Modifications for Special Needs

ADD, Dyslexia, Visually Impaired

Teaching a student with ADD
 
As a teacher, your role is to evaluate each child’s individual needs and strengths. Then you can develop strategies that will help students with ADD focus, stay on task, and learn to their full capabilities.

Your most effective tool, however, in helping a student with ADD is a positive attitude. Make the student your partner by saying, “Let’s figure out ways together to help you get your work done.” Assure the student that you’ll be looking for good behavior and quality work, and when you see it, reinforce it with immediate and sincere praise. Finally, look for ways to motivate a student with ADD by offering rewards on a point or token system.

As a teacher, you can make changes in the classroom to help minimize the distractions and disruptions of ADHD.

Seating

• Seat the student with ADD away from windows and away from the door.
• Put the student with ADD right in front of your desk unless that would be a distraction for the student.
• Seats in rows, with focus on the teacher, usually work better than having students seated around tables or facing one another in other arrangements.

Information delivery

• Give instructions one at a time and repeat as necessary.
• If possible, work on the most difficult material early in the day.
• Use visuals: charts, pictures, color coding.
• Create outlines for note-taking that organize the information as you deliver it.

Student work

• Create a quiet area free of distractions for test-taking and quiet study.
• Create worksheets and tests with fewer items; give frequent short quizzes rather than long tests.
• Reduce the number of timed tests.
  
• Test the student with ADD/ADHD in the way he or she does best, such as orally or filling in blanks.
• Show the student how to use a pointer or bookmark to track written words on a page.
• Divide long-term projects into segments and assign a completion goal for each segment.
• Let the student do as much work as possible on computer.
• Accept late work and give partial credit for partial work.

Organization

• Have the student keep a master notebook, a three-ring binder with a separate section for each subject, and make sure everything that goes into the notebook has holes punched and is put on the rings in the correct section.
• Provide a three-pocket notebook insert for homework assignments, completed homework, and “mail” to parents (permission slips, PTA flyers).
• Color-code materials for each subject.
• Allow time for student to organize materials and assignments for home. Post steps for getting ready to go home.
• Make sure the student with ADD/ADHD has a system for writing down assignments and important dates and uses it.

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_teching_strategies.htm

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ACCOMMODATING STUDENTS WITH DYSLEXIA

IN ALL CLASSROOM SETTINGS

 Teaching students with dyslexia across settings is challenging. Both general education and special education teachers seek accommodations that foster the learning and management of a class of heterogeneous learners. It is important to identify accommodations that are reasonable to ask of teachers in all classroom settings. The following accommodations appear reasonable and provide a framework for helping students with learning problems achieve in general education and special education classrooms. They are organized according to accommodations involving materials, interactive instruction, and student performance.

Accommodations Involving Materials

Students spend a large portion of the school day interacting with materials. Most instructional materials give teachers few activities or directions for teaching a large class of students who learn at different rates and in various ways. This section provides material accommodations that enhance the learning of diverse students.

1. Use a tape recorder.  Many problems with materials are related to reading disabilities.  The tape recorder often is an excellent aid in overcoming this problem. Directions, stories, and specific lessons can be recorded on tape. The student can replay the tape to clarify understanding of directions or concepts. Also, to improve reading skills, the student can read the printed words silently as they are presented on tape.

2. Clarify or simplify written directions.  Some directions are written in paragraph form and contain many units of information. These can be overwhelming to some students. The teacher can help by underlining or highlighting the significant parts of the directions. Rewriting the directions is often helpful.

For example:

Original directions: This exercise will show how well you can locate conjunctions. Read each sentence. Look for the conjunctions. When you locate a conjunction, find it in the list of conjunctions under each sentence. Then circle the number of your answer in the answer column.

Directions rewritten and simplified: Read each sentence and circle all conjunctions.

3. Present a small amount of work.  The teacher can tear pages from workbooks and materials to present small assignments to students who are anxious about the amount of work to be done. This technique prevents students from examining an entire workbook, text, or material and becoming discouraged by the amount of work. Also, the teacher can reduce the amount of work when it appears redundant. Students can help develop and implement various accommodations. Material accommodations include the following:

For example, the teacher can request the student to complete only odd-numbered problems or items with stars by them, or can provide responses to several items and ask the student to complete the rest. Finally, the teacher can divide a worksheet into sections and instruct the student to do a specific section. A worksheet is divided easily by drawing lines across it and writing go and stop within each section.

