By Richard Finegan 

There seems to be lots of interest on the web in information about paraeducators and our work with special needs kids.  Plenty is written about us by teachers, administrators, union professionals or college professors who’ve never actually done our jobs.   Not much out here is written by paraprofessionals ourselves.  That is a shame.

Sara and Richard Finegan

Some, even some of our coworkers, may have the impression that we are little more than day care workers in the public schools.  Most of us have been asked by a general ed teacher to leave the classroom (and the kids we are there to help) to go run some menial errand.  Many of us are not even consulted about or included in IEPs relating to the kids we work with, as if our observations or insights are of no consequence.

If we are going to be taken seriously, as professionals, we need to support efforts to make our jobs more professional.  Continuing education classes should be required for us, in my opinion.  Certification by the state might be appropriate where that is not already done. 

But I’ve drifted from my point:  We need to speak for ourselves.  We need to assert ourselves as intelligent, articulate professionals capable of worthwhile contribution to the discussion of our own jobs and role in the special education system.

With the expansion of full inclusion, where kids with special needs are distributed among the general ed population ad not segregated in special classes, more of us than ever before will be working in general ed classrooms without the constant presence of a special ed teacher.  Many of the general ed teachers will turn to us for guidance in dealing with issues relating to our kids.  If you’ve worked as a one-on-one to an included child you know this to be true.

We need to be prepared to step up to the plate.  Don’t wait for the general ed teacher to identify problems to you; bring things to his or her attention.  Suggest solutions or consultations with the special ed case manager.  Be an advocate for your kids.  Be an advocate for yourself as a knowledgeable coworker in the classroom, more than just a warm-bodied adult.

We contribute to this acceptance of us as professionals when we stop letting the conversation, both in the schools and on the web, be ABOUT us and start being WITH us.

We need to speak for ourselves. 

So here is my invitation to all paraeducators with something to say to the world:  contact me.  I have no desire to be a lonely voice in the wilderness of the internet .  I can see that appropriate posts get published and, more importantly, FOUND by search engines like Google, bing, Yahoo, AOL. Together we can be stronger.

If there is enough interest in this, I am considering setting  up a separate blog that can serve as a forum and sounding board for paraeducators.  What do you think?

I am cross-posting this on The Demanding Classroom and Readers With Autism.  Each blog already contains earlier posts for and about us as paraeducators.  You can look for the category “Paraeducators” on either blog to find my posts, which are mostly different on each site.

advocate · blog · classroom aides · continuing education · forum · general education · Inclusion · one-on-one · paraeducator · Paraeducators · paraprofessionals · professional · Richard Finegan · special education

 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

All children can learn. This is not merely a slogan, it’s a fact.  The question, of course, is WHAT can they learn?  In our public schools, the answer must be “the state standards” for each subject area.    Now, when I first started teaching, I wasn’t so sure whether all students with learning disabilities could learn the same concepts and strategies as their general education peers.

Certainly, students with mild-moderate disabilities can with support, master the general ed curriculum.  It was the kids with moderate to severe disabilities that I questioned:  How, exactly, were kids with mental retardation, for example, supposed to be able to master ancient history or biology?

My bias continued for several years, and only gradually dissipated as I came into contact with students whose learning and cognitive impairments were more severe than my usual group of kiddos.  Nowadays, I am certain that children on all levels of academic functioning can participate with their non-disabled peers in most subject areas.

The key is for teachers, using our understanding of how kids learn and how learning disabilities impact learning, to create the means for kids to access the curriculum.  In order to do this, we need to be creative, knowledgeable, and methodical.

The Foundation:  Know the Standards

I have been teaching the grade-level standards to my Special Day Class students every year for the last 10  years, and have spent a great deal of time collaborating with my general ed colleagues to make sure kids with IEPs in the gen ed environment are able to access grade-level curriculum.  Even so, I have to get the standards out out and revisit them when I begin the process of planning units and lessons.   So will you.

As you read them, think about how a child might be able to demonstrate mastery of each of the strands within the standards.  Think about which strands in the standards are the most important in terms of setting a foundation for future learning. When I started creating the inclusion unit bins for my peers last month, I began by printing out the third, fourth and fifth grade standards for social studies and science.

