Laura's Blog SPED 524

The Other Health Impairment category covers so many different disabilities.  In the article "Tourette Syndrome in the Classroom" the author gives an overview of what the disability is and what can be done in the classroom to assist students with this disorder.  Those with Tourette Syndrome (TS) experience involuntary movements or sounds that are called tics (Coffman, 2012, p. 46).  These behaviors can be fairly quiet and in some cases unnoticed by those around the student, such as flexing stomach muscles.  Other tics may be more disruptive, such as shouting out sounds. These tics may put a teacher on edge if he or she is not knowledgeable about TS.  The first urge may be to reprimand the student for these behaviors, or to try and set up a behavior modification plan to change the behaviors.  In this case it is important to know that the student is unable to stop the tics from happening.  Anxiety may make tics worse.  So it can be assumed that if ...

We all know that physical activity is good for us.  In this article, the authors seek to find out if physical activity provides any academic benefit to children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  In this study three kindergarten boys with ASD were evaluated on how physical activity effected their ability to complete a journal writing activity after circle time activities while in a general education classroom (Miramontez & Schwartz, 2015, p. 407). After a baseline was established, using the activities the teachers had normally utilized, a randomly selected activity was put in place.  Every day the teacher picked a piece of paper from a cup that had one of three options on it:  yoga, dance party, or reading a book (Miramontez & Schwartz, 2015, p. 408).  These activities took place during the last five minutes of circle time.  During the yoga option, teachers modeled yoga poses that the students picked from picture cards (Miramontez & Schwa...

Children with emotional and behavior disorders (EBD) seem to come to school with a lot on their plates.  The article I read aimed at looking at the family dynamic for children with EBD that were receiving services in a special education environment.  The authors were trying to see if struggles at home equated to struggles in the classroom for these students in either internalizing or externalizing behaviors.  Internalizing behavior are problems with depression or anxiety, whereas externalizing behaviors are aggression or defiant behavior.   Previous research, while in some instances examined the same idea, did not look specifically at students that were in a special education environment.  Within that environment other supports are in place that may not be available to other students.  In this study families answered questionnaires regarding family dynamics.  Questions centered around family organization, communication, partner relationship of care-...

The article, "Expanding Opportunities for Students with Intellectual Disability", examines how best to serve students in an inclusive environment.  The goal of the article is to provide suggestions on how to provide instruction to students with intellectual disabilities in a general education classroom.  Typically those that have intellectual disabilities start school in the general education classroom, but as time goes on more instruction is given by the special education team outside of the general education classroom (Giangreco, 2017, p 53).   There are six suggestions given on how to create a learning environment within the general education classroom that serves students of all abilities.  Some suggestions, such as see the person not the disability and individualize learning outcomes, are standard teaching practices (Giangreco, 2017, pp 54-55).  In this case, a real understanding of what a student's abilities are becomes even more important.  Creati...

     The article, "Life Impairments in Adults with Medication-Treated ADHD", looks at how adults with ADHD suffer not only educational impairments because of the disorder, but also overall lower quality of life.  The study looked at 105 adults ranging in age from 18-65.  All participants needed to be actively medicating their ADHD.  Once the individuals were selected for the study, each person was given an assessment to help them judge his or her satisfaction in work, interpersonal relationships, recreation, and global satisfaction.      These satisfaction scores looked at how the person felt ADHD effected each of these areas of his or her life.  The researchers were then able to determine how these factors translated to depression and anxiety.  Almost all participants indicated problems with work because of ADHD symptoms, with many also citing relationship difficulties.  Those participants that showed more problems with relat...