Creating Your Own Rock Band

Emotionally Disturbed, Learning Disabilities, Blindness/Visually Impaired

Modification for Emotionally Disturbed

General Strategies

• Bring to the student's attention science role models with disabilities with a similar disability to that of the student. Point out that this individual got ahead by a combination of effort and by asking for help when needed.
• Ask previous teachers about interactive techniques that have previously been effective with the student in the past.
• Expose students with behavioral disorders to other students who demonstrate the appropriate behaviors.
• Direct instruction or target behaviors is often required to help students master them.
• Have preestablished consequences for misbehavior.
• Administer consequences immediately, then monitor proper behavior frequently.
• Determine whether the student is on medication, what the schedule is, and what the medication effects may be on his or her in class demeanor with and without medication. Then adjust teaching strategies accordingly.
• Use time-out sessions to cool off disruptive behavior and as a break if the student needs one for a disability-related reason.
• In group activities, acknowledge the contributions of the student with a behavioral disorder.
• Devise a contingency plan with the student in which inappropriate forms of response are replaced by appropriate ones.
• Treat the student with the behavioral disorder as an individual who is deserving of respect and consideration.
• When appropriate, seek input from the student about their strengths, weaknesses and goals.
• Enforce classroom rules consistently.
• Make sure the discipline fits the "crime," without harshness.
• Provide encouragement.
• Reward more than you punish, in order to build self-esteem.
• Praise immediately at all good behavior and performance.
• Change rewards if they are not effective for motivating behavioral change.
• Develop a schedule for applying positive reinforcement in all educational environments.
• Encourage others to be friendly with students who have emotional disorders.
• Monitor the student's self-esteem. Assist in modification, as needed.
• Self-esteem and interpersonal skills are especially essential for all students with emotional disorders.
• Do not expect students with behavioral disorders to have immediate success; work for improvement on a overall basis.
• As a teacher, you should be patient, sensitive, a good listener, fair and consistent in your treatment of students with behavioral disorders.
• Present a sense of high degree of possessiveness in the classroom environment.

Teacher Presentation

• After a week, or so, of observation, try to anticipate classroom situations where the student's emotional state will be vulnerable and be prepared to apply the appropriate mitigative strategies.
• By using examples, encourage students to learn science so they can emulate adult behaviors.
• Check on the student's basic capacity to communicate and adjust your communications efforts accordingly.
• Use a wide variety of instructional equipment which can be displayed for the students to look at and handle.
• When an interest in a particular piece has been kindled, the instructor can talk to the student about it and show him or her how to use it.
• Instructions should be simple and very structured.
• Group participation in activities is highly desirable because it makes social contacts possible.
• Monitor the student carefully to ensure that students without disabilities do not dominate the activity or detract in any way from the successful performance of the student with the behavioral disorder.
• Teachers should reward students for good behavior and withhold reinforcement for inappropriate behavior.
• Some aggressive students act as they do because of a subconscious desire for attention, and it is possible to modify their behavior by giving them recognition.
• Have the individual with the behavioral disorder be in charge of an activity which can often reduce the aggressiveness.
• Special efforts should be made to encourage and easily facilitate students with behavioral disorders to interact.
• Show confidence in the students ability and set goals that realistically can be achieved.
• Plan for successful participation in the activities by the students. Success is extremely important to them.
• The environment must be structured but sensitive to the needs of these youth with behavioral disorders.
• Expose students with behavioral disorders to other students who demonstrate the appropriate behaviors.
• Direct instruction or target behaviors is often required to help students master them.
• Consultation with other specialists, including the special education teacher, school psychologist, and others may prove helpful in devising effective strategies.
• Keep an organized classroom learning environment.
• Devise a structured behavioral management program.
• As an educator you serve a model for the students who are behaviorally disturbed. Your actions therefore, must be consistent, mature, and controlled. Behavioral outbursts and/or angry shouting at students inhibit rather than enhance a classroom.
• Provide a carefully structured learning environment with regard to physical features of the room, scheduling, routines, and rules of conduct.
• If unstructured activities must occur, you must clearly distinguish them from structured activities in terms of time, place, and expectations.
• Let your students know the expectations you have, the objectives that have been established for the activity, and the help you will give them in achieving objectives.
• When appropriate, seek input from the students about their strengths, weaknesses and goals.
• Do not expect students with behavioral disorders to have immediate success; work for improvement on a overall basis.
• Be fair and consistent, but temper your consistency with flexibility.
• You should refer the students to visual aids and reading materials that may be used to learn more about the techniques of skill performance.
• Present a sense of positiveness in the learning environment.
• Remain calm, state the infraction of the rule, and avoid debating or arguing with the student with a behavioral disorder.
• Have preestablished consequences for misbehavior.
• Administer consequences immediately, then monitor proper behavior frequently.
• Enforce classroom rules consistently.
• Make sure the discipline fits the "crime," without harshness.
• Provide encouragement.
• Reward more than you punish, in order to build self-esteem.
• Praise immediately and all good behavior and performance.
• Change rewards if they are not effective for motivating behaviral change.
• Find ways to encourage the student.
• Be positive and supportive.
• Develop a schedule for applying positive reinforcement in all educational environments.
• Encourage others to be friendly with students who have emotional disorders.
• Monitor the student's self-esteem. Assist in modification, as needed.
• Self-esteem and interpersonal skills are especially essential for all students with emotional disorders.

