Katlyn Paslawski's List: Aids for Intellectual Disabilities

• Students with disabilities cannot use the same technology that typical students use.
• VoiceThread is a free software program that captures student voices and photos in order to collaborate on a topic. It is a technological substitute for written papers and allows students freedom to narrate their own projects.
• Sounding Board is an iPad/iPod Touch app that lets a student turn their device into a story board communicator. Students with writing disabilities and communication disorders can use the symbols to create their own messages in the same way that traditional symbol boards work, but easily and with a limitless supply of symbols.
• Incorporating technology increases students’ motivation to learn and personalizes lessons to a student’s individual needs.

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• A student’s ability to master the content of daily instruction largely depends on his or her ability to successfully process information in WM. This requires students to move information from short-term memory to long-term memory, where it is stored indefinitely
• The term “working memory” is defined as a person’s ability to temporarily hold and manipulate information for cognitive tasks performed on a daily basis (e.g., following directions and performing mental math)
• “mental scrapbook”
• Many classroom tasks (e.g., reading comprehension) require students to frequently use their WM and to retrieve information under conditions that include “signal interference” (e.g., retrieval of irrelevant information, overload of irrelevant cues)¹⁶ and classroom distractions

• Based on that work, they proposed grouping students according to three specific academic difficulties:

   
   
  1. students with learning difficulties only,
   
  2. students with producing difficulties, and
   
  3. students with learning and producing difficulties.
• Although these students struggle with learning certain skills, they usually are able to produce work that is of acceptable quality, because they do not have problems planning and regulating their attention or study skills.
• When these students do not demonstrate a writing difficulty, teachers and parents sometimes mistakenly view them as lazy, unmotivated, or irresponsible. Students with producing problems have difficulty consistently and efficiently applying skills they have learned.
• Teachers and parents usually recognize their difficulty with learning and producing an acceptable quality of work (e.g., when a student is asked to write a paragraph about a topic, he has difficulty deciding what to write and when he finally writes, it contains incomplete sentences, spelling errors, and often lacks coherence)
• Three categories of student difficulties

• Strategies for differentiating classroom instruction

   

  Gathercole and Alloway offer seven principles for teachers to apply to prevent an overload of a student’s WM:²⁸

   
   
  1. Recognize WM problems (e.g., failure to follow directions).
   
  2. Observe the child for early warning signs of WM overload and monitor the child’s behavior by asking, “What are you going to do next?” or “Tell me what you are going to read.”
   
  3. Identify and evaluate the demands of various learning activities (e.g., amount of information to remember).
   
  4. Reduce WM loads by modifying the activities.
   
  5. Be ready to repeat information.
   
  6. Encourage the use of memory aids (e.g., posters on the wall and technology).
   
  7. Develop the child’s use of strategies for supporting memory (e.g., rehearsal and chunking information).
• Strategy #1: Provide short, simple, and sequential directions, one at a time.
• Strategy #2: Use visual cues and modeling to reinforce oral directions or explanations.
• Strategy #3: Repeat information or directions or ask other students to repeat and paraphrase what you have just said.
• Strategy #4: Use rehearsal, visual imagery, and coding as ways to facilitate the transfer of information from short-term memory to WM to long-term memory.³⁵
• Strategy #5: Give only five to seven pieces of information at a time to avoid WM overload.
• Strategy #6: Break tasks into sub-tasks to address the students’ attention and WM capacity.
• Strategy #7: Group information into chunks to reduce potential overload of a student’s WM.
• Strategy #8: Categorize information by grouping together related objects or events.
• Strategy #9: Use semantic maps or networks to connect a main idea to related ideas.
• Strategy #10: When conveying visual information, use the spatial contiguity principle.
• Strategy #11: Make information meaningful by connecting the students’ prior experiences to the new information.
• Strategy #12: Provide advance organizers prior to beginning a lesson to help students more easily organize information to be learned.
• Strategy #14: Teach organization of text such as story structure to facilitate comprehension of narratives
• Strategy #15: Use hierarchy to organize information
• Strategy #16: Review information frequently.
• Strategy #17: Implement teaching routines and provide a structured and consistent environment.
• Strategy #18: Divide study time into sessions.
• Strategy #19: Have students practice the new skills in the same context in which they will be assessed.
• Strategy #20: Apply the serial position curve concept to teaching.

