer questions from the textbook, while the lower level kids start working on sorting cards and sight words using the vocabulary for the unit.
• Matt, Freddy, and Sam read about what to do in an earthquake.  They work with an aide to make posters to display in the classroom telling people what to do.
• The kids watch a short film about the Grand Canyon.  The higher level kids create a thinking map in their journals about what they learned about water and wind erosion.  The lower level kids get coloring pages about the Grand Canyon to color and, when they’re done, write a sentence about each picture at the bottom.
• The higher level kids complete a cloze activity about glaciers.  All of the kids work on daily review activities, identifying types of events and weather that affect the earth’s surface and whether they are fast or slow influences.
• After a mini-lesson about how water affects the Earth’s surface (weathering, transport, and deposition), the kids participate in a variety of activities in which they identify which part of the process pertains to a photo or event.
• All of the kids do a culminating report on either volcanos, wind and water erosion, glaciers, or earthquakes.
  • The higher level kids work in small groups to complete graphic organizers as a pre-writing activity, and then, once they’ve completed their first drafts, participate in editing and revising activities using a class-generated rubric.  They are expected to type their reports on the computer and use spell check and  any other aids such as a thesaurus and grammar check, if available.
  • The lower level kids use templates which pictures to identify and sentence starters about each of the different things they’ve learned.  All but Matt are expected to write one general statement and give 2 supporting details for each fact about their topic.  Matt gets a set of labels on which the teacher has typed vocabulary words for his topic and he sticks them underneath the pictures on his graphic organizer template.

accessing grade-level · ADHD · autism · decoding · differentiated instruction · dysgraphia · executive functioning · expressive language · grade-level standards · hyperlexia · Inclusion · low numeracy · modifications · receptive language · Sara Finegan · science · social studies · sorting cards · standards · vocabulary

By Sara Finegan

Before I talk about how to locate and create materials to facilitate inclusion in general education, it’s important to understand why we are doing it and what inclusion should look like.

Placing a child with learning disabilities or cognitive impairment into a general education class has two purposes: First, it promotes socialization and the skills necessary for any person to participate with his or her community in the daily activities of learning and working. Second, it allows that child to access grade-level standards with his or her general ed peers.

In any special day class, kids should also be accessing grade-level standards.  The difference is that in a general ed class, your students with IEPs will be working in a different kind of environment.   In many but not all cases the instruction and assignments are more in-depth and high-level.  (If you run a demanding special day classroom like mine, however, the work may actually be at the same level or even slightly higher.   In such a case, the difference will be in class size and pace, not work level.)

Until recently, most school districts had special education services and classrooms at a variety of levels.  In my district we had,  just a few years ago:  ILS (independent living skills) classrooms for kids with profound disabilities; PACE (adaptive curriculum) classrooms for kids with mild mental retardation and moderate-functioning autism; ED classrooms for students with mental illness and behavior issues; and yet another classroom for kids with mild-moderate learning disabilities.  We also had a Resource program for kids with IEPs who could still participate in the general education classroom; they were pulled out in small groups for guided instruction in targeted areas, but most of their time was spent with the general ed teacher.

Unless a parent demanded it, kids who had cognitive impairments or who were more than one or two grade levels below their peers were not part of the general education classroom, on the theory that they needed a smaller, more structured environment in which to learn.  As long as the instruction provided in those separate classrooms was rigorous, there weren’t many drawbacks to sheltering kids from the larger classrooms and there were many pluses.

Nowadays, in many districts, kids at all cognitive and learning levels are increasingly being placed in general education classrooms, with varying levels of support. Thus, in a general education classroom, you may have 26 gen ed students, some of whom are below grade level and some of whom are far above, and 10 students with IEPs, with any of a wide range of disabilities: ADHD and focus difficulties; mental retardation; autism; receptive/expressive language impairments; visual and working memory deficits; visual processing impairments; auditory processing difficulties.  Most of these kids will not be able to read at grade level and have problems with writing and math as well.

Without structure and support, many of these students will struggle with sensory input.   For them, the noise level and activity associated with large-group settings will be profoundly difficult to handle.