Group Interaction and Discussion

• Acknowledge the contributions of the student with an emotional disorder.
• Call for responses and participation commensurate with the student's socialization skills.
• As the student's comfort level rises and when a safe topic is available, encourage the student to be a group spokesperson.
• Along with the student, devise a contingency plan in which inappropriate forms of response are replaced by appropriate ones.
• Gradually increase the challenges in the student's participation in group exercises while providing increased positive reinforcement.
• Help the student to feel as though he or she has something worthwhile to contribute to the discussion.
• Some students may experience considerable strain in social adjustment in a group context. It may be necessary to work gradually toward group activities. One can devise a strategy of progressing from spectatorship to one-to-one instruction and eventually to small group discussion.
• Should monitor carefully to ensure that the nondisabled students do not dominate the discussion or detract in any way from the successful performance of the student with the behavioral disorder.

Reading

• It is necessary to target specific prosocial behaviors for appropriate instruction and assessment to occur such as:
1. Taking turns, working with partner, following directions.
2. Reading in group or with others.
3. Increasing positive relationships by means of awards when they read appropriately.
4. Demonstrating appropriate reading
• Instructional strategies involving self-control, self-reinforcement, self-monitoring, self-management, problem solving, cognitive behavior modification, and metacognitive skills should be focused on teaching students reading skills

Field Experiences

• Use appropriate general strategies.
• Consider alternate activities/exercises that can be utilized with less difficulty for the student, but has the same or similar learning objectives.
• In field activities acknowledge the contributions and assistance of the student with an emotional disorder.
• Help the student to feel as though he or she has something worthwhile to contribute to the field trip.
• Use a buddy system.
• Gradually increase the challenges in the student's participation in field exercises while providing increased positive reinforcement.
• Group participation in field activities is highly desirable because it enhances social contacts.
• Make the student with the behavioral disorder become one of the field trip leader of an activity which can often reduce their disorder.
• Special efforts should be made to get students with behavioral disorders to interact with other students.
• You should encourage students to practice field skills during their free hours.
• Every effort should be made to arouse the interest of such students in activities, so they will learn to perform the activities with success and pleasure with appropriate behaviors.

Testing

• Be sensitive to the student's reactions to the various aspects of assessment.
• For each student, accumulate in his or her portfolio several examples of work (quizzes, assignments, projects) that demonstrate knowledge of the subject matter or the unit of study.
• Make special arrangements for the student with an emotional disorder according to what their special needs are and that they do not compromise the integrity of the testing situation.
• Stay on top of student progress through informal assessment, don't wait until it's too late to discover that there is a problem.
• Provide private room/smaller group setting/alternative test site (with proctor present); alternatively screens to block out distractions.

