In
actually planning for ways to adapt an activity in a lesson plan, there are a
couple of important thing for a GE (general education) teacher to bear in mind.
One is to avoid pre-planning too much before actually knowing the needs and
possibilities of a student. While there are typical needs, limitations, and solutions,
which a student may present to a teacher, the possible varieties of these is
quite extensive. To attempt to anticipate all possibilities would consume too
much of the rarest of educational resources: Time. Instead, when lesson planning,
a teacher should look over the “materials” section of his or her plan very carefully. As Sheryl Burgstahler, the Director of DO-IT, University of Washington, says, "Technology is not always included in the planning process."
(How Assistive
Technology Enables Dreams. (n.d.)) The teacher should be sensitive to
the possibility that any of the materials he or she uses for an activity may
need to be adapted based on the individual student(s) in his or her classroom.
By “materials,” such simple everyday lesson items such as pencil, paper, desktop,
and movement space should be included in any consideration of an activity. With
that materials list in mind, a teacher should consider the needs, limits, and
possibilities mentioned in the IEP and observed in interactions with the
student. If needed, the teacher should consult resources such as Tech Matrix or the AEM navigator and on Guam the Guam System for Assistive Technology. The
teacher should take careful notes of any adaptations made for an activity,
including the symptoms the student presented that required them (without using
names.) These notes should be retained as reference footnotes after each semester
or year (or other cycle of students.) This allows a teacher to build up a
database of solutions used over the years, which should, over time, reduce the
amount of time that is needed in future lesson planning.
Another
thing to keep in mind is that the qualitative purpose of the activity needs to
be maintained, both for the equality of the special needs student and for
serving justice to the needs of the other students in the class. If the
activity planned was to engage in a physical experiential activity, showing a correct
demonstration of the activity to the special need student does not meet the
qualitative purpose of the activity. To do so, the student needs his or her own chance to
experiment within the activity. It may not be possible to do so with the actual
physical material that the other students use, but software that allows for
exploration and experimentation of the curriculum of the activity would be a
very valid substitute. Or a low tech solution might be for a TA to follow the
student’s directions, using the TA’s dexterity to replace the students, but the
student’s experimentational ideas to guide the experience.
Still,
perhaps some examples of specific adaptations should be considered. They can be
quite simple, and do not always require technology. For example, teaching immersive
ESL in Japan, I was tasked with delivering lessons where even the instructions
were communicated without using the native language of the students. When
working in Elementary and Kindergartens, part of this was done by planning out
very specific oral rhythms and body/hand signals to communicate basic things
like “repeat after me,” “group says the reply to my question” and “________ says
her individual choice of replies to my question.” This worked effectively until
one year on my second visit to a school the best English speaking teacher, in
quite broken English, explained that there would be 3 special needs students
joining my 4th grade class, because they had heard how fun it was. Two of them integrated into the lesson just
fine. But one of the students, a jolly giant of a 4th grader, was
never on the beat that I had been using for 2 years, but instead repeated the last thing said by his classmates a beat late, usually after I had started the next phrase or flashcard. In reflecting on the
situation I recognized that he was not repeating everything. He would not
repeat my questions when the class was expected to reply. So, he understood the
difference between “repeat after me” and “reply.” He just could not actually
reply or repeat until someone else had said what was to be said. So, for that
class I had to adapt my rhythms. “Repeat”
and “class reply” became teacher, class, and then giant. Individual choice of “replies”
became teacher’s question, point to both giant and a friend of the giant’s who
actually replies, point only at giant while he replies on his own beat. Simple.
Sometimes
technology is needed. One year, a student’s IEP informed my interdisciplinary team
that he was required to have a special hearing device that not only amplified
sounds, but did so directionally and only when the active button was pressed by
the student. He could hear some, but had a great difficulty distinguishing specific
sounds when multiple sounds were being generated (such as in a class of
students discussing an activity.) It was a bulky device that he was embarrassed
to wear and hold out towards the teacher or speaking student. Upon reading
this, a couple of things to remember for each lesson were discussed in our
meeting on him: we had to seat him in the front near where the teacher usually
faced, we had to make sure he had the device on and ready each lesson, and we
had to make it clear to his classmates that any comments that could even possibly
be considered negative would be dealt with most severely. However, in actually
working with him in class, I discovered other benefits to his device. I have very
good discipline of my voice from years in theater, and can, when needed, be louder
than a classroom of middle-schoolers. His device had a little red light that
would signal when he was using it. Instead of using his device to help him
amplify the sound of the teacher’s voice, I used his device’s red light as a
signal that I needed to amplify my own volume. This allowed me to take on the social attention and reduce his need to use the device that drew attention to him. His mother always brought him to
IEP meetings, and he was always asked to comment on his hearing ability in each
specific class. When he got to me, it was always “Mr. Brown is loud enough.”
Bibliography
AIM Navigator - Home. (n.d.).
Retrieved June 28, 2015, from http://aem.cast.org/navigator/page/
Guam System For Assistive
Technology. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2015, from http://www.gsatcedders.org/
How Assistive Technology Enables
Dreams. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2015, from http://www.edutopia.org/assistive-technology-enabling-dreams-video
Welcome to TechMatrix. (n.d.).
Retrieved June 28, 2015, from http://techmatrix.org/
Hi:
ReplyDeleteExcellent work!
-j-