Different types of students with various special needs are present in classrooms, and the instructor must take these into account when planning lessons and activities. (Wilmshurs and Brue, 2010). Appropriate interventions are needed for the various special needs in the classroom so that the students can profit from the learning process. (Birsh and Wolf, 2012). These students' special requirements will probably arise in class and will need the teacher's attention. (Jorgensen 1998). The intervention plan for a special education class was covered in the article along with its justification, description of the program, assessment, and conclusion. Special education class is one that cares of the special needs of students. Special needs in the classroom include learning incapacities, communication illnesses, emotive and social disorders. These students are likely to develop special needs are likely to benefit from additional educational services like use of diverse methods of instruction, the usage of technology, a precisely adapted instruction space, or an education resource room. These students are also assessed to determine their strengths and weakness. Their classroom placements, resources and goals can only be attained through a needs assessment. The article will present an intervention plan for special education plan for children suffering from learning disabilities.
Rational for the intervention plan
The children in the classroom all have different needs because of their individual difference Turnbull (2002). The intervention plan will allow each child to get a goal-directed Program that differentiates the child from other children in the classroom. The intervention program was developed to assist learners experiencing learning difficulties because these learners were always remaining behind during the learning process.
The intervention plan will include conducting a needs assessment to determine the actual needs of the students, organizing the content to be taught according to the needs, selecting appropriate teaching methodology to be used in the classroom. The teacher will then assess the intervention program to determine areas that need amendments and improvements. The intervention decision was made because the children experiencing learning g difficulties were not getting the content taught during the learning process, which in turn affected their learning process (Priscilla, 2002).
The intervention plan will allow the teacher to offer education services that are designed for each child in the special education classroom (Priscilla, 2002). Apart from this, the teachers will be in a position of conduction research-based activities in the classroom to test the different levels of intelligence displayed in the classroom (Blanchett, 2009). The teacher will also be in a position of testing the effectiveness of the teaching methods used in the classroom under the developed intervention (Tejeda-Delgado, 2009).
The intervention plan will allow the teachers to teach using diverse teaching resources that can help the learners grasp the content presented to them without experiencing many challenges (Bos and Vaughn, 2005). Most the methods used in the teaching process allows the child to interact with the content taught in the classroom. Moreover, the plan will allow the teachers to get close to the students during the learning process and assist the children to interact and learn without fearing to discover knowledge on their own. Finally, the students will benefit from the program because the teachers will organize content to be taught where they will only be taught some subjects at a time to reduce the amount of content presented to them that might interfere with the learning process (Bos and Vaughn, 2005).
The teacher will use the findings from the intervention plan to develop different lesson plan for the different lesson plan for the different children in the classroom. The content will be modified to fit the level of the learners, which in turn make learning more effective and motivating(Bos and Vaughn, 2005). Fin ally, various teaching methodologies will also be adopted to fit the learners in the classroom.
Program description
Children with learning disabilities often struggle with different learning competence introduced in the classroom (Mastropieri and Scruggs, 2011). For example, intention program for children with writing disability will include strategy teaching, dictation, objective setting, as well as process writing. Teaching technique in this classroom would include approaches for preparation and writing scripts. Other two reading techniques will be used to revising and editing texts and other studies two studies will be used for expansion, writing, and reviewing (Mercer, Mercer, and Pullen, 2011).
The teacher will practice dictation where the students will dictate their composition to avoid forgetting what they wanted to write because of fatigue. The children who usually record their composition on tape tend to improve their writing skills compared to those who just write without dictating on tape. The teacher will then develop specific goals and provide the students with the objectives. These objectives provide the students with the direction they will use in practicing their writing skills. The learners will be allowed to practice writing through the writing of comparisons, developing text materials and all these will help the children develop their writing skills (Brownell, Smith, Crockett, and Griffin, 2012).