Frustration with the materials and the work may lead some kids to shut down or act out and disrupt the classroom. Kids who don’t process what you are saying very quickly may miss entire chunks of instruction and directions and thus have no idea what to do when independent work time rolls around.

Our job as special educators is to provide the structure, support, and differentiated learning activities that will reduce those struggles in the general ed classroom.  It’s a complex process and one that requires a lot of thought and ongoing monitoring in order to be successful.  If we don’t plan purposefully, or if we don’t supervise the support provided by our aides when we aren’t able to be present, there’s a danger that our students will be relegated to the corner of the classroom with work that is too easy or without meaning.

Here’s what inclusion is:

It is the provision of differentiated instruction and learning activities that accommodate a child’s special learning needs within the general education classroom. The learning and the work are purposeful, meaningful, and serve to teach the child new information and skills.

Here’s what inclusion is not:

It is not separate activities for students with special needs; sponge work and other busywork that serve only to keep a child occupied instead of accessing the curriculum directly; minimal standards and expectations with high praise for accomplishing the mundane. In short, it is not babysitting.

There is babysitting in the general education classroom, and then there’s inclusion.

• Babysitting is having a child play with blocks while everyone else working on place value and numbers to a billion.
• Babysitting is having a child spend an hour coloring pictures of the a tipi while everyone else is learning about the Native American houses.
• Babysitting is writing vocabulary words on a piece of paper and having the child go over them with highlighter every day while the other students are writing paragraphs about the water cycle.
• Babysitting is having a student draw a picture of a snowman while the teacher does a mini-lesson about weather.
• Babysitting is placing a child at a listening center to listen to nursery rhyme songs while the rest of the class is learning about the genre of fairytales.

True inclusion would look like this:

• During math, while others are working on the standard and word forms of numbers to a billion, other kids are working on numbers to a hundred or a thousand. Still others may be using manipulatives to represent numbers in the tens and hundreds. When they’re done, perhaps they are playing a math vocabulary game where they have to read a number word and match it to a digit.
• After reading an easy book or chart about Native American housing, some kids are using sorting cards to match the names of the houses to the pictures. Others might be making a booklet about the different kinds of houses using pictures they’ve drawn or cut-outs the teacher provides. Still others might be pasting small pictures of the types of houses on a map showing the different regions of North America. (For example, a hogan goes in the desert Southwest, whereas a chickee goes in the Southeast.)
• While some kids are drawing the water cycle on poster board, some kids are using a word bank and labeling the different segments of the cycle on a worksheet. Others might be listening to an aide or peer read a story about a rain drop.
• After listening to a mini-lesson about types of weather, some kids are either playing a Memory game with sorting cards (matching photos of weather to the names) or are writing sentences about each of the new vocabulary words. (Ex: A blizzard is a big snow storm. A hurricane has lots of wind and rain.)
• During a unit on the fairy tale genre, some kids are listening to Hans Christian Andersen stories on tape, and others are reading books. Some kids are writing reports on fairy tales, and others are identifying the different elements of a fairy tale in stories they’ve read, using a chart prepared by the teacher. Still others might be looking at a laminated illustration from a well-known fairy tale with an aide, who is asking them to point to various items in the picture.

Inclusion is not about keeping the kids busy and quiet. It’s about giving them opportunities to use the vocabulary and practice new skills related to whatever you are teaching.

It’s not about enabling them to continue to operate with limited skill sets; it’s about guiding them forward, onward, and upward within the context of their current levels.

It’s not about having higher-level students help them; it’s about letting them experience the curriculum with higher level students.

It’s a new responsibility for many general ed teachers, and a terrifying thing for us special ed teachers, whose natural instinct is often to keep our students sheltered from the large-group learning environment, where they may get lost or overwhelmed.

The key is careful and purposeful planning, with constant monitoring and ongoing assessment to determine next steps. Much of this is done by special educators, in addition to the work we are already doing.

accessing grade-level · accommodations · classroom aides · cognitive impairments · differentiated instruction · differentiated learning · frustration · general education · learning disabilities · Paraeducators · resource · rigorous instruction · Sara Finegan · socialization · sorting cards · special day class · special education · student monitoring · supports