I took one set at a time, starting with the fifth grade science units.  For each of the science standards sets (physical sciences, life sciences, earth sciences) I examined the different strands and highlighted the ones I thought students at all levels could access.  Strands that seemed a bit more than any of my students could meet I simply simplified or adjusted to create a framework within which differentiated instruction could be provided.

I went over the standards several times, each time with a different student or ability level in mind.  In this summer’s case, I’ve been creating these units of resources in grades 3, 4 and 5 for kids in the following ability categories:

• a student who thinks at about a four year old level;
• a group of fifth graders who read at a first or second grade level;
• a fourth grader with mild autism and profound anxiety and sensory overload susceptibility who operates at a second grade level;
• a group of fourth graders whose focus and attention deficits require substantial interventions;
• kids with auditory processing deficits;
• numerous kids at each grade level with profound language deficits, be they EL or expressive/receptive disabilities.

Here’s an example of what I was working on:

Grade 5:  Earth Sciences

Standard--Water on Earth moves between the oceans and land through the processes of evaporation and condensation. As a basis for understanding this concept:

1. Students know most of Earth’s water is present as salt water in the oceans, which cover most of Earth’s surface.
2. Students know when liquid water evaporates, it turns into water vapor in the air and can reappear as a liquid when cooled or as a solid if cooled below the freezing point of water.
3. Students know water vapor in the air moves from one place to another and can form fog or clouds, which are tiny droplets of water or ice, and can fall to Earth as rain, hail, sleet, or snow.
4. Students know that the amount of fresh water located in rivers, lakes, under-ground sources, and glaciers is limited and that its availability can be extended by recycling and decreasing the use of water.
5. Students know the origin of the water used by their local communities.

Became…

Standard--Water on Earth moves between the oceans and land through the processes of evaporation and condensation. As a basis for understanding this concept students will:

• Learn about the water cycle and identify the parts of the cycle.
• Learn about each phase of the water cycle and what you might see during it.
• Identify water when it appears in each form:  liquid, solid, vapor.
• Know the difference between fresh and salt water and their sources.
• Understand that freshwater is limited and that conservation and recycling it is important.

And thus…

Standard--Energy from the Sun heats Earth unevenly, causing air movements that result in changing weather patterns. As a basis for understanding this concept:

1. Students know uneven heating of Earth causes air movements (convection currents).
2. Students know the influence that the ocean has on the weather and the role that the water cycle plays in weather patterns.
3. Students know the causes and effects of different types of severe weather.
4. Students know how to use weather maps and data to predict local weather and know that weather forecasts depend on many variables.
5. Students know that the Earth’s atmosphere exerts a pressure that decreases with distance above Earth’s surface and that at any point it exerts this pressure equally in all directions.

Became…

Standard--Energy from the Sun heats Earth unevenly, causing air movements that result in changing weather patterns.   As a basis for understanding this concept, students will:

• Identify weather types and climate vocabulary:  sun, sunny, mild, harsh, winter, summer, fall, spring, storm, calm, rain, hail, sleet, snow wind, breeze, hurricane, tornado.
• Identify influences on the weather: ocean, water cycle
• Use weather maps to show where different weather types and climates can be found in our nation.

I went through the same process for the social studies units.  In most cases, I was able to simplify and rework the standards.  Thus, for example:

Grade 5:  Social Studies

Standard--Students know the location of the current 50 states and the names of their capitals.

Became…

• Sing the Fifty Nifty United States.
• Label at least 10 states on a map, including California, and identify the capitals of New York, California, Illinois, Florida, and Texas.

And…

Standard--Students describe the major pre-Columbian settlements, including the cliff dwellers and pueblo people of the desert Southwest, the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the nomadic nations of the Great Plains, and the woodland peoples east of the Mississippi River.

1. Describe how geography and climate influenced the way various nations lived and adjusted to the natural environment, including locations of villages, the distinct structures that they built, and how they obtained food, clothing, tools, and utensils.
2. Describe their varied customs and folklore traditions.
3. Explain their varied economies and systems of government.

Became…

Standard--Students describe the major pre-Columbian settlements, including the cliff dwellers and pueblo people of the desert Southwest, the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the nomadic nations of the Great Plains, and the woodland peoples east of the Mississippi River.

