Functional Content & Core Content Instruction for Students with Moderate Disabilities: A Discussion My interests… Special education teacher preparation and reading instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities This article is included in a literature review I am doing on reading interventions for adolescents with significant cognitive disabilities Carly Roberts 4/22/11

Reviewed Article Collins, B. C., Hagar, K. L., & Galloway, C. C. (2011). Addition of functional content during core content instruction with students with moderate disabilities. Education and Training in Autism and Development Disabilities, 46, 22-39. How I’ve set this up… I’ll walk you through eachcomponent study and pause occasionally to bring up discussion questions as they are relevant to each component of the study

Pause for discussion… What does “access to the general curriculum” mean? What does it look like in practice? What should be the focus of instruction for adolescents with significant cognitive disabilities? What does “meaningful” instruction mean? What does it look like? NCLB and IDEA requires access to the general curriculum for students with moderate-severe disabilities For this article, instruction in core content linked to academic content standards

Research Questions Will middle school students with moderate to severe disabilities acquire both core content and a functional application through direct instruction? Will the students generalize that content across probe trials using novel materials and activities?

Student Participants 3 middle school students identified with moderate to severe disabilities who participate in alternate assessments Jason 14 year old male included 50-60% of the day IQ 55 and adaptive behavior score of 56 Morgan 14 year old male with autism included 40% of the day IQ 47 Rena 15 year old female with Down Syndrome included 40% of the day IQ 41

Teacher Participants Special education teacher 3 years of teaching experience Previously worked as a paraprofessional Working on her master’s degree Paraprofessional took over when the teacher went on maternity leave Experienced Had participated in a previous study Trained by the teacher

Goals Teacher chose content standards to work on and then created a academic content goal as well as a functional goal for that standard Chose content standards in language arts, science, and math Like I said prior, wanted to see if students could master both goals using direct instruction through constant time delay procedures Wanted to see if these skill would generalize to probes using novel materials assessing same academic standard similar to alternate assessment procedures

Reading Goals Content Standard Goal: Identify meanings of words/phrases from a grade level passage newspaper Functional Goal: functional application of the grade level words Okay, so like I said, the goal was to fuse instruction academic content standards with a functional application in order to address both functional and content area curriculum

Specific Reading Goals Student Content Standard Goal Functional Goal Jason Orally read the words president, representative, and governor Identify each verbally Morgan Read and receptively identify mayor, county, and district Point to the correct sight word identifying each when presented with an array of three Rena Read and receptively identify (by pointing to) the words, country, state, and city Who is the president? Pick the mayor’s name from an array of 3 when asked “who is the mayor?” Pick the USA from an array of 3 when asked “what is our country?” Thoughts on these goals? Are they authentic? Are they meaningful?

Science Goals Content Standard Goal: Identify chemical and physical properties of elements and compounds for the basic properties of (a) gas, (b) liquid, and (c) solid. Functional Goal: Identify change in properties for weather and cooking

Specific Science Goals Student Content Standard Goal Functional Goal Jason Verbally state the properties of presented real items State ways to change the properties of the real items used to cook breakfast Morgan Point to pictures of elements of the weather that were solid, liquid, or neither when presented with three choices. When given three choices, correctly identify appropriate clothing needed in each type of weather. Rena Point to pictures of elements of the weather that were solid, liquid, gas, or neither when presented with three choices. Jason -what is butter (solid) -How do you get butter from a solid to a liquid (melt it) Morgan & Rena -Point to a solid (ice), liquid (rain) -what would you wear in weather that is a liquid? (raincoat, umbrella, etc) Thoughts on these goals? Are they authentic? Are they meaningful?

Math Goals Content Standard Goal: Apply order of operations using addition and multiplication. Functional Goal: Use the order of operations for computing sales tax.

Specific Math Goals Student Content Standard Goal Functional Goal Jason Use a task-analysis to apply the order of operations using addition and multiplication to compute sales tax Use the task analysis, paper and pen, and calculator, to compute sales tax for real items found in a newspaper ad Morgan Use the task analysis, and a calculator to compute sales tax for real items found in a newspaper ad and then select the correct answer using a Bingo dabber Rena Thoughts on these goals? Are they authentic? Are they meaningful?

Teaching Procedures Setting: self-contained special education class Duration: 1 hour each day in the morning from September-April. Procedure: The teacher used constant time delay (CTD) to instruct and conduct one trial per stimulus per session. Each subject was taught to 100% criterion before beginning the next subject. The order was: (a) language arts, (b) science, and (c) math Teacher taught each student one student at a time during the hour and did one trial per stimulus per session

Pause for discussion… What is the best setting to teach academic content area goals in—an inclusive setting or a self- contained setting? Is there time to do both?

Design Multiple probe design across behaviors (reading, science, and math tasks) replicated across participants Baseline: Students did not begin instruction in next subject area goals until they reached 100% criterion in previous subject. Baseline sessions consisted of three probe trials for functional and three probe trials for core content. Given task direction and tasks and waited 3 seconds for student response (no prompting, no CTD).

Design Continued… Instruction Generalization Maintenance Constant time delay (first session 0 delay, subsequent sessions 3 second delay) Prompts were verbal models or verbal models paired with gestures Praise for correct responses and a model for incorrect responses Generalization Alternate assessment trials Same standard addressed using different materials or applications Maintenance After they reached mastery (100% for 3 sessions) in each subject only intermittent probes were conducted Alternate assessment requires them to be done before and after instruction, teacher conducted one trial prior to baseline and then three trials again after instruction mastery in each content area

Jason’s Results Acquired Language Arts, Science, and Math content in least amount of time but he was also the highest functioning of the three students Because he reached criterion so quickly the instructor changed procedures and used variable reinforcement to thin reinforcement for 2 days as indicated on the graph For generalization on the alternate assessment probes he went from 0-mean of 88.7% on LA, 27-100% on science and 0-100% on math Concerns with this graph… -his science scores were pretty high during baseline in that content area -Do you have concerns for this graph?

Morgan’s Results As you can see much more variability in his data…struggled acquiring the content across each subject area -instructor made some modifications in the process… -was only successful on some of the trials (a few times) -due to time constraints they started instruction on the next academic area due to time constraints (you can see overlap in the areas) -his generalization probes for alternate assessments improved in LA and science but not math -no fading of reinforcement Concerns with this graph… -lots of variability…did he actually master anything? If you were to do Percentage of non overlapping data for effect size would you have much?

Rena’s Results Rena’s results… -quickly acquired LA skills but struggled with science and once-again, didn’t have time for math…actually discontinued science in order to start math -didn’t show improvement in math but teacher did the alternate assessment generalization probes -showed improvement in generalization probes

Conclusions Academic instruction of core content and functional instruction can be combined, although time constraints make it difficult. It improved the students’ ability to answer generalization probes based on the alternate assessment. Combining core content and functional content and basing the functional content off of grade level standards can help make instruction more meaningful.

Limitations They ran out of time! We don’t know if the students would have had more success if they started earlier in the year. Instructional time was limited (approximately five minutes per student per day) Instruction was in a self-contained class. Can it work in an inclusive classroom?

Discussion questions… Can academic core content and functional content be taught together? Does it make instruction more meaningful? Can this strategy improve student scores on the alternate assessment? Is it okay to prioritize instruction for subjects (i.e. wait to focus on math standards until prior subjects mastered)? Additional thoughts…

Thank You!