Special Needs

I chose to read the Allsopp article about why students with special needs have difficulty learning math and what teachers can do to help because I thought it was the most relatible to my own classroom. I have one special education student in my classroom whose math scores are so low he actually qualifies for pull out special education math support for a half hour each day. He is however still in our classroom for part of his math instruction and I have seen him struggle to stay focused and keep up day after day. Allsopp also named attention problems as a major barrier for special education students because they often miss important information during instruction. In addition to special education students, I think the majority of us have students who simply have trouble paying attention. As I was reading I found myself thinking not only of my special education students but also others in my class who could benefit from the strategies that they article suggests.
I really liked the examples of how to directly model, let the students use language to describe math, and continue to give meaningful feedback with performance charts. My students have a lot of experience with modeling because of our literacy curriculum and it has been very successful. So I think directly modeling expectations and strategies during math lessons would benefit students as well. Even if the whole class didn’t require it, I could directly model for individual students as they head back to their desk. Not all students need to be dismissed from the carpet at the same time. Those that need more modeling could even stay together for just a few more minutes of instruction. Another option might be to talk with the special education teacher and make sure that we are both on the same page, using similar strategies when the special education student is pulled out for math. One thing that I realized was that my CT and I usually follow the math book very closely, using the examples from the book. I really liked the way the teacher in the article used much more authentic examples for story problems. I think it would really help my special education student if his name and interested were in the math stories he was supposed to solve. Not only would it be more memorable for him but also probably keep his attention longer if we were talking about topics he already knew and liked!