• Identify the regions of the U.S. and some of the the land masses, animals, and vegetation that might be found in each and create a visual display of one region in depth.

• Identify the Indian cultures that lived in the Pacific Northwest, Central and Great Plains, Desert Southwest, Eastern Woodlands and their lifestyle, including foods, hunting prey, clothing, and housing of each.
• Read legends and myths from each of the regions.

Don’t Just Try and Wing It

Don’t make the mistake of over-generalizing by failing to really know the standards for each unit.  The risks are numerous:

• You and your colleagues may become overwhelmed by the task.  There’s a huge difference between “How do I teach this child about Westward Expansion” and “Ok, this child can learn how to identify the modes of transportation used in pioneer life, read about Lewis and Clark,  use a chart to label a map of expansion routes, and states created as a result of expansion; and, oh, since earlier this year she learned about the landforms and geography of North America, she can now use those same maps she labeled to think about the terrain along the Oregon Trail.”

• Using only the class textbook to identify what needs to be learned can lead you down the wrong path.   Entire sections on economic development in a textbook, which are too complicated for a child with learning disabilities to grasp,  are just the authors’ way of addressing a standard, and your own review of what your State expects may reveal more manageable concepts.

• There’s a danger in just taking one part of a set of standards and ignoring the others when you don’t piece out all of the different strands.   It is perfectly acceptable to drop one or more strands after you’ve looked at them closely, but it is not okay to ignore them completely.  I know, for example, that this strand…Identify the significance and leaders of the First Great Awakening, which marked a shift in religious ideas, practices, and allegiances in the colonial period, the growth of religious toleration, and free exercise of religion… is not going to be manageable with any of my students.  But I can plan activities in which kids learn about freedom of religion and religious tolerance as two of the foundation stones in American democracy.

• There is a great temptation, especially when we lack time for in-depth planning, to make assumptions about our students and about the curriculum standards that are inappropriate.    Teachers who are rushing through the planning process may think that skipping steps saves time, and perhaps it does.  But the result may be that we have short-changed our students by skipping curriculum and standards that they can and should learn, or that we overlook key skills and information they need to know before moving to the next unit.

The obligation to carefully piece through each of the standards and their related strands for the units we are required to teach is non-negotiable, in my book.   We are honor-bound, in crafting lessons and activities for our students with special needs, to be experts in what they need to know.  Only armed with this knowledge can we begin the process of figuring out how to help them know it and use it.

accessing grade-level · accommodations · grade-level standards · Inclusion · Sara Finegan · science · social studies · special education · standards

By Sara Finegan

Having special needs in the classroom doesn’t mean that you lack the ability to learn; it means that you learn differently.   It’s not about how smart a child is; it’s about how he or she is smart.

For years, educators and parents believed that students with cognitive impairments and other moderate-severe disabilities were not well-served by inclusion in general education classes.  It was a natural extension of this philosophy to decide that these children also couldn’t follow the general education curriculum.    At first glance, this makes sense; it is only when one pauses to look more carefully that one sees the distortions.

It’s certainly true that a child with cognitive impairments, who can’t read independently cannot read the science textbook and keep a science notebook like his or her gen ed peers.   There’s no doubt that a child who has limited verbal capacity can’t write a five-paragraph essay about the Sioux Indians, or read and understand the Mayflower Compact.

But that doesn’t mean that the kids aren’t able to learn about and demonstrate their understanding of Native American daily life or the Pilgrims’ ordeal in the New World.   You don’t have to be able to read to access text.  You don’t have to be able to write to show what you know.

This year my class had the gift of accepting a fourth grader with autism and mild cognitive impairment into our five-six combo class.  Jack (name changed to protect the fabulous and amazing) had no  choice but to learn about Ancient Greece and Rome with us.  To be sure, he couldn’t use the text book the way the others could, and he didn’t have the ability to make connections between the Greek and Roman forms of government and the current U.S. political system.

• But he could, and did, read fables and do a report on them.  He could, and did, handle the tallying of votes as we explored democracy.
• He could, and did, learn all about the different Greek gods and goddesses and served as the go-to expert when we played Jeopardy!
• He could, and did,  learn 25 vocabulary words related to the units of study.
• He could, and did, create a power point presentation about Harry Potter (ok, not related to social studies or science, but still!)

