What is the general thinking about grouping ld students together in one homeroom? I teach at a small country school (4-6th) grade where we have appoximately 7-10 (at the most) ld students per grade level. (Our caseload is 31 students with 2 full-time resource teachers) We currently have three classrooms of each level and divide up the kids so each classroom has only about 2-3 ld kids in each class. This has been a scheduling nightmare and impossible to meet the collaboration needs we set up at last year’s meetings. Each grade level has it’s own very unique schedule. If we group all the kids together next year, each grade level would have a collaboration/resource classroom which would rotate to a different reg. ed. teacher each year. It would be my hope that some true collaboration with scheduled planning time would be built in. But, already lots of reasons why this won’t work has been suggested: that the teachers would have to “dumb down” the curriculum, the discussion for science and social studies would lack higher level thinking, the rest of the kids would think they are in the slower class, the reg. ed. teacher would have to go to all the spec. ed. meetings, and it’s not the least restrictive environment. Any suggestions are welcomed! Thanks.
Re: # of LD student in one class
Thanks for your ideas. They are very possible ones. The real challenge is convincing the regular ed. staff. Unfortuneately the power remains mostly with the teacher in charge of delivering the lesson. In our school ,true co-teaching occurrs randomly with a small number of teachers (usually first year ones). Like you, my radar was and still is out over these comments from reg. ed. I tend to sometimes take the comments personal. Anyway, I’d like to hear if other special ed. teachers encounter the same frustrations over scheduling. Thanks again for your wonderful ideas!!
Re: # of LD student in one class
Curriculum doesn’t have to be altered if the delivery model is adapted which then meets the needs of all students. You can also use parallel curriculum to require different students to acquire knowledge in different ways. An example would be trying to research the Boston Tea Party. Group A would use the media resources to acquire the necessary information, Group B would use the text to acquire the same information, and Group C would work in a small group with teacher assistance to locate the information. All students are having their individual levels of performance assessed correctly and hopefully the necessary challenges.
Re: # of LD student in one class
THe issues you brought up are very valid ones. So are the “scheduling nightmares.” Seems as if your choice is between juggling those schedules and having collaborations needs unmet, but without something to blame it on, and grouping the kids and having to address those fears.
If time is built in for planning, you can address those issues. First is the challenge of modifying the curriculum for the kids who need it without sacrificing challenge for those who don’t. If you can do this — and I think it can be done, though it takes not just planning of the curriculum but planning of the diplomacy of delivering a differentiated curriculum — then you can also achieve that highly desirable goal of giving LD kids the opportunity to be challenged at a higher level than they might have thought possible.
Modifications *can* be made that aren’t “dumbing down” — changing quantity of terms in any given subject for some students is one way. Students could be at different “vocabulary acquisition” levels and if they just start doing too well at one level they could move up.
As for discussion… well, my radar goes up a little. Depending on the LD lots of these kids can hold their own in pretty high level discussions — it’s the written language that leaves ‘em lost. (Others with auditory issues will struggle, though.) How many higher level thinkers are you going to have in any given classroom? Here’s where I think some creative planning can bring out the strengths in the individual kids. Break into groups so the active talkers can go at it… and let the hands-on visual folks do something different. THis can be where your verbally gifted kids can take off and your hands-on kids can do something more basic — review of those terms they do need to learn with visuals and manipulatives. Then they could switch… and there would be a more basic discussion while the other group worked with the paper and pencil or perhaps did independent work.
THe perception that the class is the “slower” class could be dealt with aggressively by having evidence that the higher level kids are challenged (and, of course, by actually providing them with that challenge). If there are projects and activities that can be individualized, and if htey can strive for dealing with lots more verbal input (i.e, they’ll have more terms to learn for tests), I think you can be held accountable for challenging them.
Modifying content area curriculum is a special interest of mine — I managed to get my LD “self-contained” kiddos doing pretty well with a modified version of the regular curriculum and it helped their morale immensely to be carrying the same books and learning about the same things as the rest of the kids on the busses. Hey, the school could hire me to help design the courses :)
Re: # of LD student in one class
Thanks for your ideas. They are very possible ones. The real challenge is convincing the regular ed. staff. Unfortuneately the power remains mostly with the teacher in charge of delivering the lesson. In our school ,true co-teaching occurrs randomly with a small number of teachers (usually first year ones). Like you, my radar was and still is out over these comments from reg. ed. I tend to sometimes take the comments personal. Anyway, I’d like to hear if other special ed. teachers encounter the same frustrations over scheduling. Thanks again for your wonderful ideas!!
Re: # of LD student in one class
Curriculum doesn’t have to be altered if the delivery model is adapted which then meets the needs of all students. You can also use parallel curriculum to require different students to acquire knowledge in different ways. An example would be trying to research the Boston Tea Party. Group A would use the media resources to acquire the necessary information, Group B would use the text to acquire the same information, and Group C would work in a small group with teacher assistance to locate the information. All students are having their individual levels of performance assessed correctly and hopefully the necessary challenges.
THe issues you brought up are very valid ones. So are the “scheduling nightmares.” Seems as if your choice is between juggling those schedules and having collaborations needs unmet, but without something to blame it on, and grouping the kids and having to address those fears.
If time is built in for planning, you can address those issues. First is the challenge of modifying the curriculum for the kids who need it without sacrificing challenge for those who don’t. If you can do this — and I think it can be done, though it takes not just planning of the curriculum but planning of the diplomacy of delivering a differentiated curriculum — then you can also achieve that highly desirable goal of giving LD kids the opportunity to be challenged at a higher level than they might have thought possible.
Modifications *can* be made that aren’t “dumbing down” — changing quantity of terms in any given subject for some students is one way. Students could be at different “vocabulary acquisition” levels and if they just start doing too well at one level they could move up.
As for discussion… well, my radar goes up a little. Depending on the LD lots of these kids can hold their own in pretty high level discussions — it’s the written language that leaves ‘em lost. (Others with auditory issues will struggle, though.) How many higher level thinkers are you going to have in any given classroom? Here’s where I think some creative planning can bring out the strengths in the individual kids. Break into groups so the active talkers can go at it… and let the hands-on visual folks do something different. THis can be where your verbally gifted kids can take off and your hands-on kids can do something more basic — review of those terms they do need to learn with visuals and manipulatives. Then they could switch… and there would be a more basic discussion while the other group worked with the paper and pencil or perhaps did independent work.
THe perception that the class is the “slower” class could be dealt with aggressively by having evidence that the higher level kids are challenged (and, of course, by actually providing them with that challenge). If there are projects and activities that can be individualized, and if htey can strive for dealing with lots more verbal input (i.e, they’ll have more terms to learn for tests), I think you can be held accountable for challenging them.
Modifying content area curriculum is a special interest of mine — I managed to get my LD “self-contained” kiddos doing pretty well with a modified version of the regular curriculum and it helped their morale immensely to be carrying the same books and learning about the same things as the rest of the kids on the busses. Hey, the school could hire me to help design the courses :)