How can you teach an assignment and have the class stay on task, when you have two different severities of the LD students with no teacher aide in the classroom? The subject is biology. Number of students 16!!! The severity is from a LD2 to the LD3 student and a non reader.
Re: severity of the LD student
Demand an aide. This is against the law, refer to IDEA and the area that talks about the number of students by law without an aide. Is your class labeled self-contained? You can’t have more than 14 students in your class. Talk to the parents after school and have them complain about the class size, if you are afraid of reprisal.
Re: severity of the LD student
I was not aware of any provision under IDEA that said you could only have x amount of students without also having an aide. Is that your state’s interpretation or the actual federal regulation?
I know my first year teaching (6 yrs. ago) I was sure that I must be over the “formula” for kids, types of disabilities, and minutes served in the classroom but in fact I was not even close to being over the official amount even though in reality it was probably twice what I could effectively handle.
Re: severity of the LD student
I would look in IDEA Chapter 342.42J and see how your state interpreted the amounts that can be in a class. The top number in a resourse class and with an aide is 8, inclusion classes: 6 and self-contained with support, 15. A teacher alone can’t have any more than 12 students without support. If you don’t have IDEA, get a copy by emailing the Dept of Ed, in Washington and then your Dept of ED in your state.
Re: severity of the LD student
Shay, each state sets their own criteria and class size. CA does not have any limits whatsoever on the size of special day classes. Teachers rely solely on the goodness of their SDs to keep their classes manageable. Our resource loads are some of the larger in the U.S., too. We face a state budget crisis that is so severe our governor has demanded that school districts give back budget money from this year’s operating budget, after it is already spent. And hear this, special ed. is not allowed to command up to 25% of the general funds, up from the previous allowance of 20%. Special ed. cannot get cut, but everything else can and will.
Re: severity of the LD student
We have as many as 16 or 17 in resource with an aide. You can see why we don’t rely on the school for very much.
Beth
Sixteen… ugh!!
www.powerof2.org and www.contentenhancement.org or com (i forget ;)) have some ideas for lesson design; I’ve found that figuring out a framework for lessons that stays the same really helps students work a little more independently - depending of course on how hard it is to get them on task in the first place.