Curricula for Students with Severe Disabilities

Narratives of Standards-Referenced Good Practice

Phyllis Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138811911
• eBook ISBN: 9781317608110
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Students with severe disabilities comprise 2 percent of the population of learners who are impacted by intellectual, communicative, social, emotional, physical, sensory and medical issues. Increasingly, however, teachers are required to meet the challenges of creating a pedagogical balance between an individual student's strengths, needs and preferences, and core academic curricula. The need to embrace the current initiative of curriculum state standards in the debate of curricula relevance, breadth, balance and depth for students with severe disabilities is not just timely—it contributes to the evolving debate of what constitutes an appropriate curriculum for severely disabled learners.

Curricula for Students with Severe Disabilities supports the development of greater understandings of the role that state curriculum standards play in the pedagogical decision-making for students with severe intellectual disabilities. The book first discusses the nature and needs of these students, the curriculum for this group of learners and the recent contributions of state curriculum standards, before presenting narratives of real classrooms, teachers and students who have meaningfully integrated state curriculum standards at the kindergarten, elementary and high school levels.

Section II

Introduction

This section of the book contains narratives of favorite lessons by six teachers who work with students with severe/significant disabilities. All teachers teach learners in more restricted settings but ensure that their students engage in standards-referenced enhanced learning. The research for this section took over a year of working collaboratively with each teacher to share their stories in structured and accessible ways. To honor the commitment and contribution of the teachers, the chapters in this section are written with the teachers and not for them. Therefore they share the authorship of the chapters. The chapters represent ELA and Math lessons at the elementary, middle and high school level.

The teachers work in two different schools in a South Eastern American State. Information about each school is included here to avoid repetition. All student and school names are anonymous, but we have the support of families to include their children in these stories and photographs to be shared.

In each chapter, there is a section where the reasons the teacher believes this was an effective lesson are shared. These are presented in the first person to connect with the reader more powerfully.

Introduction to the Schools

Orchard Hill School Written With Robin Myers

Orchard Hill School serves 190 students with significant intellectual disabilities. They range in age from 3 to 22 years and are in grades pre-K through 12th Grade. Orchard Hill was purpose-built in 2008 to accommodate the educational needs of the county's Exceptional Student Education population. In addition to being individuals with significant intellectual disabilities, many of the students may have co-existing issues. The staff of Orchard Hill consists of 30 teachers, 52 paraprofessionals, 2 administrators (1 principal and 1 assistant principal) and 7 professional licensed staff (1 Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), 1 behavior resource teacher, 2 registered nurses, 2 occupational therapists and 1 physical therapist).

In 2008, Orchard Hill School developed a plan to transition from primarily teaching functional skills to teaching academics. Elements of the plan included the development of an intensive school-based training program for the school's teachers and teacher assistants. This evolution was a proactive response to the changing landscape of curriculum entitlement for students with significant cognitive disabilities, which increasingly embraced standards-referenced curricula. In addition to a focus upon instructional strategies, Orchard Hill also addressed curricular elements in line with the state's curricular access point directives. Scope and Sequence documents were developed for every access point course in grades K through 12th. In addition, the school developed a unit-by-unit instructional framework that included many of the Marzano strategies of effective instruction for all students (Marzano, 2001). Evaluation and progress monitoring was aligned by topic for all grade levels. Orchard Hill School has been recognized as leading the charge in terms of successfully teaching state access points to students with severe and significant disabilities. Ongoing mentoring and coaching visits from personnel from districts and schools across the state attest to this. Chapters 5, 7, 8 and 9 are based in Orchard Hill School.

Spring Park School Written With Edwina Oliver

Spring Park School is an Exceptional Student Education (ESE) center school, which serves students from Pre-K to age 22 in a suburban mid-sized school district. It is a purpose-built one-story building with a wide range of services and therapies, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, vision therapy, hearing services, assistive and augmentative communication services, social work services, counseling services, adaptive physical education, music, art, horticulture, hippotherapy (horses), aquatic therapy, scouts, vocational training both on and off campus, job coaching, OJT (On the Job Training), community based instruction, social skills training programs, behavior modification programs and nursing services.

The school has five academic teams that have discrete responsibility for teaching groups of learners. The school is physically organized around the teams so that a corridor of classrooms, or part of the school building, houses the teams. The teams are:

• The A.C.T.I.O.N. Team
• The TRANSITION Team K–8
• The TRANSITION Team 9–12+
• The SPECTRUM Team
• The DAT Team.

The A.C.T.I.O.N. Team (Acceptance, Courage, Tolerance, Individuality, Opportunity and Nurture) is made up of students in grades K through 8th with emotional behavioral disabilities receiving the standard academic curriculum. A social skills curriculum is embedded throughout their day. The goal is to modify behaviors in order that students attain the skills necessary to return to their district school. The TRANSITION Team K–8 works with students at points of transition in the school who are working on Access Point standards. The TRANSITION Team 9–12+ is made up of students who are working on Access Point standards and functional life skills. Both teams have multiple exceptionalities within these two teams. The SPECTRUM Team is made up primarily of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder with intellectual disabilities in grades K through 12th, with a few postgraduate students (Grade 12+) as well. All classrooms are highly structured with visual supports to address and monitor progress on communication and behavior needs. Finally, the DAT Team (Developmental Assistive Technology) is made up of students with severe and profound intellectual disabilities in grades K through 12th, which also includes postgraduate students. Between eight and ten of these students receive nursing services for feeding and require augmentative and assistive technology for communication in order to access the curriculum. Each of these academic teams have one to three paraprofessionals assigned to support students in the classrooms. Chapters 6 and 10 are based in Spring Park School. Chapter 6 is with a teacher in the DAT team and Chapter 10 is with a teacher from the TRANSITION Team 9–12+.

Chapter 5
Fact or Fiction

With Vilmary Tautiva

This lesson takes place at Orchard Hill School.

The Classroom

There are eight students in the class, one teacher and two paraprofessionals. All students are on state Standard Access Points and have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). The students are highly interactive even with limited mobility skills. The grade levels are 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th. Two students are non-verbal, three are verbal and three students have low speech intelligibility. The students are taught in 1:3 teacher to student ratio with low and high technology. The classroom follows an Orchard Hill Scope and Sequence that is aligned to the state standards. The materials selected for the academic lessons are standards-based.

The Adults

Mrs. T., the class teacher, is a second career teacher. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, a Master of Arts in Special Education and an Educational Specialist in Leadership. She started as a paraprofessional in 2001 providing support for English Speaking Other Language (ESOL) students. In 2008, she became a teacher of pre-K students with disabilities. Following teaching pre-K, she taught a self-contained class of students with autism. The following summer she went to a special day school to teach Extended School Year (ESY) to students with severe disabilities and has since been teaching at the center school. Mrs. T. is on the school curriculum team, leadership team, School Advisory Committee (SAC) Safe Schools and is a new teacher mentor. Ms. J., one of the paraprofessionals, has a Bachelor of Science in Social Work. She has been a teacher assistant for the last 4 years. She has prior experience with high school students with disabilities. Mrs. S., the second paraprofessional, has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and is pursuing a Master of Arts in clinical psychology.

The Students

Krystal is 10 years old and is identified under the disability categories of Intellectual Disability (InD) and Speech or Language Impairment (SLI). Krystal is mobile. She has a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) that targets minim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• SECTION I
• SECTION II
• References
• Index