When working with students with moderate to severe disabilities, relationships and a student’s motivation are central to academic success. In Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), relationship building is also called pairing. Pairing is the process of establishing yourself as a reinforcer to build a positive relationship with a child. When a teacher or paraprofessional is properly paired with a student, the student should look forward to working with the adult. It is possible to pair people, environments, and objects.
Daily living skills are the routine self care activities that people engage in that promote independence. These skills span from toilet training to food preparation but generally help people maintain a level of health and safety. Some students with delays or disabilities are slow to master daily living skills but it is possible to teach these vital skills. Daily living skills are each set of multiple skills that are strung together. For instance, think about hand washing. Consider all of the smaller component skills that a person has to do to perform the larger task of hand washing: turning on the sink, pumping soap, tolerating getting wet, understanding clean versus dirty. Read on!
As adults, we rely on visual supports to navigate our daily lives. We often look to our Google calendars to see what’s next on our schedule. We create lists for the grocery store, and consult our never-ending to-do lists to complete tasks. Checking items off our lists and reviewing our calendar for what's next gives us a sense of accomplishment and reduces anxiety by providing clarity about our upcoming activities. Now, imagine being a 3, 4, or 5-year-old and getting placed inside a classroom with strangers, likely the first time away from parents for an extended period, with no idea about what will happen next. In these instances, implementation of visual supports can help ease the anxieties of our youngest learners, and especially for our students with disabilities.
Imagine that peak moment when something sour, like lemon or lime juice, hits your tongue. You experience a rush of sensations, from the tingling on your taste buds to the involuntary wince and twitch of your facial muscles. Now, think about those times when you have an irritating itch on your body that you just can't seem to soothe, no matter how hard you try. These sensations might seem like minor inconveniences to some, but for individuals with sensory processing challenges, they can be a daily struggle.
Imagine a young student named Daniel, eyes wide with excitement as he picks up his brand new book, Chicken Little, to follow along as his teacher reads it aloud to his class. He thinks to himself, “This book has farm animals! I like to watch the chickens when we go to my grandmother’s house.” At his last school, Daniel never had his own copy of the books, let alone a brand new copy! Some of the letters on the pages of the book seem like a mystery to him, but with each new lesson activity in phonics and phonemic awareness, those letters begin to make more sense. They transform into sounds, words, and eventually, as he progresses through the year, stories.
An inclusive classroom is defined as a classroom in which a general education teacher and a special education teacher work and instruct together to support all students in their classroom. Data from inclusive classrooms point to benefits across academic and social domains for students with and without disabilities: One 2015 study found that students with disabilities in inclusive settings are nearly five times more likely to graduate on time than peers that are not. Typically developing students in inclusion-based settings experienced social-emotional gains that their peers in non-inclusive settings did not. With 64.8% of students receiving special education services in inclusive classrooms, it is critical that these spaces function optimally to support all students, and that all stakeholders, from administrators to teachers to related service providers, are on the same page.
Congratulations, teacher! You’ve worked hard all year long to hone your craft and deliver high-quality instruction to your students with disabilities. By now, you know them better than you could have imagined when the school year began last fall. You’ve built strong relationships and seen inspiring growth in their academic and personal goals. Now, you’re in the home stretch with summer vacation just around the corner. With all the hard work you’ve poured into this school year, let’s be sure to end well.
In every classroom, a teacher must determine the ways in which students will engage in learning from a list of instructional methodologies. The phrases instructional methodology, teaching method, instructional method all describe how a teacher is delivering instruction to help students meet the lesson objective. There are a variety of evidence-based methods from which to choose, and expert teachers often use a combination to best support the wide range of student needs and strengths in their classroom. Read on to learn about three of them!
It’s no secret that technology plays a large role in all aspects of our lives today. When we wake up, the first thing that many of us do is immediately reach for our cell phones. We check the weather, our email, and social media long before we hop out of bed to start the day. This is no different when it comes to how we are incorporating technology in the workplace, or for students, during the school day. In classrooms across the world, technology has revolutionized traditional teaching methods, creating new avenues for learning and enhancing the educational experience for both students and educators alike.
Data drives a multitude, if not all, decisions in special education. When examining the cycle of instruction, the beginning and the end starts with a form of assessment and data collection. Data allows us to track student progress, identify skills that need additional support or reteaching, and fine tune what students need in their learning programs to be successful. Without data, information crucial to determining current levels of performance may be missing or incomplete, thus, leading to ineffective individualized plans. Whether a teacher or an administrator, the ongoing collection and analysis of student data provides the most current picture of a student's skills as well as a baseline to demonstrate growth over time. Through the use of data, education teams will be able to make educational decisions that effectively meet the needs of the students.