 Tools
for Getting Parents Involved in the Exceptional Education Process - Section 5
Classroom Strategies for Inclusion of
Students with Communications and
Learning Disorders
Content:
Introduction
Teachers in typical classrooms who are faced with students in their classroom who
have ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), SLD (Specific Learning Disability)
and/or High Functioning Autistic Spectrum often experience the following feelings.
- at a loss for what to do
- wanting to pull hair out
- overwhelmed
- befuddled, confused and dismayed.
Every trick of the academic trade teacher have used in the past to contain and direct
typical students seem not to work with these students with Communications and
Learning Disorders.
- What to do?
- What is wrong with their teaching style?
- What is wrong with the school administration which says: "Hang in there. Summer is
coming."
- There must be some answer out to help them include these students in their
classrooms.
About
Communications & Learning Disorders
What we know about Communications and Learning Disorders is that:
- they are neurological conditions which keep people off track
- either from having no self control (ADHD) of attention and/or impulsivity
- or impairs their perceptions and processing of information (SLD) either visual,
auditory or kinesthetic.
- or impairs their social relatedness (Autistic Spectrum)
- these conditions often prevent students from being organized, on target, attentive or
focused on school work
We know that there has been a great deal of coverage on ADHD, Learning Disabilities
and Autistic Spectrum on TV, in newspapers, in professional journals and elsewhere in
the public eye. Yet there does not seem to be a simple answer to help deal with these
students with Communications and Learning Disorders in the classroom.
Students with Communications and Learning Disorders often look to their teachers as
being :
- distracted
- disorganized
- fidgety
- impulsive.
These students are frequently
- socially immature
- temperamental
- with short attention spans
- suffering from low self-esteem.
Students with Communications and Learning Disorders may display one or all of the
following behaviors which tend to drive teachers crazy:
- fidget with hands and feet
- have difficulty remaining seated
- are easily distracted by visual or auditory stimuli in and outside of classroom
- have difficulty waiting for turns in classroom situations
- blurt out answers to questions before being called on
- have difficulty following directions and instructions
- have difficulty in sustaining attention on class work or lecture
- have difficulty in doing class work quietly
- talk excessively to fellow classmates
- interrupt or intrude when others are speaking
- do not seem to be listening when being spoken to
- cannot stay focused on a single task and shift from one task to another
- lose things like homework assignments or completed homework
- disrupt classroom environment
- disorganized and lack focused concentration to get a task completed.
Students with Communications and Learning Disorders are frequently under the care of
their pediatricians and/or pediatric neurologists. If they have ADHD they are often on
medications such as Ritalin, Cylert, Dexadrine or Adderol. But use of medication alone
to treat ADHD is insufficient as you can witness in your classroom. There is a need for
consistent behavioral programming in the classroom and at home to assist these
children to get better organized and to cope with their neurological condition. As the
person on the front lines working with children with Communications and Learning
Disorders, the teacher is in an important pivotal position to assist children to control
their targeted Communications and Learning Disorders behaviors which are disruptive
to the classroom and to their personal learning. The teacher is able to marshal and
monitor resources to address the needs of the children with Communications and
Learning Disorders in ways no one else in these children's lives can.
Parental Suggestions to
Give to Teachers
What follows are
some suggestions to help parents to help teachers cope more effectively with and to
help students with Communications and Learning Disorders.
1. Get teachers and parents involved on the team to help these students
First : Teachers need to form a team with the parents of students with Communications
and Learning Disorders. Teachers and parents need to engage one anther by using the
IEP format of the Individuals with Education Act, for students with SLD. Or engage the
parents by using the IEP format of the Section 504 of the Anti-discrimination against the
Handicapped Act, for the students with ADHD to have "504 plans" in school.
Second: Create open lines of communication between these students' parents and
teachers, by having frequent telephone or face to face conferences so as to help
accomplish the following tasks concerning students with Communications and Learning
Disorders:
- keep the line communication open as a collaborative effort
- share information about the children with one anther
- identify strengths of children which can be rewarded or reinforced in the classroom
and at home
- monitor medication management and identify when changes occur
- mutual problem solving about Communications and Learning Disorders issues
impacting the school performance of the students
- develop a self-esteem enhancing model of managing the behavioral concerns
related to Communications and Learning Disorders
- develop means for daily or weekly monitoring of target Communications and
Learning Disorders related behaviors.
2. Accept personal limitations in addressing students with Communications and
Learning Disorders
Once teachers have accepted that they need to involve the parents of students with
Communications and Learning Disorders in the academic process, they are then ready
to address the classroom behaviors which are disruptive and disconcerting. What is
presented here are only suggestions which will help teachers to feel like they have done
all that they can do to create an environment in which students with Communications
and Learning Disorders can learn at an optimal level.