At the begging of the class, the teacher needs to establish the needs of the students in the classroom. Within the classroom, the teacher will identify the students who require special needs. The teacher will provide a verity of teaching methods in the classroom and not separate the students in the classroom. The teacher will then determine the best approach to fulfilling the needs of the learners. The teacher will then conduct differentiation techniques when teaching to allow the children with learning disabilities grasp the content presented. The differential instruction will assist the learners to gain provincial curricular outcomes because the different learning styles are tackled in the approach (Mastropieri and Scruggs, 2011). The differentiated teaching helps instructors offer unsophisticated curricula for the learners to accommodate the student’s learning disabilities. Finally, the teachers will be in a position of differentiating curriculum in content, process, and product (Mastropieri and Scruggs, 2011).
Finally, the teachers will implement the use of different strategies like Graphic organizers, which are visual aids like mind maps, graphs, clusters that help the student understand and represent abstract ideas in the learning process (Mastropieri and Scruggs, 2011). Some of the teaching activities that will be used in the classroom include open classroom discussion, brainstorming procedures, discussion groups, performing different tasks such as reading, writing, answering questions and making summaries of what they have read in the classroom.
Conclusion
Assessment is an integral part of the learning process or any program intervention implement in the school for children with special abilities. The assessment process used in the program is often used to determine whether the project objective has been achieved. The assessment will determine the needs of the students. The assessment will also determine the effectiveness of the program. The findings of the test will give the teachers an insight into the learning process in the classroom. The collected information will be used to improve the process of instructions. Finally, the test will also help the instructors formulate the next step in teaching because it will give a picture of the learners after instructions.
Assessment
Assessment is the process of documenting and collecting information regarding the students’ performance with the aim of making a decision concerning their learning process. It id the systematic process the teacher conducts to determine the level of understanding of students in their classrooms (Carless, 2015). The process is mainly conducted to improvise the learning process in the given context. The assessment information in the classroom can be obtained through directly examining learners work to measure the realization of learning consequences or the teacher can use the information obtained to make inferences about the learning process (Phelps, 2007). The assessment process used in the classroom is usually used interchangeably with the test, although they are never limited to the tests the teachers use in the classroom. The assessment process used by the teachers can center on the distinct student, the studying community or an academic program implemented in the school (Carless, 2015).
The assessment process in most cases is a continuous process. Where it is frequently used in establishing quantifiable and well-defined student education products for education, provisioning an adequate volume of learning chances to attain these consequences, executing a methodical technique of collecting, scrutinizing and decoding evidence to establish how well the learners learning process matches objectives, and using the collected material to alert upgrading in learner learning(Carless, 2015).
In the program intervention, Placement assessment will be conducted to place students depending on what they already know from their previous learning experience. The assessment will be conducted before the actual instruction on takes place in the classroom to determine what the learners already know. The test will only be administered ones at the beginning of the class to help identify areas of weakness that the learners with special needs have. Placement assessments are conducted using placement tests, which are used to measure the student level of understanding. Therefore, in an intervention program, placement tests what the learners with disabilities have with the aim of helping them improve their own learning.
Both teachers and their learners will carry out formative assessment all through the intervention program with the aim of determining areas that require improvement. The assessment is usually used to aid teach (Priscilla, 2002). The assessment might be a teacher or the learner and the feedback obtained from the assessment is not usually used for grading purposes. The assessment used will take different forms, which include diagnostic tests, homogeneous tests, cross-examine, oral inquiry, and the draft work. These kinds of assessment will be carried out concurrently with the instruction as the teacher interacts with the students. The aim of the formation assessment is to determine if the learners understand what they have been taught before the final summative assessment (Allen, 2004). Thus, in the intervention program, the teachers will use the assessment to determine the weakness of the program.
Summative assessment is usually conducted at the end of a program or project. The summative assessments are normally used in a learning context to allocate students grades. Thus, the summative assessment turns out to be evaluative. In most cases, they are used to summarize what the learners have attained at the end of the program (Suskie, 2004). At the end of the intervention program, the teachers will conduct a summative assessment, which is usually conducted at the end of a program to determine what the students have covered and allocate those grades. They will be carried out to ascertain what the learners have learned in the program. The assessment will take the form of tests, exams, or project performed by the students. The teachers will use the test to measure whether the students with special needs have passed or failed at the end of the program. In this case, it will determine if the students with language disabilities have improved in their learning.