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• Audacity is a free, open-source program for recording and editing audio.
• Mindmeister is an on-line free mapping and brainstorming tool where students can create maps of project plans, show how historical events are linked, brainstorm for their next piece of writing, and more.
• Sally Ride, the first woman in space, has teamed up with Google Aps for school to create an educational tour of our solar system and beyond in Sally Ride
• Realworldmath.org helps students see that there are real world applications to the math that is being taught in the classroom.

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• Intellectual disability is a disability characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behaviour, which covers many everyday social and practical skills.
• Computer software and devices (such as touch screens and interactive whiteboards and tables) have been used very successfully over the past twenty years in many school and pre-school settings.
• The emerging technology of choice for many parents and schools are the portable, hand held tablets, with the iPad leading the way with thousands of generic and tailor made Apps. They cater to almost every facet of learning, therapy, communication and engagement.
• Often the traditional teaching pedagogy doesn’t apply or work well with these students
• . Children with ID need to revisit the same learning objectives repeatedly through a variety of activities that maintain their interest and motivation.
• Technology can range from no-tech through to hi-tech devices and equipment. A range of technologies is required to stimulate the user to elicit responses and to invite exploration and experimentation using sound, music, colour, movement and visual media.
• The eBooks that can record of the child’s or educator’s/parent’s voice reading the story, commenting on the plot or images as well as video recording of the session, provide scope for so much more.
• Staff can take a photo using a digital camera or movie camera. The iPads have inbuilt cameras (backwards and forwards facing) so that educators, therapists and parents can immediately capture moments and important events in a child’s day.
• As the iPad has iTunes (and many other music Apps) the device can be used effectively for playing back sounds, sound effects, music and narration. Apps that offer ambient sounds, soothing music and relaxation music cater directly to children who require time out or an opportunity to be diverted or redirected

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• But how do you address those learning needs in positive and effective ways that really help the student learn?
• 1 | Recognize that you can make an enormous difference in this student’s life! L
• 2 | Be an active participant in the student’s IEP team.
• 3 | Provide accommodations and supports that help students with intellectual disabilities
• 4 | Be as concrete as possible.
• 5 | Go step by step
• 6 | Give immediate feedback
• 7 | Help the student learn life skills.
• 8 | Address the social aspects of school. 
• 9 | Communicate with your student’s parents.

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• Talk to the parents or guardians.
• Request that the student be put on the agenda for a future school-based team or school planning meeting.
• Before organizing this meeting consider:
• If the student has an IEP in place
• If there has been an assessment of the student's strengths and needs and level of functioning,
• IIf there is a teacher assistant assigned to the student, get to know this person
• Take time to listen to the student's history.
• hile teachers maintain the authority to manage their classrooms, it is important to work collaboratively with parents.
• Students can provide useful insights regarding their own strengths and needs and how these might be addressed in a new setting.
• The IEP should be implemented and reviewed/updated at least annually. Its development should be seen as a dynamic, ongoing process.
• • are written records of planning prepared with input from students, parents/guardians, school personnel and other service providers, i.e., preschool staff.  
  • describe students' current learning, strengths, styles and needs, and identify appropriate goals.  
  • help in determining the degree of intervention needed.  
  • describe individual team members' responsibilities.  
  • provide coherent plans for student learning and service needs.  
  • should include planning for students' transitions.  
  • Assist in determining criteria for evaluation.  
  • help in determining how well students are meeting their goals, and form the basis of reporting students' progress.
• Communication
• Instruction
• Assessment -

