Anna's story

Learning opportunities for a student with an intellectual disability in an ECE classroom

What opportunities am I providing to meet my student’s particular learning needs?

As educators we are often conscious that we could extend the learning of students even further if we had infinite time, more resources etc. For many teachers, this is especially true for students with special learning needs. Anna used the opportunity of being involved in the project to look at exactly what she did to address goals of access, participation and achievement for the student with autism spectrum disorder in her Grade 2 classroom.

Background Ideas

We have long passed the time when it was thought appropriate to expect all students in the one class to learn the same thing from the same curriculum presented in the same way at the same time. Our current knowledge that effective teaching is based on the needs of the learner means that, at any point in time, curriculum delivery needs to cater for a range of learning abilities and learning styles. Thus, the best practice will allow multiple opportunities for all students to participate in meaningful ways.

Ideally, for students with disabilities, the majority of instructional time should be spent with peers and activities should approximate as closely as possible those undertaken by peers. There are many ways in which students with disabilities or additional learning needs can be included meaningfully in the classroom, especially by :

• modifying expectations
• providing supports^gl and accommodations^gl
• embedding basic skills and Individual Education Planning (IEP) goals into classroom routines.

Participation for students with disabilities can be considered in the following ways:

1. Same as other students
   Most students with IEPs will be able to participate in the same activities as their peers, with similar outcomes in mind. Supports and accommodations should only be provided as necessary.
2. Same activity / Different level
   In this case, students are doing the same activity but are working at their own levels. For example, in a numeracy session on addition, a student with an IEP might be working on one-to-one correspondence.
3. Same activity / Embedded skill
   At this point, students will be participating in the same activity, and may even be working to the same or similar goals as peers, but the activity will also provide opportunities to address specific individual goals that can be embedded. These embedded goals do not directly relate to the goals of the activity.
4. Different activity / Different skill
   At times, it will be appropriate to provide opportunities for students to undertake activities that are parallel to those of their peers in order to meet individual goals. Examples may be undertaking speech and language activities, or going shopping for ingredients for a class cooking activity.

These levels of involvement are commonly depicted on a pyramid. The base level is that of number 1 above (occupying a large portion of classroom time) where all students are engaged in the same activity with similar learning goals. At the apex of the pyramid the learning is very student specific (number 4 above) but the proportion of weekly time spent thus engaged is typically quite small. Supports and accommodations to facilitate inclusion may be available at each level.

Anna found this pyramid model a useful way to examine
and extend her provision for the learning needs of her student.

Click on the linked activities to find out more...

The school chickens activity with its evidence about the student’s role in this (as written about by his peers) provides a fine example of the levels of student achievement possible when teachers are creative about learning possibilities.

Anna also found it useful to plot a matrix of her student's IEP short term objectives as matched against the learning opportunities that occur across the school week for achieving these. In this way, she ensured that she was maximising opportunities for her student to generalise his learning across different settings and people.

Frameworks such as the pyramid model or the learning opportunities matrix provide educators with tools to examine and maximise the wealth of opportunities that occur in a regular classroom program for students with disabilities to meet their personalised learning goals.

References

Foreman, P. (2005). Inclusion in Action Thompson, Australia.

Kleinert, H. L. and Kearns, J. F. (2001). Alternate assessment : Measuring Outcomes and Supports for Students with Disabilities Paul. H. Brookes Publishing, USA.

Ryndak, D. L. & Alper, S. (2003). Curriculum and Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities in Inclusive Settings Pearson Education Inc., USA.

top