1. 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

2. 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,
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

3. 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

4. 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?

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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?

10. 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

11. 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?

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

13. 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?

14. 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

15. 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?

16. 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).

17. 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

18. 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, % 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?

19. 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?

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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?

23. 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…

24. Thank You!