Imagine an ostrich egg. Now, hard-boil it, and slice it in half with a perfect stroke that cuts the shell as cleanly as the cooked egg. As you look at half of the egg, you see layers: the shell, the white, the yolk. Now take a large ruby of the kind you might put on a ring, and stick it right in the middle of the yolk. You've just created a very decent model of what a typical school's special education needs look like.
The shell, and a significant area outside of it, represents the greater student population -- a large mass of students that are 'normal', and make it through their entire schooling without really raising the question of disability.
Supports
The albumen -- the white of the egg -- represents students that have a known disability. It may be ADHD, or dyslexia, or social anxiety disorder... whatever it is, they are thought to be 'beyond' it, or to have a variation of it that does not require special effort to work through. Much like there's more white to an egg than yolk, these kids actually represent more than half of the 'kids with disabilities' in any given school.
Many of them have thick files full of IEPs and full records of all of the efforts that were required in preschool, kindergarten, and sometimes into elementary school -- efforts to get them where they are today. But by and large, an outside observer would never guess that these kids were once considered 'special needs.' If these children need anything at all to get by -- say, an ADHD kid taking a supplementary dose of their medication at lunchtime -- these minor aids are referred to as 'supports,' but unfortunately, that word is also often used as an umbrella term that also includes the two categories below as well.
Accommodations
The yolk of the egg represents the students that currently require 'accommodations.' These are students who are mostly able to deal with the material as-is, provided that it is presented in a manner that operates within their sphere of competence. The most extreme example is a deaf student, who is completely competent scholastically, but cannot receive information from lectures, standard classroom videos, and so on. Most 'special needs' students can function at or above grade level given adequate accommodations, and schools are legally required to provide accommodations for students who need them.
Modifications
The ruby in the middle -- that tiny bit of the huge egg -- represents the students whose needs are greater than 'mere' accommodations will compensate for. These are the kids who require what are called 'modifications'. Children with profound disabilities such as cerebral palsy, severe autism-spectrum disorder, or oppositional defiant disorder need coursework that is almost completely different from that used by the core students. These modifications are designed to provide material that correlates to what the rest of the school is learning, but presents it in a way that is accessible to the children that fit in this small group.
The important thing to know about these need levels is that:
- Supports generally don't involve any change to the material or the teaching style, and are simply tools to help the student access the material as easily as a 'normal' student would.
- Accommodations involve changes to presentation, but generally not the material itself.
- Modifications are changes that affect both presentation and the curriculum material itself.
Examples
To clarify, let's look at a few examples of each:
Supports:
- Medicine -- prescribed or OTC -- taken on a schedule that allows the child to maintain function. The most commonly-used is Adderall, but that is one of many examples that cover a wide variety of disabilities.
- Dietary modifications that avoid specific allergens or other potential food-borne toxins that can cause complications with some disabilities (for example, avoiding MSG for children with ADHD.)
- Altered seating arrangements to account for minor disabilities like low-level myopia or touch-averseness.
Accommodations:
- Pacing Changes, such as shorter lessons, longer lessons, or more breaks within lessons.
- Environmental Changes, such as putting certain students in the front of the room, or teaching in a room with curtains over the windows and minimized distractions.
- Presentational Changes, such as the aforementioned adaptation for deaf students, or providing 'pre-instruction' for certain children on certain difficult subjects.
- Adaptive Technology, for example braille printers, large-print books, large-button calculators, and so on.
- Behavioral Adaptations, such as applying strong positive reinforcement, requesting parental enforcement at home, and utilizing behavioral contracts.
Modifications:
- Occupational Therapy Intervention, for children who cannot control their bodies and impulsively get up and move.
- Oral Testing, for children who are unable to hold a pencil or operate a keyboard.
- ESL Teaching, for children who are not progressing in English at a school-relevant speed.
- Assignment Truncation, or allowing a special needs student to turn in an assignment with less than a standard workload in order to achieve the same grade.
- Curriculum Slowing, such as allowing a given student to spend an extra several days on a given subject while their peers move on.
If it seems as though students that require modifications probably also require a lot more work than those that require accommodations, who in turn require a lot less work than the merely 'supported' -- you're absolutely right. Fortunately, the Federal government provides schools with extra funding based on the number of students in each category, so for most schools, the system works passably well.
By Peter Mangiola
0 comments:
Post a Comment