Chapter 6 – Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities
What are low-incidence disabilities?
· Low-incidence disabilities – any of the less common disabilities such as multiple disabilities, hearing impairments, orthopedic impairment, other health impairments, visual impairments, deaf-blindness, autism, and traumatic brain injury
· Developmental delay – the presence of a significant physical, intellectual, communication, or social or emotional delay without specifying a specific disability category
What accommodations can you make for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders?
· Autism – condition in which an individual lacks social responsiveness from a very early age, has a high need for structure and routines, and demonstrates significant language impairments. These characteristics interfere with learning.
o Affects boys more than girls
· Characteristics
o Significant difficulty with social relationships
o Have difficulty learning the subtleties of social interaction
o Often have significantly delayed language development, and struggle to maintain conversation with another person
o Narrow range of interests
o Low threshold for and difficulty in dealing with stress
o In the classroom, be aware of potentially stressful situations for a student with autism
· Students with Asperger Syndrome
o Extraordinary difficulty in social interactions
o Difficulty in using language correctly
o Insist on specific routines in the classroom and at home
o Ma have very high intellectual ability
· Accommodations
o Establish clear procedures and routines for classroom tasks and follow them consistently
o Create a structured and predictable environment and encourage appropriate social interactions
What accommodations can you make for students with moderate, severe, or multiple disabilities?
· Students with Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disabilities
o The amount of information they can learn may be limited and the rate at which they learn may be slow
o May have difficulty maintaining their skills àwithout ongoing practice, they are likely to forget what they have learned
o May have difficulty generalizing skills learned in one setting or situation to another
o Difficulty combining a series of small skills into a larger one
o Create a collaborative effort with families
o Take advantage of assistive technology
§ Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) – unaided (gestures- or aided (computer software)
· Students with Multiple Disabilities
o Most students with multiple disabilities have an intellectual disability and a physical or sensory impairment
o Majority participate in general education activities
o Communicating can be a challenge
· Deaf-blindness
o Need to stay in touch with the environment
o Prompt students with special needs and typical learners to interact with each other
o Interpret behaviors
What accommodations can you make for students with sensory impairments?
· Students with Visual Impairments
o Cannot see well enough to use vision as a primary channel for learning without significant assistance
o Accommodations
§ Help students understand the difficulties that a student with a visual impairment deals with
o Planning Instruction
§ Orientation and mobility
§ May have to modify teaching
§ Learning tools
· Students with Hearing Loss
o Cannot hear well enough to use hearing as a primary channel for learning without significant assistance
o Accommodations
§ Many students struggle because their hearing loss affects their ability to understand language, which in turn affects their learning
§ Speech reading – watching others’ lips, mouth, and expressions
§ “Buddy system”
§ Learning Tools
What accommodations can you make for students with physical, medical, or health disabilities?
· Orthopedic impairments (OI) – diseases or disorders related to the bones, joints, and muscles
o Cerebral Palsy
§ Injury to the brain before, during, or after birth and results in poor motor coordination and abnormal motor patterns
o Muscular Dystrophy – A group of diseases that weakens the muscles
o Spinal Cord Injuries – injury occurs when the spinal cord is severely damaged or severed
o Teaching
§ Depends on the nature and severity of the disabilities
§ Meet the personal needs of the student
· Other health impairments (OHI) – medical and health conditions such as AIDS, seizure disorders, cancer, juvenile diabetes, and asthma
o Seizure Disorders
§ A physical condition in which the brain experiences sudden but brief changes in functioning
§ Generalized tonic-clonic seizures (grand mal seizures) – involves the entire body
§ Absence seizures (petit mal seizures) – does not involve the entire body
o Sickle-cell disease
§ When normally round blood cells are abnormally shaped like sickles which makes the blood thicker and prevents it from efficiently carrying oxygen to tissues
o AIDS
o Asthma
o Cancer
o Teaching
§ Often accommodations are to help the student make up for work missed
· Traumatic brain injury (TBI) – any insult to the brain caused by an external force
o
Outside Resources | |
Autism Society of America | www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer |
Association for Down Syndrome | www.nads.org |
A-Z to Deaf-Blindness | www.deafblind.com |
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