4. Block out extraneous stimuli. If a student is easily distracted by visual stimuli on a full worksheet or page, a blank sheet of paper can be used to cover sections of the page not being worked on at the time. Also, line markers can be used to aid reading, and windows can be used to display individual math problems.

5. Highlight essential information. If an adolescent can read a regular textbook but has difficulty finding the essential information, the teacher can mark this information with a highlight pen.

6. Locate place in consumable material. In consumable materials in which students progress sequentially (such as workbooks), the student can make a diagonal cut across the lower right-hand corner of the pages as they are completed. With all the completed pages cut, the student and teacher can readily locate the next page that needs to be corrected or completed.

7. Provide additional practice activities. Some materials do not provide enough practice activities for students with learning problems to acquire mastery on selected skills. Teachers then must supplement the material with practice activities. Recommended practice exercises include instructional games, peer teaching activities, self-correcting materials, computer software programs, and additional worksheets.

8.  Provide a glossary in content areas. At the secondary level, the specific language of the content areas requires careful reading. Students often benefit from a glossary of content-related terms.

9. Develop reading guides. A reading guide provides the student with a road map of what is written and features periodic questions to help him or her focus on relevant content. It helps the reader understand the main ideas and sort out the numerous details related to the main ideas. A reading guide can be developed paragraph-by-paragraph, page-by-page, or section-by-section.

http://www.dyslexia-ncbida.org/factsheets/accommodations.pdf

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Visually Impaired

Visually impaired students may need preferential seating. Your student should be seated near the front of the class to hear clearly what is being presented and to see as much as possible. However, the student should be allowed the same anonymity as other students. Avoid pointing out the student or the alternative arrangements to the rest of the class.

Get to know your visually impaired student early in the semester. Meet with him or her and find out what, if anything, she/he can see. Approximately 80% of visually impaired students have some usable vision. Like everyone, students with vision impairments appreciate being asked if help is needed before it is given. After you ask, wait for a response before acting.

Provide a thorough orientation to the physical layout of the room, indicating the location of all exits, desks, raised floors, low-hanging objects, and your lecture position. When giving directions, say "left" or "right," "step up" or "step down." Convert directions to the visually impaired student's perspective.

Although it is unnecessary to rewrite the entire course, you can help a visually impaired student by modifying the presentation of material to make it accessible. Allow the student to tape-record lectures or use a note-taker. Pace the presentation of material; if referring to a textbook or handout, allow time for students to find the information.

Visually impaired students usually need extended time for their exams and possibly a reader/scribe for assistance in reading and writing. Either the faculty member or the Office for Disability Services can provide exam accommodations.

You should not modify academic standards for visually impaired students. All students must meet the required level of understanding and performance competencies for the course, although there may need to be modifications in the evaluation or testing method.

When there is a blind student in the classroom, remember not to use phrases that require sight to understand, like "this and that." However, words and phrases that refer to sight, such as "I'll see you later," are commonly used expressions and usually go unnoticed by visually impaired students. Don't be self-conscious; students with vision loss can still "see" what is meant by such expressions.

By using enhanced verbal descriptions in your class, blind students as well as sighted benefit. In making comparisons or analogies, use familiar objects that don't depend on prior visual knowledge. Foods or objects found around the house are useful.

If a student has a harnessed guide dog, it should be considered a working animal and should not be petted.

Partially sighted students should not be overlooked. They sometimes have greater difficulty in college than do totally blind students, partly because they often try to "blend in" without using special assistance or asking questions.

If you have problems when teaching a student who is blind or visually impaired, first decide if the problem is related to the disability or is a problem that any student could have. Consult with the student if you have concerns about accommodations or his/her learning. Other resources to assist you in working with the students with vision loss include: the Office of Disability Services, faculty who have worked with other visually impaired students, and professional and state organizations, including the Special Education Department and the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind.

http://www.umass.edu/complit/ogscl/visualdis.htm

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