Including Children with Special
Needs: Individualized Instruction Ed Clement
Not long after I began my teaching career
I realized that I could not get the students in any one
of my classes to progress at an even pace, no matter how
homogenous they were. Add inclusive children to the mix,
and classroom achievement becomes even more erratic. In
an effort to even out the achievement of my students, I
turned to individualized programmed material like the old
SRA cards, and the new computerized instructional materials.
When I didn't find any commercial products
that lived up to expectations, I began making my own materials.
Over the years I've created hundreds of individualized
lessons and I find that individual instructional lessons
work best when:
They are based on a set of well thought
out oral(recorded) or written directions that students
follow. Here is an example:
Ask teacher for a DART work
sheet.
Put your name at the top of
the work sheet
Solve problem one on your DART
work sheet.
Use problem one answer to make
a dot on your Cartesian coordinate grid.
As you solve the rest of the
problems, place a dot on your Cartesian coordinate
grid for each answer.
Connect the dots on your Cartesian
coordinate grid.
Ask teacher to check your Cartesian
coordinate grid.
They are project based: paper airplanes,
clock faces that are turned into clocks, and cardboard
geodome play houses for the Kindergarten are examples
of the project based individualized instructional lessons
I've developed.
They can be evaluated
visually: it can be extremely time consuming
to check all the work your students do,
and this can slow down the learning process.
But if that work results in a picture or
some other visual image, you can check
the work of an entire class, at any stage,
in a matter of minutes.
You
do "just in
time" instructing.
One of the
math tasks
that many of
my students
have trouble
with is rounding.
When this occurs
I give the
student a little
mini-lesson
in the form
of a set of
illustrated,
typed or oral
(recorded)directions
that will help
him/her master
the particular
skill and proceed
with the project.
The student
works on this
mini-lesson
at his/her
own pace.
They
are
based
on
modular
task
sheets:
these
sheets
are
independent
from
the
main
body
of
instructional
directions
and
can
be
easily
tailored
to
the
ability
level
of
individual
students
or
student groups.
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