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Modification for Learning Disabilities

From: www.k8accesscenter.org/training_resources/math.asp

An article entitled: Mathematics Strategy Instruction (SI) for Middle School
Students with Learning Disabilities provided me with a wealth of relevant
information.  First, some general tips and guidelines:

One effective approach to assisting middle school youth with LD in accessing
challenging mathematical concepts is to provide strategy instruction (SI).
This brief defines strategy instruction, identifies key features of
effective strategies, and identifies key components necessary for
instructing youth in the use of a strategy. In addition, we provide a
practical example for the use of a math instructional strategy that can be
applied to a variety of concepts and settings, and provide some key
considerations when using strategy instruction in mathematics classes.

What Is a Strategy and What are the Key Features?

A strategy refers to, “a plan that not only specifies the sequence of needed
actions but also consists of critical guidelines and rules related to making
effective decisions during a problem solving process” (Ellis & Lenz, 1996,
p.24). Some features that make strategies effective for students with LD
are:

(a) Memory devices to help students remember the strategy (e.g., a First
Letter Mnemonic, which is created by forming a word from the beginning
letters of other words);

(b) Strategy steps that use familiar words stated simply and concisely and
begin with action verbs to facilitate student involvement (e.g., read the
problem carefully);

(c) Strategy steps that are sequenced appropriately (i.e., students are cued
to read the word problem carefully prior to solving the problem) and lead to
the desired outcome (i.e., successfully solving a math problem);

(d) Strategy steps that use prompts to get students to use cognitive
abilities (i.e., the critical steps needed in solving a problem); and

(e) Metacognitive strategies that use prompts for monitoring problem solving
performance (“Did I check my answer?”) (Lenz, Ellis, & Scanlon, 1996).

The article contains a number of examples and considerations following the
introduction of these general principles, and I dare say that they all could
have some merit in the classroom, even if there were not any students with
Learning Disabilities.

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Modification for Blindness

For accomdating blind students, I found the following advice at the University of Washington website (http://www.washington.edu/doit/Brochures/Academics/science_lab.html):

• verbal descriptions of demonstrations and visual aids
• Braille text and raised line images
• Braille/tactile ruler, compass, angles, protractor
• Braille equipment labels
• notches, staples, fabric paint, and/or Braille at regular increments on tactile ruler, glassware, syringe, beam balance, stove, other science equipment
• different textures (e.g., sand paper) to label areas on items

From the UWU website, I found a load of information at http://www.as.wvu.edu/~scidis/vision.html, and these tips on the site are particularly important:

General Information Access for Persons with Vision Loss

1. Visual material needs to be accompanied by a verbal description . If you are demonstrating how to use a piece of equipment, be sure to describe the equipment and what you are doing to operate it. Read overheads aloud and describe the content of slides (see note below about large print). In a conference presentation setting, you will probably want to provide all descriptions yourself. If you are showing a videotape, describe the action. If you distribute videotapes as handouts, any action or an explanatory text that is crucial to understanding the text of the presentation should be narrated.
2. If there are multiple speakers (such as a panel), have each speaker introduce himself or herself to the audience so that the speakers' voices are keyed for the audience as to their identity.
3. Be certain that your presentation can be clearly heard by everyone in the room and repeat all questions from the audience, prior to answering.
4. Handouts should be available in large print, audiotape, computer disk , and/or Braille formats. If this is not possible prior to your presentation, note the various individuals' preferred formats and then make your materials available to them within a short time after your presentation.
5. Large Print * - People who have some functional vision may be able to see print if it is large enough. Prepare print information on white paper with sharp, black ink. Standard print is generally 10-12 point type. Large print is 16-18 point and up, generally an enlargement setting of 160-175% on a copy machine. In the case of documents that already exist in print form, use a copy machine to enlarge each page onto 11 x 17 paper. Try darker settings on the copy machine to increase contrast without producing streaks. Many computer programs offer a variety of font types and sizes.
   (On most newer versions of browsers, you can select Text Zoom from View Menu of the browser for larger view).

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