Here is an example of how I adapted a worksheet about Squanto. The worksheet is from a 1st grade Social Studies workbook, the skill addressed is using a table to find information to answer questions.
This first adaptation is for a student who is working on matching colors. I have placed re-positionable labels that I have color coded with highlighters over the chart and used the highlighters to mark matching colors in the answer blanks. The student removes the label and matches the color to place the answer on the worksheet.
This one is similar but doesn't have the highlighted squares on the answer sheet. The color cue tells the student where in the chart to look, and they remove the label and place it in the answer blank.
This last example is the least modified - the color cues show the student where to look on the chart but the student still has to copy the answer into the blank. You'll notice I only highlighted the key words to help the student focus on that - teaching them to look for those words to find the answers.
I listed some of my favorite materials for accessing standards in a previous post, here are some others that I love from Mayer-Johnson (the company that makes Boardmaker). They have several books that are great at tying literacy, math and science/social studies together very neatly. I have (and frequently use) all of the following and highly recommend them:
All About Animals - WONDERFUL resource, including counting activities, spelling, sentence writing, and patterning activities (and more) all focusing on animals. There are activities to sort animals according to how they move or where they live. The best part is that there are four levels of EACH activity - Let's use, for example, the sorting activity I mentioned. The lowest level has pictures already on the chart (sorting by two) and the student simply matches the pictures. The next level has small pictures at the top of the chart as a cue to where each picture goes. The third level has words at the top of the chart and the hardest level doesn't have any cues.
Hands-on Reading - Another great resource. Each volume is associated with several popular and readily-available picture books organized into units based on common classroom themes. For each book there are multiple communication boards and several activities (cooking activities, songs, cut/paste, take-home books) and comprehension questions with picture choices.
Simple Symbol Stories has stories for long and short vowels. Each story is written with Boardmaker symbols along with the text. There are comprehension questions for each story.
Math Exercises for Nonreaders and Step Up to Math both have excellent math activities using boardmaker symbols. Math Exercises has lots of activities for identifying "more", counting pictures, connect-the-dots to practicing numerical order, and math problems based on grocery shopping. Step Up to Math includes sequencing and patterning activities, number recognition, counting and identifying same and different.
Curriculum Experiences - I use the primary and elementary levels, there is also a high school level available. These include original stories (using Boardmaker symbols) addressing different science or social studies topics (see an example of a Thanksgiving story at my class blog). Following each story are math and literacy activities. These are *great* ways to focus on (mostly social studies) topics that the general education classes are studying at a level that my students can understand and actively participate. (They do address a couple of science topics like grooming and forest animals - but for science I prefer ...
Step by Step Science, which has lots of very simple science experiments that my kids find fascinating (like "How do you make mud?"). Each experiment includes pictures of the materials you need, a page for making a hypothesis (they call it a guess), instructions for the experiment and charts for the results. There are also games, songs, and other activities as well.
Health Units for nonreaders is another science resource for health units. There are stories (written with Boardmaker symbols along with text) about different topics followed by questions (also with symbols) about the story (with picture choices for the answers).
Stories About Me is a good resource for addressing writing standards. The stories are written with picture symbols and the student fills in the blanks to write stories about activities and events relevant to their life (for example, participating in Special Olympics or going on a field trip).
And finally, Boardmaker's Curriculum Companions. These are software programs that provide activities related to general education standards. I have only recently purchased two of these and haven't used them yet in class, but from my initial experience previewing the activities it looks very promising! There are reading and writing activities that can be adapted for all levels. The software tracks student progress and the teacher can print progress reports, which is always great!
As a final word, just to reiterate - I love these resources (and many others from Mayer-Johnson) because they are created specifically for students with communication disorders and lower cognitive skills. They focus on the "big idea" of the general education standards using activities that my kids can do and actually *get* something out of. I don't have to do much adapting or modifying (like I do with most other activities) because it's already done!
A big issue in special education currently is for students with significant cognitive impairments to have access to the same curriculum as general education students. There are many pros and cons to the issue I will list a few of my opinions, simply because I'm an opinionated person :-) In subsequent posts, I hope to give you some ideas on *how* I access general education standards and still try to make it meaningful for my students.
But I figured I'd get the opinionated part out of the way first ...
Pros
I spend a lot of time and energy trying to educate typical peers about my students and one of the things I try to make clear is that my students can do many of the same things that they can, just in a different way. Having my students learn about the same topics as their typical peers gives them an opportunity to illustrate that academically.
Many of the general education standards (especially the "Listening, speaking, viewing" ones) are extremely similar to the IEP goals that my students are already working on, so obviously I think those are applicable and relevant.
Many of the science standards are very reinforcing to students with autism, which makes them easy and fun to work on. This past week, for example, we were working on simple machines and my students had a great time making pulleys and wheels and axles.
You never know a student's potential! I'm always amazed at what my students pick up on and retain. I have met and talked with adults with autism who were in special education classes for kids with severe intellectual disabilities and treated like they were stupid - but they tell me they understood things, just couldn't express it (until one day something "clicked") and these people now have PhDs. I'm doing my students a huge disservice if I just assume they don't understand anything and don't at least expose them to a variety of ideas and information.
Cons
Thereare only so many hours in a school day. How do I find time to teach my students about the Civil War, geometry, poetry AND still have time to work on things like eating with a fork, using the toilet, holding a pencil, learning how to play appropriately, sit in a group, etc. I mean look at the ABLLS-R (which is what I use as an assessment and curriculum guide for my students) - there are 481 items (not counting the 56 in the reading/math/writing sections) that focus on communication and functional skills - the skills deemed necessary to be ABLE to learn in a general education class. Your typical child has these skills by the time they enter kindergarten (or preschool!), so general education students don't have to work on them. However, they are skills you NEED to function in the "real world". How do I work on all of those skills PLUS fit in a whole other day's worth of instruction in academics - all in ONE day?
Seriously - is it more important to be able to ask for something you need or tell someone you're in pain, or to tell me what contributions some famous person in history gave to society? If you can't feed yourself, speak, play with a toy, or sit in a chair for 30 seconds - when is being able to explain how many planes and angles an octagon has going to come in handy?
I have students in kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, and fifth grade in my class. Each of those grades has different standards. We're back to the 'only so many hours in a day' argument, just from a different angle.
OK - now that's out of the way, the fact is we have to do it whether we want to or not - it's the law.
I will be posting, soon, examples of standards and how I modify or adapt them for my students. I often try to tie in functional skills or find other ways to make them meaningful for my students and I will elaborate on how I do that.
In the meantime, please visit my class blog to see examples of my students accessing general education standards.
I am Nicole, a 30-something year old PhD student (not for long! One class and my dissertation left to go). This is my 8th year teaching students with autism in a self contained special education class.
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