There’s an ongoing debate, albeit a quiet one, about whether someone like Jack really would be better off learning about Ancient History when he might be, instead, learning independent living skills and the kind of reading and writing he will have to do as an adult.   I confess that I don’t know.  What I do know is that I have never been able to determine what a child’s capacity actually is, and thus have not been privy to knowing what he or she will be able to do as an adult.    Jack came to me unable to do anything independently and very averse to trying difficult things.  By the end of the year, he was actively engaged with other kids in the class, participating in all of our lessons, and doing things nobody had thought he could.

All it took, besides my amazing aide Tamara, was a little planning time.  OK, a lot of planning time.

And there’s the rub: preparing materials and activities for kids with moderate-severe disabilities to access the gen ed curriculum is extremely time-consuming.   As far as I know, there aren’t pre-built units available on the market to use; you must be creative and innovative.

This kind of instruction can be provided in both special ed and general ed classrooms.  If you are designing it for a general ed classroom then it also has to be structured around the gen ed teacher’s time-frame, teaching style and structure, and areas of emphasis.   I suppose you can develop a generic set of tasks and materials, but if we’re serious about teaching every child at his or her level, then we need to provide our kids with special needs with work that makes sense.

And once you’ve created a resource bank to use, you can’t stop there.  You must constantly be building upon it, adding to it, revising, and customizing it to fit the needs of each child.

The task may seem daunting.  For some, it may appear to be an impossible responsibility.   But I think that, if we understand the proper methodology to use, we can, slowly but surely, create for our students and our gen ed colleagues a workable system that allows all of us to engage in the job of teaching in new and exciting ways.

autism · general education · Inclusion · learning styles · lesson planning · modifications · multiple intelligences · Sara Finegan · science · social studies · special education · teaching strategies · unit planning

By Sara Finegan

I’ve spent my free time during the last month preparing learning activities for students along a wide spectrum of disabilities in third, fourth and fifth grade science and social studies.

I had a lot of free time, as I had not one, but two student teachers, who basically took over my classroom.  The job of a master teacher like me is to monitor and support, and since my tendency is to want to jump in a lot, I keep myself from doing so by working on related tasks.  More about the tasks I chose later.

Two things have rocked my world as a teacher this spring:

1. My school has lost one special education position, and despite my rather extensive years at the district, I’m junior in seniority at my school, so I get to go.
2. My school administrator has opted to take our school three giant steps in the direction of full inclusion by eliminating our Special Day Classes, so all of our kiddos are now going to be mainstreamed next year.

I’ve had several months to adjust to the fact that I am going to be at another school next year and to organize and sort my “stuff” preparatory to packing.  I’ve also had several months to listen to my general ed colleagues, hear the worry in their voices as they wonder how to accommodate kids with profound learning disabilities in their classrooms with less special education support, and to decide what to do about that.

What I’ve done is to create unit-by-unit resource bins and binders for our third, fourth and fifth grade science and social studies classes that contain activities and learning materials from the very lowest, pre-K level up to the third-grade level.    Gen ed and special ed staff can easily pull what they need to support everyone from the barely-verbal fifth grader with a four-year-old intellect to the fourth grader with autism and hyperactivity who becomes overwhelmed by words and activity around him.

The first thing I did was to look at the grade-level standards and pull strands that I thought kids at every level could access.  I delved into my own resource bank and our school’s book room and pulled books at every level that related in some way to each of the standards.   I located materials on the internet that pertain to the standards and downloaded them.  And what I couldn’t find, I wrote myself.

At the end of the my final day at the school, I had created boxes of books, sorting cards, stories, readers theater scripts, and art projects for each of the science and social studies units.    Each box has a binder containing a variety of materials and lesson ideas, plus coloring pages and other things for kids to do with support or on their own.

My hope is that the easily-accessible materials will allow kids to stay in the gen ed classroom with modified assignments and materials instead of becoming so frustrated that they need to leave.  My other hope is that my gen ed colleagues will have less stress as they begin this new phase of inclusion and that they will see, as they implement the lessons and pull activities and books to use, how they can continue the planning and gathering work in future years.

