What is an Individual Education Plan?

In special education an individual education plan, or IEP, is created for a single student’s learning needs whether these needs are challenging or advanced. An IEP creates a modified curriculum for a student. Modification means the curriculum is tailored specifically to this child’s needs. As a result s/he does not follow most of the regular classroom curriculum. That special needs student may learn the same subject at the same time as his or her peers, for instance transformational geometry strand in mathematics, but the IEP student does not learn or get taught curriculum at the provincial or state level. Rather, the student’s curriculum is modified to assist the student in improving his or her learning skills, or putting advanced (gifted) skills to better use. An IEP requires the consent of the student’s parent or guardian and cannot be put in place without it. Yearly, the school is required to re-test the child in order to determine whether or not the child needs to continue using an IEP.  Watch what is an individual education plan?

An IEP is part of the Education Act in Ontario.  It is a legality and any student who requires curriculum modification is entitled to an IEP by law.  If deemed necessary, the student is also entitled to assistive technology, for example software that translates a student’s speech into text in a word processing program.  This type of assistive technology is especially helpful for children with reading difficulties or phonemic dyslexia. Since assistive technology is very expensive a school requires additional funding to provide AT to its special students.  In that case the school’s Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC)  examines the student’s full academic history, receives feedback from the classroom and special education teacher about the student’s progress, and discusses the situation with the student and/or parents. Watch what are learning disabilities?

All schools are required to establish an IPRC by law. Sometimes consultants from the school board, such as autism specialists, attend the meetings to provide valuable input.  Although parents and the student are invited to offer suggestions about the IEP, the IPRC has the right to reject these suggestions if they are deemed unreasonable, unhelpful, irrelevant, or otherwise.  In that case the family may appeal an IPRC decision to an Ontario tribunal to determine whether or not the IPRC has made a correct decision. If the tribunal supports the school’s decision the parent is permitted to take the matter further and appeal to the Ontario Supreme Court. Watch best practices and accommodations.

Along with IEPS, classroom teachers usually provide accommodations for special students. An accommodation does not require parental or administrator consent and is not a legality. An example of an accommodation includes moving a student’s desk beside the teacher’s; not seating an ADHD child near a window since outside activities are distracting for this student; reducing the number of questions a struggling student answers in math compared to the assignment given to the rest of the class and so on.  Accommodations are not necessarily used for children with IEPs.  They are also used for children with disruptive behaviours and weak academics. Watch learning disabilities accommodations

Taking the Special out of Special Education

I teach special education to elementary school children.  They have their own individual education plan (IEP) that differs from the curriculum their peers study.  They, and the class, are well aware of this especially since I am frequently obliged to withdraw children from the regular classroom. The youngest children I work with on average are 7 years old but I do work with children as young as 6.  By 7 children are painfully aware they are different and not in a good way. Their peers are also well aware that students who are withdrawn from the classroom are getting “extra help” because school is “hard” for them. Watch Special Education Teaching: Teaching Students to Accept Special Education Teachers

School is a challenge for everyone, otherwise how will children learn?  It is the concept of withdrawal from classrooms when this is not always necessary as well as labels that concern me.  For instance when a teacher is teaching, say, a math lesson in probability the class and the special education child are all learning this particular lesson.  The special education child has a considerably modified (easier) curriculum with lowered expectations. That being the case why not include the special education teacher into the regular classroom instead of withdrawing the “special” child? The special ed teacher can work with the student within the regular classroom just as easily as in the special ed office. Watch what are learning disabilities?

Schools try to make this happen for their special students. They do make the effort but continually I encounter odd situations where students are withdrawn during a language arts lesson to study math with the special ed teacher.  What?  Why not dovetail the two subjects so the child be included in the classroom with the assistance of the special ed teacher?  Sometimes scheduling is an issue for the teacher however when I was a regular classroom teacher one thing I noticed at the start of the year is that no special education teacher approached me to coordinate our curriculum schedules. At that time I was unaware that special ed teachers had the authority to do this, and since then I approach all of the teachers I will be working with during the year to try and coordinate our schedules. Read Special Education Inclusion

Inclusion is fair.  Inclusion prohibits embarrassment and develops a higher self-esteem in students. Clearly children whose learning issues are strong or severe cannot be included in the classroom. They require an intensive one on one with the special ed teacher so as not to be distracted by the rest of the classroom, but I am not referring to those students. The students who are slightly to moderately substandard in their learning deserve as much inclusion as possible. Treating them like everyone else rather than “special”, an unfortunate lable that everyone knows means “learning difficulty”, may even result in higher report card grades.  High self-esteem is proven to be a positive consequence as it relates to learning. Watch Special Education Teaching: Inclusion in the Classroom

Dyslexia in the Classroom

Good afternoon students.

Many people think dyslexia is a simplistic disorder whereby people write letters and numbers backwards. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that was dyslexia’s biggest challenge! Reversed letters and numbers may be a symptom of dyslexia however not every dyslexic person reverses letters, and children in grade school may reverse letters for a number of years and not be dyslexic. Dyslexia is a chronic learning disorder that disrupts a person’s comprehension in being able to read, speak, and spell. There are at least 4 dyslexias that have been identified and lead to significant difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory.

Got that?  In plainer english dyslexics struggle with reading, reading comprehension and writing. There is also a mathetmatical form of dyslexia known as dyscalculia. These people struggle with comprehending arithmetic, and in number alignment. A dyslexic person might see letters and words move around on a page, or words might change colours. Other dyslexics see text in a highly disjointed manner.

An example of a severely dyslexic grade 2 child’s handwriting.    The story is a copy of the itsy bitsy spider. Click the image to see how much you can read and comprehend the child’s writing. Most dyslexics are highly intelligent. Some are brilliant and lead outstanding lives: Mozart, John F. Kennedy, Leonardo DaVinci, Mohammed Ali, George Clooney, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein,Winston Churchill, the list is endless. It’s hard to argue against a list as impressive as this one.

Where does dyslexia originate? In the left hemisphere in the posterior lobe of the brain. Scientists aren’t entirely certain what is happening in this area. Some science journals simply call it a “glitch” in the brain’s wiring although this doesn’t come close to a true explanation. Dyslexia is either acquired (alexia) or inherited. Often the family of a dyslexic person are very poor readers and writers although they may not be dyslexics. Alexia is due to brain injury or trauma.
video: What is it like to have dyslexia? Animations and illustrations.

Dyslexia is not classified as a learning disability, just as ADHD and ADD are not considered disabilities. They are neurological disorders because they originate in the brain (in the case of ADHD and ADD an imbalance in neurotransmitters seems to be responsible for attention issues). As such the province does not provide funding for dyslexia in the way of assistive technology. Nor does it offer the services of special education teachers who are trained in working with dyslexia. Traditionally schools simply placed dyslexic children into special education programs that were too simplistic for the child’s comphrehension and these children became become bored and frustrated. Lately more school boards are providing special education teachers with training in dyslexia in order to teach dyslexic children techniques in learning how to read and write more fluently. However school boards are not mandated by the Ontario Ministry of Education to provide this service. A shame.
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Website:  Discovering Dyslexia  Prezi: The Challenging Gift of Dyslexia