February Newsletter
SELCO BULLETIN FEBRUARY 2010
Found at About.com. Special Education.
Accommodations for Students with Special Needs
Teacher Checklist to Maximize Accommodations
From Sue Watson, former About.com Guide
Rarely are there specific lesson plans for special education. Teachers take existing lesson plans and provide either accommodations or modifications to enable the student with special education to have optimum success. This tip sheet will focus on four areas where one can make special accommodations to support students with special needs in the inclusive classroom. These four areas include:
1) instructional materials
2) vocabulary
3) lesson content
4) assessment
Instructional Materials
- Are the materials you select for the instruction conducive to meeting the children with special needs?
- Can they see, hear or touch the materials to maximize learning?
- Are the instructional materials selected with all of the students in mind?
- What will you use to demonstrate or simulate the learning concept?
- What other hands-on materials can you use to ensure that the students with needs with understand learning concepts?
- If you are using overheads, are there extra copies for students who need to see it closer or have it repeated?
- Does the student have a peer that will help?
Vocabulary
- Do the students understand the vocabulary necessary for the specific concept you are going to teach?
- Is there a need to focus first on the vocabulary prior to starting the lesson?
- What will your overview look like?
- How will your overview engage the students?
Lesson Content
- Does your lesson focus completely on the content, does what the students do to extend or lead them to new learning? (Wordsearch activities rarely lead to any learning.)
- What will ensure that the students are engaged?
- What type of review will be necessary?
- How will you ensure that students are understanding?
- Have you built in time for a breakout or change in activity?
- Many children have difficulty sustaining attention for lengthy periods of time. Have you maximized assistive technology where appropriate for specific students?
- Do the students have an element of choice for the learning activities?
- Do you need to teach the student specific learning skills for the lesson such as how to stay on task, how to keep organized, how to get help when stuck?
- What strategies are in place to help re-focus the child, continue to build self-esteem and prevent the child from being overwhelmed?
Assessment
- Do you have alternate means of assessment for students with special needs?
- Do they have longer time lines?
- Have you provided checklists, graphic organizers and/or outlines?
- Does the child have reduced quantities?
In Summary
Overall, this may seem like a lot of questions to ask yourself to ensure that all students have maximized learning opportunities. However, once you get into the habit of this type of reflection as you plan each learning experience, you will soom be a pro at ensuring the inclusion classroom works as best as it can to meet your diverse group of students which are found in most classrooms today.
LAUGHS—THE BEST VALENTINE FOR EDUCATORS IN THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY WHEN THE CLOUDS DON’T GO AWAY AND THE TEMPERATURE HAS FORGOTTEN WHAT IT’S LIKE TO CRAWL OVER 40!
These “Creative Puns for Educated Minds” were sent by a retired 8th grade English teacher. Enjoy and share with your students.
The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.
No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationary.
A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
A backward poet writes inverse.
In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism, it’s your count that votes.
Now that you have at least smiled a little, let’s look at some brief relaxation techniques.
Breathing: 2-step breath—Fill the bottom of your lungs first, then add the top as you breath through your nose. Breath out slowly. Feel the tension flowing out.
Limp Rag Doll: do the 2-step breath two times. With your mind imagine that you are a limp rag doll. Feel your mind and body become limp and relaxed.
Now that you have laughed a bit and relaxed a bit, you can go back to thinking about high stakes testing season!
This came from the Omaha World Herald.
HIGHLIGHTS OF KIDS’ MEDIA USE
>> Kids average seven hours, 38 minutes of media use per day. Five years ago it was six hours, 21 minutes.
>> In past years, multitasking was the novel feature of kids’ media lives. Now it’s mobility: 20 percent of their consumption is via mobile devices — phones, audio players or handheld games. Another new feature: increased consumption of “old” content — such as TV, music or print — delivered through “new” pathways on a computer, such as Hulu.
>> Three subgroups , regardless of other factors, report especially heavy media use: blacks, Hispanics and children ages 11 through 14.
>> Heavy media use correlates with low grades and less “contentment,” gauged by questions about kids’ friends, how they get along, whether they are often bored or sad, and whether they are often in trouble.
>> Traditional printed-page media — books, newspapers, magazines — are less used than five years ago, but online versions partly offset the decline.
>> Reading for pleasure is “the only media activity that decreases as children grow older.”
