Accommodating Student Variability

Chapter 6 Summary

Historical Developments

1. 2 approaches to creating more homogeneous groups: Ability Grouping (involves the use of standardized mental ability or achievement tests to create groups of students who were considered very similar to each other in learning ability; elementary and middle school: low, average, or high groups; high school: placed according to what they would be doing after high school such as college, secretarial work, or vocational school) and Special Education (for students who were deemed to be incapable of profiting from any type of normal classroom instruction; IDEA can from this)

Ability Grouping

1. tracking is used more in middle school and high school than ability grouping
2. 4 types of ability grouping: between-class ability grouping, regrouping, the Joplin Plan, and within-class grouping
3. Between-class ability grouping (goal is for each class to be made up of students who are homogeneous in standardized intelligence or achievement test scores) There are typically 3 levels of classes in this grouping: high, average, and low. Students from one ability group do not usually have any contact with students in another group.
4. Regrouping (more flexible in assignments and narrower in scope than between-class groups; students of the same age, ability, and grade but different classrooms come together for instruction in a specific subject usually reading or math) 2 disadvantages: requires a certain degree of planning and cooperation among teachers, and many teachers are uncomfortable working with children whom they see only once a day for an hour or so.
5. Joplin Plan (a variation of regrouping; regroupings take place across grade levels) same advantages and disadvantages as regrouping; SUCCESS FOR ALL was patterned after this
6. Within-Class Ability Grouping (most popular; involves the division of a single class of students into 2 or 3 groups for reading and math instruction) One disadvantage: the teacher needs to be skilled at keeping the other students in the class productively occupied while working with the a particular group
7. Ability grouping assumes intelligence is inherited, reflected by IQ, and unchangeable and that instruction will be superior.
8. No research support for between-class ability grouping
9. Joplin Plan and within-class ability grouping for math and science produce moderate increases in learning.
10. Regrouping research for reading and mathmatics is inconclusive
11. Between-class ability grouping negatively influences teaching goals and methods. (best teachers assigned to highest tracks and lowest teachers assigned to lowest tracks) Low teachers expected and demanded less of their students and covered less and simplier material
12. Freedom of Choice programs- low track minority students are allowed to enroll in honor courses
13. 3 courses of action: (1) to discontinue the use of full-day, between-class ability groups or tracks (2) to use only those forms of ability grouping that produce positive results: within-class grouping and the Joplin Plan, especially for reading and math (3) to dispense with all forms of ability grouping, detracking
14. Techniques that can be used to get high achievement in students: making clear presentations, displaying a high level of enthusiasm, reinforcing students for correct responses, providing sufficient time for students to formulate answers to questions, prompting correct responses, providing detailed feedback about the accuracy of responses, requiring a high level of work and effort, and organizing students into small, heterogeneous learning groups and using cooperative learning techniques.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

1. Major Provisions of IDEA: A free and appropriate public education; preplacement evaluation (before placement, student must be given complete, valid, and appropriate evaluation; rules on p. 187); Individualized Education Program (IEP must include objectives, services to be provided, criteria for determining achievement; p. 187); Least Restrictive Environment (students with diabilities must be educated in least restrictive environment; Mainstreaming: policy of placing students with disabilities in regular classes)
2. Inclusion (or full inclusion): Inclusion policy aims to keep students with disabilities in regular classrooms for the entire day; Full inclusion refers to eliminating all pullout programs and special education teachers and of providing regular classroom teachers with training in teaching special-needs students so that they can teach these students in the regular classroom
3. Disabling conditions: autism, deaf-blindness, hearing impairment, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairments, other health impairments, emotional disturbance, specific learning disability, speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury, and visual impairment including blindness.
4. Regular classroom teacher's responsibility under IDEA: referral, assessment (multidisciplinary assessment team: determines whether student needs special services), preparation of the IEP (classroom teacher, parents, and several specialists prepare IEP), implementation and evaluation of the IEP (if student is in the regular classroom, the teacher must put into practice the various instructional techniques listed in the IEP)