- teachers need to accept that even after they attempt all of the following steps they
still might not be able to help some students with Communications and Learning
Disorders to settle down and learn because these neurological problems are out of
control in some students.
- teachers need to accept their limitations in dealing with Communications and
Learning Disorders. They are neurological problems with multiple social and
emotional components which cannot be completely eradicated so that students are
magically transformed into "normal compliant students."
3. Accept the students with Communications and Learning Disorders as people
and not as a diagnosis
After being assigned students with Communications and Learning Disorders teachers
need to refer to them as people and not as: "that hyper kid, the slow student, that SLD
student, the impulsive one." The preferable terminology is: "students with ADHD,
students with Communications and Learning Disorders, or students with SLD. Teachers
in the typical classrooms need to:
- work hard to relate to these students and not to their set of behaviors only
- remember that students have feelings and emotions and that they primarily need
unconditional acceptance as people from teachers
- remember that these students' behaviors are part of complex disorders which have
impacted the way they define themselves and has impacted how others accept and
relate to them
- try hard to set aside their own personal emotional response to these students'
behaviors and not take their actions personally.
4. Teachers need not hold onto the belief that medicine should cure ADHD
Putting students with ADHD on medication is only the first step to handling the
problems resulting from this neurological disorder. As a teacher, professional helper
and motivator of change teachers need to remember that:
- social and emotional concerns have come together to make these students label and
define themselves as: "losers, dumb, unacceptable, misfits, boom booms, never will
amount to anything, not as good as others, and not good enough."
- medication helps these students to get some of the ADHD related behaviors under
control, but there is a good possibility that many of the ADHD related behaviors have
become habits which need to be changed
- children with negative or low self-esteem will act like the "not good enough" persons
they believe themselves to be, as fulfillment of self-defeating and self-negating
prophecies about their potential, worth and value as people.
5. Teachers need to monitor the effectiveness of the medication on students with
ADHD
There is no real assurance that just because children with ADHD are on a medication
that the dosage, timing and type of medication is adequate to help them contain their
targeted behaviors related to ADHD which are disruptive to them learning. Teachers
need to:
- work with the parents and children's physicians to monitor the effectiveness of the
medications used
- develop a daily log, if they feel that the medications are not working "the way they
are supposed to work"
- give their daily log as proof of their observations to the parents and physicians as
evidence of the effectiveness or ineffective nature of the current dosage, timing and
type of medication
- in their daily log teachers need to record the following information:
- if children are on medications and what dosages at what times are they taken
- quantitative totals for target behaviors exhibited
- duration and intensity of exhibited behaviors
- time of day behaviors are exhibited
- what activity in classroom or the students' day preceded the exhibited behaviors
- what exceptional event was happening in school or classroom when behaviors
occurred.
- with their daily behavioral log teachers need to watch for:
- trends or patterns: e.g., do these children, on a regular basis, exhibit more of the
target behaviors in the morning, before lunch, after lunch hour, just before dismissal
or some other portion of the day
- do these children exhibit more of the targeted behaviors on the first day of the school
week or on the last day of the school week or on a specific day of the week
- do these children exhibit more of these targeted behaviors on special days in the
school setting or when the schedule in school has been varied
- recognize that this log and description of trends or patterns will assist the parents
and physicians to determine if there is a need to increase dosage or decrease
dosage or change time medication is administered or change the type of medication
given
- remember that for pre-adolescent and adolescent students who have been on
medications for a few years, that the effectiveness of these medications may wear
down so it is important to monitor them more closely which could result in them being
removed from these medications altogether.
- at the beginning of each school year, all students on medication must be monitored
closely because if there is a weight gain or increase in body size, the dosage used in
the previous school year might not be sufficient to accommodate for the
physiological changes in the child
- teachers can never afford to assume that just because students are on medications
that it is sufficient or appropriate for them
- use these log as an effective tool to clarify the effectiveness of medication as just
one of the components in the comprehensive service delivery to students with
ADHD.
6. Organize classroom to address the auditory and visual distracting stimuli
When teachers have students with Communications and Learning Disorders in their
classroom, they need to recognize that there are visual and auditory stimuli which may
draw away the attention of these students. Teachers might do one or all of the following
to make their classrooms less distracting:
- do not have any sound producing machines in classroom
- insure that no music or sounds are audible when lecturing or when students are to
be working quietly
- do not have large multi-colored posters with many images or small writing on them,
limit decorations to single objects with large lettering and do not put many of them in
the classroom
- do not have animals in the classroom
- seat students with Communications and Learning Disorders in front of classroom or
in study carrels
- try not to do any distracting behaviors like switching topics suddenly or talking too
rapidly, try to slow the pace of spoken delivery to these children
- when making transitions in classroom activities do them orderly and calmly, try not to
alter the tempo of the environment too drastically at these transition points
- use multi-sensory approach to teaching a topic by which the students can:"see it,
hear about it and touch it."