In the next few posts on The Demanding Classroom, I will talk about the work involved in preparing for inclusion and the tasks that gen ed and special ed staff face as we support all of our kids to learn grade level, standards-based curriculum.

general education · grade-level standards · Inclusion · lesson planning · modifications · readers theater · Sara Finegan · science · social studies · sorting cards · special day class · special education · standards · supports

By Richard Finegan

Paraeducators–classroom aides in special education, including one-on-one aides–can do any number of things to help a child.  But a recent Google search I ran across got me thinking in terms of 10 (not to be confused a David Letterman Top Ten List).  All of this needs to be coordinated with your teachers of course, but here are my suggestions:

1. Never underestimate the child’s abilities. I like to observe a  new student for a couple of days before I read his or her IEP so I can see how he or she  compares to the other students, what the child’s behavior is like, etc, before I see what others have observed.   Be sure to read the “Present Levels of Performance” in the IEP so you know what they can already do.  Do not assume a child can’t do something just because he or she is in special education or is identified with autism or a “learning disability.”

2. Focus on the child’s strengths, not on the child’s deficits. Is he a visual learner?  Kinesthetic?  Does she type well?  Is he crazy about animals?  Does she love Harry Potter?  Find out as much as you can about the children’s areas of interest and strength and use these in creative ways to help them succeed at tasks or in subjects where they may have difficulty.

3. Build the child’s confidence. You do this not with false praise but with an honest appraisal of his or her strengths and successes, acknowledgement of areas in which the child can improve, and by giving him or her opportunities to practice new skills not yet mastered.

4. Allow the child to make mistakes.  We are quick to tell kids they learn from their mistakes and just as quick to not allow them to make them. It is tempting for an aide, especially a one-on-one, to correct the child’s work on the spot.  Don’t edit the child’s assignments for him.  It does NOT reflect poorly on you as an aide if the child’s work is imperfect.  It does reflect poorly on you if the child’s work is actually your work.

5. Gradually remove supports (the level of  assistance you provide a child).  Do not get stuck providing a certain level of support because it is comfortable for you and the child.  If you help with word processing, make the child take over more of that task.  If you reduce the assigned math homework, gradually increase the amount the child is expected to do.  I don’t throw the term lazy around carelessly, but I know (when I was new at this) that I have caused at least one child to become lazy because it was easier for me to do some things than deal with his unwillingness to do them himself.

6. Help the child get and stay organized. If you’re like me, you may first have to get organized yourself.  Make sure the older children use a calendar (agenda, planner) to keep track of assignments.  Color code folders to keep track of homework in different subject areas.  Whatever it takes.  But always coordinate with parents because no organization will work for long if it isn’t reinforced both at home and at school.

7. Don’t do for the child what his or her classmates routinely do for themselves.  Assuming no physical impediment, of course, make the child take responsibility for having daily supplies, following classroom routines, turning in homework, etc.  If the child depends on you for these things, you have failed.

8. Give the child responsibility for composing any writing assignment.  Writing is a two-step process: (1) putting thought into words–composing–and (2) putting words into text–typing or handwriting.  If a student cannot or will not handwrite or word process, it may be permissible to have the child dictate to you.  In that case, take down what he or she dictates word for word.  Ask where to put in punctuation.  Don’t correct as you go.  Let the child read what was dictated and make his or her own revisions.  Only then would I suggest any corrections or improvements.  Gradually remove this level of support.

9. Allow the child to interact with peers, even if those interactions aren’t always positive.  Some of our kids will have social interaction issues and do poorly in partner or group work.  If we work with them one-on-one we will want to minimize their friction with other students.  We should resist the temptation to step in and mediate all disputes or difficulties.  Let them learn from working through these problems.

10. Do not get into a power struggle with a child.  Back off.  Don’t threaten consequences you aren’t prepared to impose.  Keep your composure.  (Remember why you do this.  These kids are great!)

Remember your role is to help the child become independent.  When the child no longer needs you, you have succeeded!

abilities · autism · classroom aides · composition · confidence · dictation · general education · IEPs · Inclusion · independence · learning disabilities · mistakes · one-on-one · organization · paraeducator · paraprofessionals · peer interactions · praise · present levels · Richard Finegan · role · special education · strengths · supports