Students with Mental Retardation

1. Mental retardation: a disability characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills. It originates before age 18. (2 or more standard deviations below the mean)
2. Characteristics: frustrate easily, lack confidence and self-esteem, appear immature for their age; mild retardation: tend to oversimplify, have difficulty generalizing, smaller memory capacity, shorter attention spans, the inclination to concentrate on only one aspect of a learning situation and to ignor other relevant features, and delayed language development
3. Suggestions for teaching these students on Page 196-198

Students with Learning Disabilities

1. Learning Disabilities: disorders in basic processes that lead to learning problems not due to other causes
2. Characteristics: poorly developed social skills, ignore teacher's directions, cheat, use profane language, disturb other students, disrupt group activities, and start fights
3. Identifying students with learning disabilities: at least an average score on a standardized test of intelligence and a significantly below average score (1 or more standard deviations below) on a standardized achievement test
4. Students with learning disabilities have problems with perception, attention, memory, metacognition
5. Disorder of basic psychological processes: refers to problems with how students receive information, process it, and express what they have learned
6. Reading program tested on middle school students that teaches them how to use reading comprehension strategies contained the following components: word identification (using a first letter mnemonic to help them recall the seven steps involved in decoding multisyllabic words), partner reading (pairs of students modeled fluent reading for one another and helped each other decode unfamiliar words), and collaborative strategic reading (improved comprehension and combined two proven instructional techniques: reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning)
7. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: many children who have a learning disability also have ADHD; symptoms of ADHD include inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
8. Treatment for ADHD: prescribed stimulant medication, school-based psychological/educational programs (Behavior management programs: the systematic use of reinforcement and punishment to increase the frequency of desired behaviors and decrease the frequencey of undesired behaviors; Cognitive behavior therapy programs: teaching students to remind themselves to use effective learning skills, monitor their progress, and reinforce themselves; Classroom environment restructuring programs: use techniques such as reducing classroom noise, assigning studnets permanent seats, seating students with ADHD at the front of the class, and providing frequent breaks between tasks), multimodal programs (invovle combinations of one or more of the earlier treatments
9. Suggestions for teaching these students on Page 202-203

Students with Emotional Disturbance

1. Emotional Disturbance: condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics: inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors; inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers; inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances; general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems
2. Schizophrenia
3. Behavior Disorder: focuses on behavior that needs to be changes, objective assessment
4. Characteristics: externalizing (aggressive, uncooperative, restless, and negativistic; tend to lie, steal, defy teachers, hostile, cruel, or malicious); internalizing (shy, timid, anxious, fearful, depressed, and lack self-confidence)
5. Suggestions for Teaching these students on Page 205-207

Students who are Gifted and Talented

1. Definition: children and youth who give evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capabilities
2. Identification: standardized test scores, especially IQ scores; alternate assessments are beginning to be used
3. Characteristics: excel on tasks that involve language, abstract logical thinking, and mathematics; faster at encoding information and retrieving it from memory; highly aware of how they learn and the various conditions that affect their learning; exhibit such high levels of motivation and task persistence that the phrase "rage to master" is sometimes used to describe their behavior; tend to be more solitary and introverted than average children; tend to have very intense emotional lives
4. Instructional Options: Accelerated Instruction (allowing students to skip one or more grades, curriculum can be compressed [complete work for more than one grade in a year], school year extended by the use of summer sessions, and students can take college courses while still in high school); Gifted and Talented classes and schools (these may aid achievement but may lower academic self-concept of some students); Enrichment and Differentiated Instruction (using different learning materials, instructional methods, assignments, and tests to accomodate differences in student's abilities, learning styles, prior knowledge, and cultural background)
5. 3 levels of enrichment: Type I (exploratory activities that are designed to expose students to topics, events, books, people, and places not ordinarily covered in the regular curriculum; this will stimulate new interests); Type II (instructional methods and materials aimed at the development of such thinking and feeling processes as thining creatively, classifying and analyzing data, solving problems, appreciating, and valuing); Type III (activities in which students investigate and collect data about a real topic or problem)
6. Websites mentioned: www.gnacademy.org; www.tip.duke.edu
7. Suggestions for Teaching these Students on Page 212-213