Apart from this, the teachers can use the Criterion-referenced assessment to measure the performance of the students based on the objectives of the program (Priscilla, 2002). This kind of assessment is often used in the program but it cannot measure the competence of the learner. Finally, the teachers will use the Norm-referenced assessment to compare the student’s performance in the program and make decisions concerning the program. Assessments used in the program will affect the decision-making process thus the teacher will consider communicating with the parents together with other teachers with the aim of assisting the learners. Assessment inspires the teachers to measure whether they are attaining their objectives. The assessment conducted before the program was initiated was used to provide the teachers a diagnostic feedback on the level of the learners. The findings obtained helped the teachers figure out what the students needed in the program (Priscilla, 2002).
Conclusion
Assessment is the process of obtaining information from the students with the aim of measuring their performance and determines the areas that require improvements (Earl, 2003). The assessment used in the program drives instruction by the teaching checking the students through instruction and the teachers constantly revise their instructional methods which in turn improves learning. The assessment used in the program drives the learning process by sending the right information concerning their learning process.
Assessment findings also helped the teachers develop an understanding of what the students actually know and how to improve what they do not know. The assessments conducted in the program will help both the teachers and the students understand the kind of knowledge needed to improve their teaching and learning process (Vergis and Hardy, 2010).
The assessment process informs the students and their parents on the student learning progress. The effective assessment provides information on what the students really need to understand the program being implemented. Thus, the assessment conducted must match the objectives and the content presented (Boud and Falchikov 2006). Assessment is important because it not only provides guidance to the development of learners in the program but also it monitors and uninterruptedly develops the quality of the intervention program.
References
Allen, M.J. (2004). Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass.
Boud, D. & Falchikov, N. ( 2006). Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, Vol. 31, No.
4, p. 399-413 This page explores the role of assessment in higher education.
Bos, C. S. & Vaughn, S. (2005). Strategies for teaching students with learning and behavior
problems. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Birsh, J., R., & Wolf, B., eds. (2011). Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, Third
Edition. Baltimore: Brookes.
Blanchett, W. J. (2009). A retrospective examination of urban education: From brown to the
resegregation of African Americans in special education—it is time to "go for broke". Urban Education, 44(4), 370–388.
Brownell, M. T.,Smith, S. J.,Crockett, J.B.,&Griffin, C. C.(2012). Inclusive instruction:
Evidence based practices for teaching students with disabilities. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Carless, D.(2015) Excellence in University Assessment: Learning from Award-Winning Practice.
London: Routledge.
Earl, L (2003). Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student
Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwin Press
Jorgensen, C.M. (1998). Restructuring high school for all students: Taking inclusion to the next
level. Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks Publishing co.
Mastropieri, M. A., & Scruggs, T. E. (2002). Effective instruction for special education (3rd ed.).
Austin, TX: PRO-‐ED.
Turnbull, R (2002). Exceptional Lives: Special Education in Today's Schools (3rd ed.)Merrill
Prentice Hall. New Jersey.
Tejeda-Delgado, M. (2009). Teacher efficacy, tolerance, gender, and years of experience and
special education referrals. International Journal of Special Education, 24(1), 112–119.
Priscilla P (2002). The History of Special Education. Rethinking Schools. 16 (3). 45-69
Phelps, R. P.(2007) Standardized Testing Primer. New York: Peter Lang
Mercer, C.D.,Mercer, A.R., & Pullen, P. C. (2011).Teaching students with
learning problems(8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Suskie, Linda (2004). Assessing Student Learning. Bolton, MA: Anker.
Wilmshurst, L., & Brue, A. W. (2010). The complete guide to special education (2nd ed.). San
Francisco: Jossey-Bas
Vergis A, Hardy K (2010). Principles of Assessment: A Primer for Medical Educators in the
Clinical Years. The Internet Journal of Medical Education. 1 (1). 21-30
