Shawnee Wakeman

Research on Reading Instruction for Individuals with Significant Cognitive Disabilities

This article presents the results of a comprehensive review of 128 studies on teaching reading to individuals with significant cognitive disabilities. The review compared these studies against the National Reading Panels components of reading; although it revealed an inadequate consideration of the components of reading, it found strong evidence for teaching sight words using systematic prompting and fading. The reviewers considered not only the number of studies, but also indicators proposed for evidence-based practice and effect size. This study identified some high quality studies with strong effect size for comprehension and fluency, but only one phonics study was strong in both quality and effects. Additional research is needed to promote broader skills in literacy for this population.

A Meta-Analysis on Teaching Mathematics to Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities

This article reports on a comprehensive literature review and meta-analysis of 68 experiments on teaching mathematics to individuals with significant cognitive disabilities. Most of the studies in the review addressed numbers and computation or measurement. Within the computation studies identified, most focused on counting, calculation, or number matching. For the measurement studies, nearly all focused on money skills. Of the 54 single subject design studies, 19 were classified as having all quality indicators for research design (13 representing the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Measurement standard and 6 representing the Numbers and Operations standard). These studies offer strong evidence for using systematic instruction to teach mathematics skills and for using in vivo settings.

Aligning Instruction with Academic Content Standards: Finding the Link:

For students to have full access to the general curriculum, they need the opportunity to learn academic content that links closely to the standards for their grade level. In this article, we synthesize what we have learned through our research on aligning instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities with states academic content standards. In finding these links between state content standards and instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities, we have discovered that it is important to understand (a) the implications of current federal policy; (b) the evidence for academic learning by this population; (c) the nature of national and state standards; (d) the importance of starting with universal design and general education collaboration; and (e) the concept of alignment.

Principals' Knowledge of Fundamental and Current Issues in Special Education.

The purpose of the study is to determine the comprehensive knowledge base of national secondary principals related to special education issues. Using a survey developed from the empirical and conceptual literature for assessing fundamental and current issues in special education, data were collected from a national sample of secondary school principals. Overall, principals report being well informed in fundamental issues. Although the relationship between demographics and knowledge produced mixed results, principal practices have a positive relationship with knowledge of special education issues.

Helping Students with Moderate and Severe Intellectual Disability Access Grade-Level Text

Teaching students with moderate and severe intellectual disability who are early readers or nonreaders to engage with grade-level text is challenging. How can teachers promote text accessibility and teach text comprehension? This article describes research-based strategies educators can use to adapt grade-level text and teach text comprehension for students with moderate and severe intellectual disability who are early readers or nonreaders. These approaches can support teachers in developing materials and instruction to promote student interaction with gradelevel text.

Facilitating participation in assessments and the general curriculum: level of symbolic communication classification for students with significant cognitive disabilities

This study empirically evaluated a classification schema based on symbolic communication level use with students with significant cognitive disabilities. Ninety‐five teachers of students with significant disabilities rated students’ level of performance on 10 academic tasks. Cluster analysis suggested a range of two to four clusters solutions. Support was found for three clusters: symbolic (abstract), early symbolic (concrete), and pre‐symbolic/awareness. The potential application of the classification system to planning general curriculum access and setting achievement expectations are discussed.

Measuring the Enacted Curriculum for Students With Significant Cognitive Disabilities A Preliminary Investigation

Based on recent federal legislation, alternate assessments for students with disabilities may now be based on alternate achievement standards, modified achievement standards, or grade-level achievement standards. Although all students with disabilities must access the general curriculum, those with significant cognitive disabilities often do so through extensions of grade-level content standards. Because curriculum is individualized for students with disabilities, experts cannot immediately apply to this population the methods for examining the taught curriculum in general education. The purpose of this article is to describe the development and use of a method for examining the enacted curriculum for students who take alternate assessments. We present initial item development, survey blueprint, expert review, and pilot test findings. Experts can use this tool to investigate the alignment of curriculum with alternate assessments and state standards and to design professional development for educators learning to access the general curriculum.

