1. Developing Understandings ESE 426 Fall 2009

2. What Is Learning? Please work in groups of three to define “learning” from your own words. Write your responses on a sheet of paper, and be prepared to share.

3. Please work in groups of three to define “teaching” from your own words. Write your responses on a sheet of paper, and be prepared to share. What Is Teaching?

4. Who Are We Supposed To Teach? According to the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, all students with disabilities, with the exception of those with the most severe disabilities', must be held accountable to the same academic as their peers without disabilities.

5. What Do We Really Teach? A test item on a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics assessment presented the following question to 8th grade students, as an open-ended prompt demanding a written answer: “How many buses does the army need to transport 1,128 soldiers if each bus holds 36 soldiers?”

6. The Answer? Almost one-third of the 8th graders gave the following answer: “31 remainder 12” (Schoenfeld, 1988, p. 84).

7. How Effectively Are We Teaching? For tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students who took the AIMS in the spring of 2005, approximately 47 percent more students with disabilities “fell far below” the standards than their peers without disabilities in math, 23 percent in reading, and 21 percent in writing.

8. Secondary Special Education Quality and quantity of services inferior to elementary services Repetition or continuation of elementary level programs Teachers use strategies and instruction not validated for secondary students Materials are often intended for elementary students or secondary students without disabilities

9. Meeting Their Needs Following the general curriculum Flexible and creative curricular materials Flexible curriculum decisions Flexible assessment strategies Aligning goals, assessments, and procedures