>> Traditional print is the least likely to be multitasked with other media. And print is the only medium in which heavy use corresponds with high grades.
SOURCE: Survey of 2,002 children, ages 8 to 18, during 2008-09 school year compared with similar surveys in 2004 and 1999.
EFFECTS OF MEDIA OVERUSE
Overuse of media can stunt “emotional intelligence,” or the know-how people need to relate to one another, said Boys Town psychologist Patrick Friman. He says the problem can show up in three traits:
• “Frustration tolerance” — what one needs to accomplish a task that’s not easy — is shrunken.
Children once had to spend more effort to get something they wanted, even to ask someone for it, he said. Now some will erupt if they don’t get instant answers. “I’ve seen kids get into an argument because someone didn’t return a text. . . . Frustration tolerance is critical to professional development, critical to life.”
• The capacity for thinking conceptually is underdeveloped.
• Listening, which is “critical to effective human relationships,” is impaired.
February’s Other Interesting Dates
It’s February: Bake for Family Fun all month long! Also, remember that it is National Laugh-friendly Month and guffaw a little every day. It is also Sweet Potato Month and Plant the Seeds of Greatness Month.
As for the weeks, Just Say No to Powerpoints Week: 7-13; Getting Dizzy Week: 8-14; Random Acts of Kindness Week: 12-15; National Pancake Week: 14-20; Read Me Week: 22-26; and Texas Cowboy Poetry Week: 26-28.
Feb. 1: Hula in the Coola Day
4: Quacker Day
5: Bubble Gum Day
15: National Gum Drop Day
18: Battery Day
23: Curling Is Cool Day
25: National Chili Day
28: National Tooth Fairy Day
FYI: February 18 is Pluto Day commemorating that day that Clyde Tombaugh discovered this “planet.” Last year, the official international astronomical group defined planets in such a way that Pluto became a “dwarf planet.”
AWARD WINNING BOOKS ANNOUNCED
(From The Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 18, 2010, by Nancy Gilson)
When You Reach Me, a time-travel novel by Rebecca Stead, has won the 2010 Newberry Medal for distinguished children’s literature. In this novel, an 11-year-old girl deals with seemingly random events that converge in one intricately-constructed plot.
The Caldecott Medal was awarded toThe Lion & the Mouse, a retelling of the Aesop fable set in the Serengeti plains and written and illustrated by Jerry Pinkey.
Study Links Rise in Test Scores to Nations' Output
U.S. could see $41 trillion gain in GDP over 80 years, it projects
Washington
Relatively small improvements in the skills of a nation’s workforce can have a big effect on its future economic well-being, concludes a new international study that seeks to quantify those benefits.
For the United States, the research suggests, modest gains in student achievement as measured by one international assessment could cumulatively boost the country’s gross domestic product by tens of trillions of dollars over the coming decades.
“There’s almost a one-to-one match between what people know and how well economies have grown over time,” Andreas Schleicher, the head of indicators and analysis for the education directorate at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , said at a briefing held here last week to discuss the findings. “It’s not the quantity of schooling that drives success in countries, it is the quality of [learning] outcomes that we
Received from a retired English teacher:
These are genuine answers from 16-year olds.
Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink?
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.
Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
A: Premature death
Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.
Q: How are the main 20 parts of the body categorized (e.g., the abdomen)?
A: The body is consisted into 3 parts—the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels: A, E, I, O, and U.
ARTICLES OF INTEREST
(Contact Gail for copies. gmadison@slatonisd.net)
“FLOATING ON A SEA OF TALK: READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH SPEAKING AND LISTENING.” K. Mills, The Reading Teacher December 2009/January 2010. “Learning depends on the use of language knowledge for the purpose of acquiring more language concepts and information.” With that in mind, the author shares her six top speaking and listening strategies and ties them to activating prior knowledge, making inferences, using knowledge of text structures, visualizing, generating and answering questions and retelling and summarizing. A short, but sweet article.
TARGET AUDIENCE: General ed, remedial and special ed reading teachers.
“VOCABULARY-RICH CLASSROOM: MODELING SOPHISTICATED WORD USE TO PROMOTE WORD CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOCABUALRY GROWTH.” H. Lane & S. Allen, The Reading Teacher February 2010. We know that children who enter school with a limited vocabulary such as children from poverty, are at an extreme disadvantage. Keep this in mind and read this: “Promoting incidental learning and word consciousness through frequent and deliberate modeling of sophisticated vocabulary can add substantial breadth to students’ vocabulary.” The authors’ speak about ‘What Does It Mean to Know a Word,’ ‘Promoting Word Consciousness,’ and ‘Avoiding the Temptation to “Dumb Down” Our Language for Children.’