- control the lighting in the classroom so that it is bright enough for the students to see
the graphs, charts, maps, models and other visual cues being used in teaching
- insure that the volume level is appropriate for all students to hear the auditory cues
being used in teaching
- encourage students to take notes when listening to a lecture so that they can write
down what they are hearing and get the information through their tactile senses
- allow students to tape all lectures and classroom presentations so as to assist them
to capture what is being presented
- insure that the teacher's clothes and accessories (jewelry) worn, do not provide
additional distracting stimuli for students with Communications and Learning
Disorders.
7. Involve the students with Communications and Learning Disorders in steps to
address the target behaviors in the classroom
It is important for teachers to engage the students as members of the team to deal and
cope with their target Communications and Learning Disorders related behaviors by:
- letting these children understand the nature of the problem both physiologically and
educationally and how it impacts the other students in the classroom
- involving students in conferences with the parents to help accomplish the task of
expanding the parent-teacher team to include students themselves
- making students feel important and needed in addressing their disorder, which is
negatively impacting their academic future
- developing a set of auditory or visual cues which the teacher can use with students
to remind them when the identified target behaviors are becoming a problem in the
classroom
- insuring that the students do not lose eye contact with the person making a
presentation in the classroom
- problem solving with students to determine what learning styles they learn best with,
e.g.,
- auditory?
- visual? or
- kinesthetic
- make an effort to provide class work and presentations with these modalities to let
the students see that their input into the learning environment is welcomed and
wanted by the teacher.
- help children recognize the behaviors which indicate an overcompensation for not
feeling: "good enough or different or not fitting in" which causes them even greater
problems in the classroom and with their fellow classmates
- point out that the following compensation behaviors are unacceptable and cause
greater problems for them:
- acting the clown
- acting helpless
- chip on the shoulder
- anti-authority behaviors
- braggart or big man on campus
- inflated sense of self
8. Involve other students in assisting student with Communications and Learning
Disorders to alter the targeted behaviors in the classroom
Teachers need to give their students an informational presentation on Communications
and Learning Disorders, about:
- its causes
- ways to address these issues
- how having these conditions impacts students with these problems.
- how students with these conditions benefit from the understanding and cooperation
of fellow students in addressing the related issues to these disorders
Use some of the following suggestions to involve other students to address the
Communications and Learning Disorders related behaviors in the classroom:
- conduct weekly or monthly classroom discussions to address the success in
decreasing the occurrence of Communications and Learning Disorders related
behaviors in the classroom
- set up peer tutoring for students with Communications and Learning Disorders with
other students to insure that they are grasping the academic material being
presented
- conduct weekly or monthly classes on self-esteem related issues about how people
need to accept the differences in others and how they can extend themselves to
assist people who are different from them
- identify students who have been successful in coping with their own Communications
and Learning Disorders related behaviors and ask them to be a "Buddy" to a student
who is still struggling to cope with such behaviors
- identify what behaviors other students in the classroom do which trigger the
Communications and Learning Disorders related behaviors and work at problem
solving how to extinguish these "triggering" behaviors in the classroom
- set up classroom rules with the students by which they can self-monitor when they
are exacerbating the environment to stimulate the targeted behaviors in the students
who are wanting to change
- have the identified students with Communications and Learning Disorders decide if
there is a desire to involve fellow classmates on the team dealing with their problems
coming from their disorder and have the target students invite their fellow students to
participate on the treatment team to provide assistance and motivation for change for
the target child.
9. Make accommodations in the educational setting for students with
Communications and Learning Disorders
There are a number of school-based interventions which have proven effectiveness in
assisting students with Communications and Learning Disorders reduce their disorders'
related unwanted and unacceptable behaviors. These strategies can be adjusted for
both elementary and secondary education. These accommodations make it possible to
include students with these disorders into the regular classroom and experience
success without negatively impacting the mental and physical health of both the
teachers and all of their students. The primary reason for failure in inclusion efforts
aimed at students with these neurological conditions is that there has not been enough
pre-planning to prepare the teacher, classroom and fellow students for their presence.
