Helping Your Students Understand Their Classmates with Special Needs

• A good overview on sensitivity training: The primary objective of this unit is to sensitize both students and teachers to special education students and their needs and their rights. Many regular education students and teachers have had limited contact with special education students. They have very little understanding of the various handicaps of children with special needs.

Helping Students Develop Their IEPs

High Stakes Testing

• High-Stakes Testing, Uncertainty, and Student Learning: This article provides a brief history of high-stakes testing and an analysis of eighteen states with severe consequences attached to their testing programs. These 18 states were examined to see if their high-stakes testing programs were affecting student learning, the intended outcome of high-stakes testing policies promoted throughout the nation.
• Pass the test or no diploma-High stakes graduation testing and children with learning disabilities: This article provides an explanation as to why there are high stakes tests, what sort of tests they are, legal authority for including children with disabilities in exit exam interviews, why there is backlash etc.
• High Stakes Testing: This site offers news and articles about high stakes testing by people who are for and against it so that you can get a feel for the positives and negatives of it.

Home Bound Instruction

• Example of homebound criteria: This page gives instructions on the process of setting up home bound or hospital instruction for children with disabilities.
• This page shows the procedure of getting a student home or hospital bound instruction and a sample request form.

Home Schooling

• A series of articles dealing with a variety of home schooling topics
• An overview of home schooling
• A-Z on Homeschooling: This site offers many articles and resources about home-school instruction through the web.

Homework Strategies for Children with Disabilities

• 5 homework strategies for working with children with disabilities: Homework is one aspect of the general education curriculum that has been widely recognized as important to academic success. Teachers have long used homework to provide additional learning time, strengthen study and organizational skills, and in some respects, keep parents informed of their children's progress.

I

IDEA Amendments of 1997/2004

IDEA-Part C-Early Childhood Intervention

• Early Intervention Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities (Part C-IDEA): This site explains the program for infants and toddlers with disabilities called “Part C of IDEA”. This federal grant program assists states in operating a comprehensive statewide program of early intervention services.
• This site describes the eligibility for Part C for children age birth-3 with disabilities. There are also links to other information on this topic.: Includes information on parent's rights, Individual Family Service Plans, transition, and service definition.

Impartial Hearings

• Parent Training and Information Center for Parents of Children with Special Needs: SPAN provides statewide training and technical assistance for families of children with disabilities or those who are at risk for academic failure due to poverty, limited English proficiency, inadequate education, special health, emotional or other needs. This site offers services and programs to help those in need.
• From the State Education Department of New York: This page is a proposed amendment to provide appropriate procedures for carrying out impartial hearings under the IDEA. It explains the duties of impartial hearing officers.

Inclusion

• Startegies for general education placement (Inclusion): an excellent list of classroom strategies, behavioral intervents, and strategies for mild impairments in the regular education setting.
• Preparing students, teachers and parents for inclusion: Here are some thoughts to keep in mind as a team of educators, parents, and perhaps the student work on a student's IEP and inclusion. Professionals may look at concerns in a different way from parents or people with disabilities.
• Inclusion Models: More and more general education and resource teachers are working together using different forms of teaming. A number of these models have been successfully implemented at building level in school districts across the United States. Three of those models have a consultant approach, teaming, and co-teaching. (Gartner and Lipsky, 1997).
• Helping parents deal with inlcusion: Welcoming parents into a classroom and school is vital to having them be part of the team for inclusive education. Parents of students with disabilities....
• Support and strategies are explored here for the inclusion of children in the regular education classroom.: From the Florida Inclusion Network.
• Parents for Inclusion: This site is for parents helping parents, so their children will be successful in a school inclusion environment.
• Supporting individual learning needs: This site offers four sources that give advice and information on special educational needs and inclusion.
• Inclusion definitions: This article contains definitions of vocabulary that pertain to inclusion, states the laws around it, gives examples of past court cases, gives results of research done on it, and has recommendations on how to implement it.
• How to make inclusion happen.:The LRE Part B Community of Practices held this webinar recently, and it's now available online at the link below. When you click on the link, a form will open and ask for your first and last name plus your email address. Once this form is submitted, you will have access to the recording of the webinar.

