Working with Students who have Disabilities
 Photo by Betsy Weber (flickr.com) As classroom teachers, one of the biggest challenges facing you is accommodating the needs of every student. In a class of thirty students, knowing how to help each child can be an overwhelming responsibility. Two teachers from New Jersey share with us how they alter tiny things in their lessons to make a big impact and how they teach other students about fairness and disabilities.
How To Deal With A Disability Special Education Specialist, Patricia, offers children a chance to understand what accommodations really mean when she visits homeroom classes in Belleville, New Jersey. “When a student with a disability, such as autism, is placed in a general education class, I am often asked to provide information about that student to that student’s teacher and classmates,” she says. “One of the issues teachers are often concerned about is fairness. Some teachers fear that students will think it unfair that this new child may receive different forms of support than they do. To solve this dilemma, I use a box of band-aids and a short skit to show that fair does not mean everyone gets the same thing. Three students are the actors. Student #1 enters the room crying and claiming he was hurt on the playground. I give that student a band-aid, tell him I hope he feels better, and ask him to sit down. Student #2 enters the room crying and claiming she has a headache. I give her a band-aid, tell her I hope she feels better, and ask her to sit down. Student #3 enters the room crying and claiming he has a stomachache. I give him a band-aid, tell him I hope he feels better, and ask him to sit down.” “When the skit is over, I ask the class to discuss what they’ve just seen,” Patricia explains. “They offer responses that have to do with the uselessness of giving a band-aid to someone who has a headache or a stomachache. I counter with the idea that they were all crying so, in order to be fair, I treated them all the same. It doesn’t take long for the class to grasp the idea that fairness does not mean everyone receives the same treatment. We also explore the difference between wanting something and needing something. I close the discussion by announcing that the box of band-aids will remain with the teacher as a reminder of our lesson.”
 Write Again Colored Dry Erase Markers Color Your Way To Better Teaching Techniques Lauri, a K-Grade 8 Teacher in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, has hit upon a simple alteration in her lessons that makes a big impact with her learning challenged students. “I’ve discovered that bright colors have many benefits when working with learning-challenged students. For example, I use a variety of brightly colored dry erase markers on my white board to emphasize points and create graphic organizers,” Lauri explains. “I find that the bright colors help my students focus, understand, and retain the material better than when I limit myself to using black markers only. I also allow students to use the colorful markers when working on individual white boards.” “I also make available to students a bin filled with brightly colored highlighters,” she says. “The kids use the markers to highlight directions, flag answers, target vocabulary words, etc. For my students, color helps accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative!”
How do you address the needs of special education students in your classroom? What is the thing that challenges you most about making accommodations? Shop at Really Good Stuff for supplies to accommodate differentiated learning! |
At Really Good Stuff, we're committed to bringing you the best teaching resources online and off. We under-
Commented On July 14th, 2010 10:11 am
I am an Intervention Specialist going into my 5th year of teaching. I have been teaching, full time, in a co-teach classroom since day one. I started my career in a 4th grade classroom, followed those special needs kids to 5th grade the following year, and then went to 3rd grade. I will be starting my third year co-teaching with the same third grade teacher this year and can’t wait. I believe a co-teach classroom is a wonderul environment for high functioning special needs children. I have seen so much growth with the majority of my students whether they have special needs or not. I think that one of the best things about our classroom is that an outsider can not tell which one of us is the regular ed. teach and which is the intervention specialist.
One strategy we use in our classroom to help reach those with special needs is a lot of small group instruction and centers. We start the mini lesson as a whole group instruction. This lesson lasts approximately 20 minutes. We then break up into three to four groups. I take a leveled group, my partner takes a leveled group and then (depending on the subject) there is a group doing either independent work at their seat and maybe another group or two doing a center. These groups last about 15 minutes and then we rotate. My partner and I see all of our students during these rotations to ensure that they may get a different spin on the target skill to help ensure understanding, and so that we can both see the progress they are all making. Our students love the movement and diversity of their day, and my partner and I love the fact that we are providing our student with many different learning activities and styles to make learning interesting and fun!
Commented On October 20th, 2010 2:10 pm
I have taught special education students in self contained, inclusion, and now community resource learning. I am currently doing research on differentiated instruction.
Standing in the library the other week I watched my students readingthe shelves to find a book.
I immediatly (often with out thinking things through do this) I assigned each student a section in the library to read. As they read they looked to see if the decimals were in order.
We solved 2 birds with one stone. The library shelves got cleaned up and my students learned the order of decimals. This worked so well that we have been back twice and are now learning to alphabetise by shelving fiction books.
The students are learning decimals, the numbers in the library like 921 stands for biography and learning to alphabitize while helping the librarian read the shelves and pull books that are out of place and presumed lost on the shelves.
Win Win
Pat
Commented On August 24th, 2011 11:45 pm
Thank you for this article – I love all of the tips that you provide. They are new and creative. Great job!
Commented On October 4th, 2011 11:07 pm
I am a first year special education teacher & love the band-aid visual, I will be using it real soon!