Inclusion is something which does not need to be dreaded if enough time, attention,
planning and structuring of the academic environment has taken place. These
strategies can be included in the students' 504 plans to address the ADHD and in their
IEP's to address their SLD issues. Teacher should make a copy of this list for all of their
students with Communications and Learning Disorders, to assist them and their parents
in planning for their educational programs in their IEP and 504 Plan Meetings:
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH
COMMUNICATIONS AND LEARNING DISORDERS
CLASSROOM ACCOMMODATIONS
Check those accommodations most needed for this student:
ALTERING THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
- seat near teacher
- assign student to low distraction work area
- seat near positive peer models
- use rows instead of tables in classroom
- don't assign to open classroom setting
- use study carrel
- stand near student when giving instructions
ALTER PRESENTATION OF LESSONS
- adjust work load (reduce rote writing)
- use visual aids with oral presentations
- give student outline of material to be covered in the lesson prior to beginning
lesson
- highlight instructions by emphasizing the major points
- permit student to tape record lesson
- provide student with written instructions concerning the lesson
- give clear behavioral objectives
- clearly explain grading criteria for all assignments
- break lesson into short segments
- ask student to repeat instructions
- use high - impact, game - like materials
- modify student's schedule
- call on student often
- give reminders for student to stay on task
ALTER TESTING/EVALUATION PROCEDURES
- permit untimed testing
- arrange for oral testing
- have resource teacher administer tests
- use short, frequent quizzes
- permit breaks during tests
- permit student to type tests by use of computer in classroom
- adjust grading criteria
ALTER DESIGN OF MATERIALS
- use large type
- keep page format simple
- use dark ink
- use buff-colored rather than white paper to reduce glare
- divide page into clearly marked sections
- remove distractions from paper
PROVIDE ORGANIZATIONAL ASSISTANCE
- schedule a study hall in last period of day
- provide AM check-in to organize for day
- provide PM check-out to organize for homework
- provide lunch-time check-in to organize for afternoon
- give time to organize desk during class
- provide training in time management
- provide training in study skills
- provide training in how to take tests
- use a schedule or day timer to plan for long term assignments
- provide periodic review of student's notes
- provide training in how to take notes
- allow student to take notes by use of PC or laptop computer in classroom
EMPLOY EFFECTIVE MOTIVATIONAL TECHNIQUES
- increase frequency of feedback
- provide a daily assignment sheet
- send daily progress note home
- send weekly progress note home
- periodically review the student's progress with student and parents
- encourage student to use a computer at all times to complete school work
- use a "response cost" for misbehavior, student subtracts a set amount of
points from points given at beginning of each day which points result in a
special privilege or activity for the student to participate in at the end of each
school day
- use time out for misbehavior
- use in-class point system for positive behaviors, with points earned for positive
goal behavior with daily reward experience at end of each school day
- write sentences for bad behaviors
- call parents if student does ________ (fill in what you want to be
called about)
ADDITIONAL SUPPORTS
- peer tutoring
- cross-age tutoring
- study-buddy
- work with teacher aid or personal assistant
- meet with teacher after school
ADDITIONAL SKILL TRAINING
- provide conflict resolution training
- provide communications training
- teach student to monitor own behavior
- teach cognitive self-instructional (self-talk) techniques
- provide stress reduction and relaxation training and techniques
- keyboard and computer usage training to use computer instead of handwriting
- provide training in test taking skills
PARENT INVOLVEMENT
- call parents immediately if student_________ (fill in what
you want to be called about)
- conduct parent conferences on at least a quarterly basis
- involve parents in selecting teacher(s) for the next school year
INPUT TO MEDICAL/THERAPEUTIC SUPPORT
- maintain a narrative log of significant events
- complete teacher ratings as follows
- look for specific medication side-effects
- train office staff to administer medication as prescribed
- remind student to go to the office to take medication
- check to see if medication is wearing off too soon
SOCIAL/PEER ORIENTED INTERVENTIONS
- monitor playground interactions with peers
- monitor lunch-room interactions with peers
- prompt student to engage in specific social skills such as:
- assign to be with adults during lunch and/or recess times
ONGOING OR INTENSIVE INTERVENTIONS
- provide individual counseling for student with school or mental health
counselor
- provide social skills training by outside mental health professional or agency
- teach self-instructional strategies by outside mental health professional or
agency
- provide student's family with family therapy with a mental health counselor
- monitor behavioral plan at school and home for consistency in approach
- maintain ongoing consultation with parents by phone and in person
- maintain a procedure to provide crisis intervention if ever needed
- refer student to see if good candidate for medication
- refer student for medication review and update if noticing problems
TEACHER ATTITUDES/BELIEFS
- provide student's teacher(s) with in-service workshop on inclusion of students
with Communications and Learning Disorders
- provide student's teacher(s) with reading materials on Communications and
Learning Disorders
- provide student's teacher(s) with all relevant background information on
student to assist in planning an appropriate educational plan
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