|
March 15, 2002
Assistive Technology and the Multiage Classroom
By Terry Lankutis and Kristen Kennedy
These tips and technologies from the special needs classroom can help teachers reach struggling students.
Special needs educators have long known that technology can come close to working miracles in bringing students with physical and learning disabilities into the general education curriculum. Assistive technologies such as text-to-speech and word prediction software remain invaluable resources for struggling readers and writers, while multimedia-enhanced Web sites and concept mapping software have opened new pathways for students with alternative learning styles (see "Promising Technologies"). Whereas full-time aides once shadowed learning-disabled students, reading worksheets aloud or helping with writing assignments, new technologies now allow students to work independently, and as a result, they are better able to participate in the regular curriculum.
Since the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990, which first mandated that IEP teams explore the use of assistive technology to help students with disabilities, schools nationwide have been working slowly toward the goal of improving the educational outcomes of these children. New provisions of the law now require schools to provide coordinated intervention and support to improve their performance. One step toward reaching this goal has been to increase the successful participation of students with physical and learning disabilities in the general education classroom. While technology is an important part of the move toward inclusive classrooms, exploring new teaching models is an equally vital component of creating a transformative learning experience for all students-with and without recognized disabilities.
How Technology Is Helping Students with Disabilities: Emily's Story
 | | Head teacher Darla Torix uses a variety of technologies to help Emily, a student with cerbral palsy. |
Darla Torix is head teacher of a two-room schoolhouse in rural Galata, Mont., where she and an assistant teach the full array of elementary and middle school subjects to 10 students in grades K-8. In addition to building lesson plans and sharing playground duties, they both help students with special needs complete their IEP goals. This multiage environment-where students of different ages, levels, and abilities work together-offers an ideal scenario for Emily, a student who has cerebral palsy, because of its naturally inclusive atmosphere. And like many students with disabilities, Emily depends upon technology to lessen physical barriers to learning and assist her integration into the general curriculum.
When Emily entered school six years ago at the age of four, Torix could see that technology would be a tool essential to both Emily's academic success and her participation in class activities. Since Emily often uses a motorized wheelchair and has limited use of one hand, Torix initially prescribed IntelliTools' IntelliKeys with Overlay Maker, a customizable keyboard and software combination that lets Emily write word by word instead of letter by letter; and IntelliTalk, a text-to-speech word processing program that allows her to see and hear what she writes. Emily, who just entered fourth grade, is now using Don Johnston's Co:Writer SmartApplet word prediction software for a portable memory-enhanced keyboard called the AlphaSmart. Due to Torix's gradual process of testing out different technologies, Emily is no longer physically isolated in the computer station in the back of class. With the mobility she gains with her AlphaSmart, Emily can work anywhere she wants in the classroom-at her desk or alongside her peers in a group activity.
The Multiage Classroom and the Struggling Student
 | | With the help of a stander, Emily can more fully participate in class activities. |
While Emily's success is due in part to powerful assistive technologies like the AlphaSmart, Co:Writer, and IntelliKeys, it's also indebted to Torix's innovative way of making the multiage classroom work to each child's benefit. For Emily, this means an inclusive context where her physical difference from her peers is part of, rather than isolated from, the educational program, and which serves as a positive model of inclusion.
Torix assigns learning goals and activities at the beginning of each day, and students spend the rest of the day working independently or in small groups to complete assigned tasks. While Torix teaches a math lesson to third-graders, her first- and second-graders, nestled in the big floor pillows of the story corner, quiz each other on their spelling. Meanwhile, Emily enters data into her IntelliTools MathPad, a type of math word processor, to complete part of a chapter test.
Since Torix's students are familiar with this multiage setting, they know how to manage their time and can choose to work independently or as part of a group. If they finish a reading assignment, they can visit the story corner's bookshelves and find something to read, or join other students researching on the Internet for a social studies project due the following week. Each day, Torix schedules valuable teacher time with all students, either in groups or individually.
Lessons Learned from the Multiage Classroom
Multiage classrooms encourage a spirit of cooperation and sharing among students of various ages and abilities. They also offer teachers and students a unique learning environment not available in the regular classroom. Other advantages include:
Peer Teaching and Mentoring. Multigrade classrooms are ideal environments for implementing peer tutoring programs, where older kids tutor younger students, especially when a teacher is working with another small group or one-on-one with a struggling student.
In Torix's classroom, older students help Emily get set up at her workstation while Torix gets ready to teach a lesson. Assignments as well as entire curricula can be built around peer teaching and mentoring, where a piece of a student's assessment includes developing a lesson and teaching it to another student. For example, more advanced students could demonstrate their knowledge of long division by teaching kids a year below them how to divide. Meanwhile, their teacher works with her youngest students on simple addition.
Project-Based Learning. A project-driven curriculum can thrive in the multiage classroom. For example, in a recent science project on heredity, Torix's students collected fingerprint samples for study. While first-graders analyzed three basic types of fingerprints and used them in drawings for an art project, seventh-graders compared eight more complicated prints. The whole class then graphed class fingerprint results, with older kids doing the math and the younger ones designing the poster presentation. In this environment, teachers can group kids by ability and age, rather than by grade, so that learning on all levels happens while the whole class explores a single project or theme.
Collaborative, Less Competitive Classrooms. When kids of different ages consistently work together-over an entire school year or over several years-they tend to build lasting friendships and set the groundwork for a cooperative learning environment. Multiage teachers report that their classrooms, which by design foster positive social interaction, sharing, and independent learning, have fewer discipline problems. And because struggling students are more likely to ask for help from an older student than from someone in their age group, researchers and educators alike feel that at-risk and disabled students may benefit directly from mixed-age groups because there are fewer stigmas associated with falling behind or not meeting age-related achievement standards.
One thing is certain, however. Inclusive, multiage classrooms mean more work for teachers, especially educators in traditional schools that don't have the resources to put this kind of learning into place. Full-time assistants and teacher teams are vital to making such a diverse environment productive and structured. Teachers in multiage classrooms must also be versatile, highly organized managers as well as skilled facilitators.
Torix has had to draw from an extensive repertoire of teaching strategies to create individualized learning plans for each of her students. Even so, she admits feeling a bit out of her element teaching algebra to seventh-graders when her background is in liberal arts. Ideally, she and a math teacher would co-teach K-8, individualizing instruction by organizing kids according to their abilities, rather than by grade. She also knows that some of her students will go on to high school without being as prepared as their peers. She is confident, however, that whatever weaknesses students might have in a specific content area, they bring with them vital critical thinking skills, the motivation to learn what they don't know, and the independence to figure it out on their own-those traits borne of the multiage classroom. The trade-off, Torix thinks, is worth it.
Terry Lankutis is an assistive technology consultant, trainer, and teacher with over 23 years of experience teaching students with disabilities.
Kristen Kennedy is senior editor of T&L.
Read other articles from the March Issue
Send a letter to the Editor in response to this article.
|