TARGET AUDIENCE: General ed, remedial and special ed reading teachers.
“REVISITING READ-ALOUD: INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES THAT ENCOURAGE STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT WITH TEXTS.” V. Morrison & L. Wlodarczyk, The Reading Teacher October 2009. You can help your students’ comprehension with the strategies described in this article: ‘Reading as a Transactional Process,’ ‘Benefits of the Read-Aloud Process,’ ‘Alphaboxes in First Grade,’’Making Connections—text to self, text to text, text to world,’ and ‘Discussion Web in First Grade.’
TARGET AUDIENCE: General ed, remedial and special ed reading teachers.
“FACILITATING ENGAGEMENT BY DIFFERENTIATING INDEPENDENT READING.” M. Kelley & N. Clausen-Grace The Reading Teacher December 2009/January 2010. The authors provide a rationale for facilitating reading engagement, describe types of readers found in many classrooms and offer tools and tips to differentiate and enhance independent reading based on their own action research project. Included is a chart showing the continuum of engaged readers and level of support they need and a Silent Reading Behaviors Observation Checklist.
TARGET AUDIENCE: All teachers of reading.
“DIGITAL STORYTELLING: EXTENDING THE POTENTIAL FOR STRUGGLING WRITERS.” R. Sylvester & W. Greenidge, The Reading Teacher October 2009. Have you wondered how you might use the new technologies in your classrooms. These authors, who know that digital technologies can motivate struggling writers and scaffold understanding of traditional literacy, have written just for you. They offer Digital Storytelling In My Classroom 101, talking about struggling writers, what digital storytelling is, the rationale for using this technique and how to use digital storytelling to support students as writers. An excellent short primer for adventurous souls.
TARGET AUDIENCE: Folks teaching students to write and willing to jump into technology to do it.
“PARAPHRASING: AN EFFECTIVE COMPREHENSION STRATEGY.” S. Kletzien, The Reading Teacher October 2009. There are several studies that show that paraphrasing has helped special education students increase their comprehension. But how to teach that skill to your students is a big question. This author presents an appropriate sequence and two case studies.
TARGET AUDIENCE: Special ed reading teachers. Anyone doing Tier 2 reading.
“GRADING EXCEPTIONAL LEARNERS.” L. Jung & T. Guskey, Educational Leadership February 2010. The authors present a 5-step model that provides fair and accurate grades for students with disabilities and English language learners. Step 1: Ask whether the standard is an appropriate expectation without adaptations. Step 2: If the standard is not appropriate, determine what type of adaptation the standard needs. Step 3: If the standard needs modifications, determine the appropriate standard. Step 4: Base grades on the modified standard, not the grade-level standard. Step 5: Communicate the meaning of the grade. Get the article to read the explanation for each step.
TARGET AUDIENCE: All special educators.
“GENERATING MEANING FOR RANGE, MODE, MEDIAN, AND MEAN.” J. Mason & E. Shifflett, Teaching Children Mathematics November 2009. The authors did not teach averages simply by showing students a procedure for finding an average. They engaged their students in investigations to develop meaning for the mathematical terms range, mode, median and mean. This approach helped the students better understand and remember the concepts and allowed the teachers to emphasize reasoning and making sense of mathematics. What a concept!
TARGET AUDIENCE: Math teachers—both gen ed and special ed.
“PRESCHOOLERS’ NUMBER SENSE.” S. Moomaw, V. Carr, M. Boat & D. Barnett, Teaching Children Mathematics February 2010. Many preschoolers already lag far behind their peers in understanding number relationships. Teachers must pay particular attention to monitoring mathematical development in children who are at risk for further developmental delays. But traditional assessment methods may not supply the type of ongoing information that teachers need to make instructional decisions. These authors present an appropriate tool for assessing number sense in young learners.
TARGET AUDIENCE: General ed pre-K and Kinder teachers, primary and intermediate special ed teachers.
Your heart is slightly bigger than the average human heart, but that’s because you’re a teacher.
Aaron Bacall
