Teaching Students with Low Incidence Disabilities. Ethan Karwand

What are low-incidence disabilities: Rarer, and often more severe or noticeable disabilities. The categories for low-incidence disabilities are: Multiple Disability Deaf-Blindness Autism TBI Orthopedic Impairment Hearing Impairment Other health impairments Developmental Delay Visual Impairments

All of these share four characteristics 1. They are uncommon, with prevalence staying the same throughout the years. 2. The assumption that an uncommon disability is always a severe disability 3. They tend to be more visible, and can be more easily identified by a non-expert 4. You will likely not teach many of these students.

Developmental Delay IDEA ‘04 always young students, between the ages of 3 to 9, to be labeled as developmentally delayed, instead of forcing a diagnosis that may be incorrect. They did this because only a small number of disabilities can be diagnosed in young children accurately. This category includes about 2.2% of students.

There are two main reasons for this label: 1. Experts do not want to hang a potentially incorrect diagnosis on a child 2. A child may just be developing slowly and will later catch up to peers. These children vary widely in their educational needs, some have very mild disabilities while some have very severe disabilities, so a wide variety of accommodation is needed.

Overall most accommodation has to be tailored to the individual student, as each child is unique in their needs. Here are some good starting points in creating accommodations for these students: Teach one concept or activity component at a time Teach one step at a time to help support memorization and sequencing Teach students in small groups, or one-on-one, if possible Always provide multiple opportunities to practice skills in a number of different settings Use physical and verbal prompting to guide correct responses, and provide specific verbal praise to reinforce these responses Within each of these points are multiple ways to help students reach their goals, though not students will respond to the same techniques.

For most of these students these accommodations should take place in a mainstream classroom. Research has shown that these children learn better when taught alongside their peers, not when separated from them. However, many of these students fall into the severely disabled category and so are not given accommodations within a mainstream classroom but are instead relegated to special schools, classrooms filled with only those with similar conditions. Very few students ever leave these restrictive settings, and their learning suffers as a result. Unfortunately this trend will likely continue for some time, as most states have only put in the resources to identify and place these students, instead of finding ways to accommodate them in mainstream classes.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/cognitive-social-functioning-delays-adapting-instruction-for-learners.html Kahoot # 95061

Extra Resources: http://www.projectidealonline.org/v/intellectual-disabilities/ http://www.brighthubeducation.com/special-ed-learning-disorders/104639-modificatons-for-students-with-intellectual-disabilities/ http://do2learn.com/disabilities/CharacteristicsAndStrategies/DevelopmentalDelay_Strategies.html https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/treatments-approaches/educational-strategies/common-modifications-and-accommodations