Changing Instruction to Increase Achievement for Students with Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disabilities

education teacher for students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities, is struggling with what to do for two of her students who appear to have hit the proverbial wall with adding fractions. Although they previously performed parts of the skill with accuracy (i.e., Student One completed 6 of the 8 steps including finding the correct answer for 3 days, and Student Two completed 7 of the 8 steps for 4 days), the students have regressed in recent days. Neither student can successfully complete all of the steps to find the correct answer. Mrs. Lee has provided each student with a task analysis of how to solve the problems, fraction strips to represent parts of a whole, and several models. In the context of teaching fractions within a recipe, she has marked the measuring cup and spoons to help provide a visual support for increasing the amounts in fraction form. Mrs. Lee is sure she is teaching the skill correctly as she consulted her general education partner for confirmation, but she is not sure how to teach it any differently. She has noticed that these two students have begun to act out during math by throwing their materials on the floor, circling their answers without trying to complete any step of the task analysis (i.e., guessing), or simply refusing to do their work at all. A change has to occur, but Mrs. Lee is not sure what to do next.

Teaching the Common Core in English Language Arts to Students with Severe Disabilities

guage arts class has 12 students with a wide range of ability levels: two students use wheelchairs and have limited mobility in their arms, one student has low vision, five students are nonverbal, four have autism spectrum disorder, three students use English as their second language, and all have moderate or severe intellectual disability. Mrs. Lewis started the year with one goal in mind: to share her love of literature and English language arts by exposing the students to a variety of genres, while teaching to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In Mrs. Lewis’s classroom, literary terms and definitions cover the walls with items such as character, setting, theme, and plot—all with picture supports. The students all have an adapted text of The Pearl by John Steinbeck (1947) on their desks, and follow along by text pointing. The student with low vision has an enlarged adapted text set on a slant board, and the nonverbal students have a Big Mack switch to read the repeated story line. Mrs. Lewis reviews the events that have happened in The Pearl up to this point. She uses time delay and example/nonexample training to teach a combination of high-frequency sight words and grade-level vocabulary prior to starting the next chapter. Mr. Davis, the paraprofessional, reads the text projected on the interactive whiteboard aloud to the students. Unlike many adapted texts, there are no picture symbols above the words, but there is a picture or two on each page of text illustrating what is happening in the story. As Mr. Davis reads the text aloud and the students text point in their adapted books, Mrs. Lewis acts out a scene where Kino deftly opens the oyster shell to reveal an incandescent pearl. The students are mesmerized as Mrs. Lewis walks around showing them the beautiful pearl in the oyster shell, and the students get to feel the rough oyster shell and the smooth pearl. Seeing, touching, and interacting with the shell and the pearl is a new experience for many of the students. Mrs. Lewis projects several comprehension questions on the whiteboard; some are literal and some are inferential. She checks students’ understanding by walking from student to student, displaying response options on an iPad. One student selects an incorrect answer, and she uses a leastintrusive prompting script to guide him to the correct answer. For inferential questions that cannot be found directly in the text, Mrs. Lewis uses a thinkaloud strategy to help students come up with the answer. She closes the lesson by reading an excerpt from the original text so students have an opportunity to hear the author’s tone and the rich language. At the end of the lesson, Mrs. Lewis’s students show an impressive level of understanding, thanks to the supports and instructional strategies she has used to keep them actively engaged in the storybased lesson (which is aligned to both the content and the CCSS).

Teacher Evaluation of Resources Designed for Adapting Mathematics for Students With Significant Cognitive Disabilities

Although educators of students who take alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards are charged with providing access to grade-level mathematics to help their students prepare for this requirement, almost no models exist to provide guidance for how to adapt mathematics content for this population of students. This study asked educators to evaluate resource materials for adapting grade-aligned mathematics. One hundred twenty-five participants completed a survey to appraise two resources developed specifically for teaching mathematics to students with significant cognitive disabilities. One of the resources was designed to build mathematics content knowledge and the second to provide guidance for designing mathematics instruction aligned to academic content standards. The resources received positive reviews from a large majority of respondents who agreed they provided educators with needed models for teaching specific mathematics content.