Chapter 6: Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities

·         Low-incidence disabilities include autism, moderate, severe, and multiple disabilities, sensory impairments, and physical, medical, and health disabilities.

·         Asperger syndrome are students who have extraordinary difficulty in social interactions, such as making eye contact, using facial expressions appropriately and understanding those of others, and seeking out peers and other people, even though their language and intellectual development are typical.

o   Resource: http://specialchildren.about.com/od/aspergersyndrome/a/ASschool.htm

o   This website provides teachers with 5 things they should know about a child with Asperger’s syndrome.  It is written by a parent which a child entering a public school.

·         Students with sensory impairments have either vision loss or hearing loss so significant that their education is affected.

o   Resource: http://www.trinity.edu/org/sensoryimpairments/

o   This website provides advice for teaching students with sensory impairments strategies for mainstream teachers.  It includes many links that provides information for vision loss and hearing loss.

·         A type of hearing device is an FM system consisting of a microphone worn by the teacher and a receiver worn by the student.

·         Generalized tonic-clonic seizures involve the entire body.  A student experiencing a generalized tonic clonic seizure falls to the ground unconscious; the body stiffens and then begins jerking.  Absence seizures occur when students appear to blank out for just a few seconds.

o   Resource: http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/living/children/education/managing.cfm

o   This website is from the epilepsy foundation and tells teachers exactly what to do if a child in your classroom has any type of seizure.

·         At the end of 2005, approximately 1411 children under the age of 13 were living with AIDS.

·         In one study of parents’ and educators’ perceptions of problems faced by children with chronic illness, parents reported that their children’s most frequent problems were “feeling different”, undergoing constant medical procedures, experiencing pain, and facing death.

Chapter 5: Planning Instruction by Analyzing Classroom and Student Needs

·         INCLUDE gives teachers a systematic process for accommodating students based on their individual needs and the classroom demands on or expectations of the teacher.

·         Universal Design is the idea that instructional materials, methods, and assessments designs with built-in supports are more likely to be compatible with learners with special needs than those without such supports and they minimize the need for labor-intensive accommodations later on.

o   Resource: http://www.k8accesscenter.org/training_resources/UniversalDesign.asp

o   This website is a great resource for the concept of universal design because it explains in detail what it is, and gives different benefits and examples of the idea.

·         Students’ diverse needs are met by differentiating the content being taught, the process by which it is taught, and the ways students demonstrate what they have learned and their level of knowledge through varied products.

·         The classroom climate concerns the overall atmosphere in the classroom-whether it is friendly or unfriendly, pleasant or unpleasant, and so on.

·         Same-skill groupings are helpful when some but not all students are having trouble mastering a particular skill and need more instruction and practice.

·         Mixed-Skill groupings is that they provide students with special needs a range of positive models for both academic and social behavior.

·         Assistive technology is any piece of equipment that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of a child with a disability. 

o   Resource: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/technlgy/te7assist.htm

o   This website provides a lot of general information and information about the types of assistive technology for many different needs. 

·         Indirect instruction is based on the belief that children are naturally active learners and that given the appropriate instructional environment, they actively construct knowledge and solve problems in developmentally appropriate ways.

o   Resource: http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/hutt/strateg/indexpl.htm

o   This website is very informative and has links to different forms of indirect instruction.

Chapter 4: Assessing Student Needs

·         The major program placement decision involves the setting in which a student’s special education services take place.

·         Program Evaluation decisions involve whether a student’s special education program should be terminated, continued as is, or modified.

·         Curriculum-based assessment is a method of measuring students’ level of achievement in terms of what they are taught in the classroom.  Student performance is measured repeatedly over time, and the results are used to guide instruction.

·         Alternate assessments are given to those who typically work on a more individualized curriculum and do not have to meet the same requirements as those students graduating with a standard diploma.

·         Psychological tests measure abilities that affect how efficiently students learn in an instructional situation.  They can include intelligence tests and tests related to learning disabilities.

·         Standardized achievement tests are divided into group types: Group-administered tests are completed by large groups of students at one time and individually administered tests are part of a student’s case study evaluation.

·         High-stakes tests are assessments designed to measure whether students have attained learning standards.

o   Resource: http://www.crsep.org/Annotated%20%20Bibliography.pdf

o   This website is an annotated bibliography full of other resources about high-stakes testing.  It gives you 48 pages of books to look at if you are interested in all aspects of high-stakes testing.

·         Criterion referenced tests involve comparing student performance to a specific level of performance, or benchmark, rather than to a norm, or average, as with traditional standardized achievement tests.

o   Resource: http://www.education.com/reference/article/criterion-referenced-tests/

o   This website explains what criterion referenced tests are and the similarities and differences between norm referenced and criterion referenced testing.

·         Academic Probes can help teachers make many of the assessment decisions.

o   Resource: www.cise.missouri.edu/links/research-cbm-links.html

o   This website provides teachers with a wealth of resources to help implement research-based practices related to curriculum-based measurement.