Individualized Education Programs (IEPs)

• Understanding the Standards-based IEP - Many states and local school districts are embracing a new approach to developing Individualized Education Programs  (IEPs) for students receiving special education. This  approach—most often referred to as “standards-based IEPs”— is driven by changes to both the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the current Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Understanding this standards-based approach to IEP development and how it can benefit students with LD.  PDF File from NCLD.
• PennSTAR Master Curriculum - FREE TO NASET MEMBERS (Retails for $20.00) - This product is an excellent tool for creating IEPs and curricula. </font>It consists of the following components:
  • 16 Subject Areas
  • 105 Goal Areas under the Subject Areas
  • 4,830 Objectives under the Goal Areas
  • 2,719 Suggested Activities for achieving the objectives.
  Individualized Education Programs: An excellent and thorough overview for teachers and parents.
• This article addresses the seven habits of highly effective IEP teams: It is essential for members of IEP teams to be proactive in collaborating efforts to help children with disabilities have individual educational plans.
• The IEP Process: This site defines IEP, provides the timelines for developing an IEP, composition of the IEP Committee, IEP meeting notification, revising the IEP components, and the IEP components.
• Individual Educational Programs: This site gives you information about IEPs such as who needs them, the referral and evaluation process, development of an IEP, and legal rights of parents and children.
• This site contains a slide presentation with topics pertaining to Individualized Education Plans.
• New and improved IEP meetings.Looking for tips? Here are some very wise ones!
• Health and the IEP CD-ROM: The Wisconsin Community on Transition Health Practice Group has developed health-related training materials that can be used with schools, health providers, families, and directly with youth to help youth with disabilities learn to more effectively manage their health care concerns.
• Health and Transition in the IEP Video: “Embedding Health Outcomes in the Individualized Education Program” is a video recording of a 40 minute teleconference that provides information and specific examples of health-related goals for an IEP. This free recording is available from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Web site.

IEP Goals

• PennSTAR Master Curriculum -  FREE TO NASET MEMBERS (Retails for $20.00) - This product is an excellent tool for creating IEPs and curricula. It consists of the following components:
  • 16 Subject Areas
  • 105 Goal Areas under the Subject Areas
  • 4,830 Objectives under the Goal Areas
  • 2,719 Suggested Activities for achieving the objectives.
  Writing good IEP goals: This area contains a series of articles that answer many questions about writing IEPs, including goals and objectives.
• Making IEP Goals measurable: These examples are from the  handbook "A Guide for Understanding and Developing IEPs".
• Writing IEP Goals: A very well organized site that takes you through every step of writing an IEP including annual goals, writing measurable goals and objectives, present levels of educational performance checklists
• Basic IEP: a good site that explains the language of IEPs including measurable goals, number of goals, and numerous samples to help you understand how they are written.
• Sample IEP goals: a very extensive sample of IEP goals including annual goals and short term objectives for a variety of areas.
• Sample IEPs for children with autism: This site offers numerous examples of IEPs written for children with various types of autism. A good site to get started.
• Sample IEP for child with autism: a sample IEP outlining goals and objectives for a child with PDD.
• IEP goals/benchmarks: The goals and objectives or benchmarks are the core of the IEP. This site explains these areas and their importance for parents and teachers.
• Objectives for behavior plans: If you are writing a plan to ensure that your behavior student will be successful, you will want to make sure that your goals are based on the student's past performance and that they are stated positively.
• Everything you need to write an IEP: The Individual Education Plan (IEP) is every exceptional or identified student's lifeline for academic success. If students with special needs are to achieve the academic curriculum to the best of their ability and as independently as possible, the professionals involved in the delivery of their programming must have a plan in place.
• Developing IEP goals: a good step by step description with some useful tools to determine appropriate goals.
• Annuals goals, short-term instructional objectives and benchmarks: a good step by step outline that explains in easy terms the basics behind writing annual goals.
• An IEP goal bank: thousands of goals that can be used to design IEP goals and objectives in 12 different areas including functional academics, independent living, motor, recreation and leisure, daily living skills, social emotional and much more.Easy to use.
• Motor goals behaviors and objectives: this site offers numerous goals in these areas for infants through 12 years of age.
• The dreaded IEP behavioral objective: This page is to give you extra information and practice, in case you are having difficulties writing them for your lesson plans.
• Writing better IEP goals, short-term objectives or benchmarks (PDF file): This article provides strategies for writing precise goals and short-term objectives or benchmarks.

Individualized Family Service Plan - IFSP

• Overview of the IFSP process
• Example of an IFSP manual
• Good overview
• IFSP early intervention process
• Journal articles and resources on IFSP
• Service coordination

Intellectual Disability

Intelligence Tests-Individual

Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities

• This article focuses upon two promising interventions for students with learning disabilities: helping students develop their use of learning strategies and helping them develop their phonological awareness.

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