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• Use strategies such as chunking, backward shaping (teach the last part of a skill first), forward shaping, and role modeling.
• Use mnemonics
• Do not overwhelm a student with multiple or complex instructions.
• Develop a procedure for the student to ask for help (e.g. cue card, raising hand).
• Proceed in small ordered steps and review each frequently.
• Emphasize the student's successes.
• Use visual supports when relating new information verbally.
• Ask one question at a time and provide adequate time for student to reply.
• Provide frequent opportunities for students to learn and socialize with typically developing peers.
• Directly teach social skills, such as turn-taking, social distance, reciprocal conversations, etc.
• Break down social skills into non-verbal and verbal components.
• Ask students to imagine how their behavior might affect others.
• Model tolerance and acceptance.
• Be aware that some students may work better alone.
• Ensure that the student has a way to appropriately express their wants and needs.
• Reinforce communication attempts (e.g. their gestures, partial verbalizations) when the child is non-verbal or emerging verbal.
• Paraphrase back what the student has said
• Be aware that some students may require another form of communication.
• Be patient when the student is speaking, since rushing may result in frustration.
• Use active listening.
• Incorporate the student’s interests into conversational exchanges.
• • Break down / task-analyze skills into steps.
   
  • Model targeted skills, then provide practice opportunities.
• Provide many opportunities for students to apply information they have learned.
• Find ways to apply skills to other settings (field trips).
• Teach and model personal hygiene habits such as washing hands, covering mouth and nose when sneezing or coughing, and dental care.
• Teach students to provide personal identification information when asked.
• Model desired behaviors, and clearly identify what behaviors you expect in the classroom.
• Ensure consistency of expectations among all staff.
• Create a “calming area” or a “sensory area.” 
• Brainstorm better choice(s) with students.
• Behavior management techniques can be used in the home, school, and community settings. Functional Behavior Assessments/Behavior Intervention Plans can be created by examining a student's specific problem behavior, identifying antecedents, understanding consequences that maintain the behavior, and developing strategies to reduce the inappropriate behavior and increase desirable behavior. 

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• Its benefits include enhancing academic achievement in written expression, reading, mathematics, and spelling; improving organization; and fostering social acceptance.
• "any piece of equipment, or product system. . . that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities"
• Computers change the writing process by making it easier to develop and record ideas, to edit ideas, and to publish and share with others.
• Samples of talking word processors for student use:
• auditory feedback
• reinforce the writing process
• Features can be customized to individual student
• Another useful tool is word prediction, which augments spelling and syntax to enable users to make choices, find words, and complete sentences
• Portable note takers allow more time for writing and require less concentration on operating the device.
• Many writers have difficulty with the planning stage, which incorporates brainstorming, clustering, and listing ideas, themes, or keywords
• Graphic organizers such as Inspiration provide organizational frameworks to help writers generate topics and content for writing projects
• Many young children draw pictures to tell a story before they can write
• These findings suggest that writing teachers may need to develop a management strategy that ensures a balance between time spent planning stories and time generating actual text.

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• • I noticed that this lesson plan had a great amount of visuals and ways of using more than one sense to engage the learner.

• using interactive Smart Boards as effective teaching tools for secondary and elementary students with intellectual disabilities.
• designed to increase the engagement, attention and learning of students who may include diagnoses of a mild intellectual disability, a developmental disability, and/or an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
• provide visual, touching/manipulation and audio support for academic learning and classroom routines.
• easier through the use of voice, speech output from a computer, sound effects, pictures, communication symbols and graphics.
• “The use of the Smart Board and specific programs designed to meet the needs of students with intellectual disabilities allows students to express their knowledge and understanding of concepts in non-traditional means,”
• She has observed their independence strengthen, their self-esteem improve, and their confidence soar to be able to speak in front of the class when at one time they were too shy to do so.
• huge gains socially and academically
• The skills developed through the Smart Boards can become building blocks for students to develop social skills for when they eventually enter the workplace

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