Chapter+7+Notes

Chapter 7: Teaching and Assessing Students with Special Needs

This chapter focused on the needs of three groups of special needs students: students with learning disabilities, students with behavioural disorders, and English language learners. This particular chapter focused on three big ideas that are imperative to special needs students ability to learn new content and being assessed fairly and accurately for their learning by teachers.

The Big Ideas This chapter reviews three of the “big ideas”:

Big Idea #1 “Assessment serves different purposes at different times; it may be used to find out what students already know and can do; it may be used to help students improve their learning; or it may be used to let students, and their parents, know how much they have learned within a prescribed period of time.” Along these lines Cooper stresses the importance of early assessment for special needs students to identify areas of of need early on in courses so that these needs can be adequately addressed in instructional planning. Additionally it provides teachers with valuable information that signifies how much support students will need (accommodation, modification, substitution). Essentially we are using the information to decide if students can work at grade level if provided with accommodation. If not recommendations can be made to special education departments on how to move forward in the best interest of the student in question.

Big Idea #3 “Assessment must be balanced, including oral and performance as well as written tasks, and be flexible in order to improve learning for all students.” In support of this big idea Cooper demonstrates the importance of differentiated assessment and instruction for special needs students. This means that teachers should offer assessments that support students different strengths and needs while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the course.

Big Idea #8 “Grading and reporting student achievement is a responsive, human process that requires teachers to exercise their professional judgement.” What seems to be important for special needs students in this big idea is that teachers do not begin to use their professional judgement and begin to assess “effort” over “achievement.” At times as educators there is a tendency to begin to evaluate how much effort a special needs student is putting into activities in order to not further damage the students self-esteem. Cooper maintains that there are three principles that teachers must follow when assessing special needs students:


 * 1) performance standards, as represented by rubric levels must represent consistent measures of achievement for all students
 * 2) The curriculum grade level at which the student is working must be clearly communicated to the student and parents.
 * 3) The amount of support provided to enable a student to achieve success on a given task or during a term must be made clear to the student and must be communicated to parents.

Questions Still Remaining:
 * 1) When students with special needs are still struggling with accommodations and need modifications how and who makes these decisions?
 * 2) How can we ensure that we are providing “equity of opportunity” for all students in our classroom? Cooper suggests that special needs students should be given additionally opportunity to demonstrate skills and evidence of learning. Should non special needs students who are unsuccessful also be given the same opportunity?