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Accommodations and Mods for Special Education Students

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Describe 10 accommodations and/or modifications used to assist students with physical and/or health impairments. Describe them in detail and then evaluate them according to research findings from a minimum of five references.

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Solution Summary

Difference between accommodations and modifications in Special Education - ten adjustments to instruction commonly made for students with physical and/or health impairments, with commentary indicating if there is reason to expect that there is research on the adjustment. Web-based references, with specific quotes pulled to support and explain specific adjustments described.

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To approach addressing this assignment, I suggest that you first search the Web, using any search engine you prefer (I used Google), with the following search string: research studies on special education modification effectiveness, or similar words. Look through the hits you get from scholarly sources, and skim several to see what they have to say that you can use. You are looking for two things: first, scholarly references that you can cite for the eventual response you will submit, and second, the ten modifications you have to describe.

I skimmed the following sites, all scholarly studies or meta-analyses of studies:
http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/06_01_04.pdf
http://nichcy.org/research/summaries - this is a portal page with several useful links organized by disability, or modification
http://wordpress.ed.pacificu.edu/educ674/files/2011/08/Gersten-Designing-Research.pdf
http://www.education.gov.uk/complexneeds/modules/Module-1.1-Understanding-the-child-development-and-difficulties/All/downloads/m01p010c/II.teaching_strategies%20including_aspects_of_II.pdf
http://www.ehow.com/list_6402780_effective-strategies-special-education-students.html
http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/curriculum_modification
http://mheresearch.com/assets/products/a5771bce93e200c3/DI_Special_Ed_Aug_2010.pdf
http://nichcy.org/schoolage/iep/iepcontents/specialeducation

All of these links provide articles and papers which discuss this assignment theme: how effective (or ineffective) various modifications have proved to be, as assessed by various research studies. As you can see by reviewing these links, there is some variation in results in study outcomes, depending on the modifications employed, or studied, by the researchers.

It is worth mentioning here that the special education category of student that your assignment addresses (physical and/or health handicaps or impairments) encompasses a huge variety of disabling conditions, from deafness and blindness to mild/moderate/severe injury or birth defects, disease or genetic conditions, and even including things such as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD (Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder), among others.

That being the case, there are a huge number of modifications that you could potentially cite and describe for this group of Special Education clients.

1. For those students who are visually impaired, reading materials aloud, or recording materials/allowing recording devices to be played back later for additional study is one possible adaptation. EVALUATION: This adaptation is one that permits the student to function better in the classroom setting, in obtaining the material covered in a format that they can process. As explained below, adaptations are clearly helpful to the student in coping with their disability, and is not one of the questionable modifications to curriculum that the research studies address for improved student academic performance.

2. Likewise, for hearing disabled children, a possible adaptation could be to provide written scripts of all spoken lesson materials, or even a sign-language adept instructor or paraprofessional. EVALUATION: This adaptation is one that permits the student to function better in the classroom setting, in obtaining the material covered in a format that they can process. As explained below, adaptations are clearly helpful to the student in coping with their disability and are not one of the questionable modifications to curriculum that the research studies address.

3. For students for whom writing is not possible, handouts with the lesson content, or recorded lessons, would be an appropriate adaptation. EVALUATION: This adaptation is one that permits the student to function better in the classroom setting in obtaining the material covered in a format that they can process. As explained below, adaptations are clearly helpful to the student in ...

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