Using Technology to Assist Exceptional Students

1. Assistive technology: any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of a child with a disability. Ex: adapted spoons, joysticks, taped stories, adaptive switches, head-pointing devices, captioned programming, and communication boards
2. Technology for Students with Hearing Impairments: closed captioning, audio amplification, and cochlear implants
3. Technology for Students with Visual Impairments: Speech synthesizers, magnification devices, screen reader (software programs)
4. Technology for Students with Orthopedic Impairments: pointing devices held in the mouth, attached to the head, or voice activated; condensed or mini keyboards; touch sensitive expanded keyboards
5. Technology for Students with Speech or Language Impairments: computer software with a speech synthesizer and expanded keyboard
6. Technology for Students with Learning Disabilities: software programs for reading(computerized study guide, videodisc program, hypermedia study guide, software with synchronized visual and auditory presentation of text); writing software (word prediction software, e-pal program)
7. Technology for gifted and talented students: distance education (http://epgy.stanford.edu), web quest (www.webquest.sdsu.edu)

Life Experiences

I work with students with disabilities everyday so I see each of these kinds of kids. I see the differences that each of these students exhibit in learning and in social skills. So I understand that when discussing educational needs, instructional strategies, and grouping they need to be thought about and discussed in an individual basis. I do not agree with trying to mainstream all students with disabilities. Some children can succeed in a regular classroom if given the right instructional strategies and modifications, but so many others need that extra one on one assistance that a special education teacher can give them. If all schools had the money to hire a special education teacher for every classroom more children could be mainstreamed, but the federal government just keeps cutting our money so that just isn't possible. Even with this, the severely disabled still would not be able to function properly in a regular education classroom all day long. Too many times those who make these kind of decisions in government are not the ones who actually have ever worked in a classroom trying to teach students with disabilities and nondisabled students at the same time all by themselves.

Ideas:

I love reading the suggestion for teaching and finding all the neat websites full of new information that is in each chapter. By keeping this blog I am able to have a place to record this information and any new ideas that I read or hear about. I just wish I had a slower schedule for life so that I could put more information into my blog each week and read about new techniques or strategies that are coming about.

Discussion Boards:

It was real interesting reading everyone's view on students with disabilities and mainstreaming. There was a variety of perspectives given and a variety of reasons for these perspectives. I also liked the ideas that people shared about how they would deal with students in their classroom with learning disabilities, mental retardation, and emotional disturbance. I have not had to deal with a student that has a real prominent emotional disturbance, so this is something that I need more information about. So many students had great ideas of things that they would do in the classroom.

Educational Blog:

TinyEye had a lot of new information for this week. She had posted a video from ASHA about Speech therapy telepractice. It was a real informative video that I am going to share with the Speech Therapist that I work for. It gave me new information that I was not familiar with. She also posted a real neat statement about the importance of thinking differently. She said "“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” I really liked this statement because it is so true but we never think that way. There was also two posts about Breast cancer because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This really hits home to me because a year and a half ago my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has completed treatments and is doing very well. But it is always in the back of my mind if it will come back again. She had a whole blog concerning peoples thoughts about telepractice and how she is able to give her patients the same services online as if she was right in the room with them. She discusses all her different thoughts and ideas. Even if you do not use telepractice her ideas are great. Her website is so full of great ideas and new techniques, every speech therapist needs to read her blog. Even when this class is over I am going to continue reading her blogs and recording the information I find in my journal here. If she is half the speech therapist that she sounds like any person would be blessed to receive her services or advice.

Question of the Week: When looking at ability-grouped classrooms, how do you feel about this issue? Is this a technique that you would use in your "classroom"? Would it be beneficial - why or why not? Are there any parts of ability grouping that could be modified to work in your "classroom"? How?

I have mixed feelings about ability grouping. In some situations if used properly they could be productive but if not they could be detrimental to a students learning. The type of ability grouping that I might use would be a mix of abilities in a group such as 1 advanced, 2 average, and 1 low. By grouping this way, each student might be able to help another. The advanced student would be able to help all the students in the group and the average students could gain from the advanced and maybe help the low. Everyone would be able to prosper hopefully. A mix of ability groups is about the only way that I could use ability grouping in my classroom because I have limited students at one time. So many times the grouping I use has more to do with grouping by like disabilities instead of like abilities.