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Courtney Krueger
Professor DiScala
Curriculum in EC Education
October 23, 2018
Choice Activity 2: Special Education Article

The article “What Are Teachers Doing to Accommodate for Special Needs Students in

the Classroom?” shows results from an experiment done that surveyed teachers in a school

district to find out information on how special needs students are accommodated for. The study

was done by having teachers fill out anonymous questionnaires, they ended up getting 42

questionnaires back. One of the questions they asked was what their experience with special

education students were, only 2% of them said they had no experience. Between in class

experiences, college work, training and workshops most of these teachers are familiar with how

to deal with special education. The results showed that almost all of the classes had over 21

students and 88% of the classes had 1 or more special needs student in them. Most teachers

reported having students with mild disabilities and a little less than half of them reported Severe

Behavior Handicaps (SBH) and Multiple Handicaps (MH). “When asked how often they planned

lessons for special needs students with a special education staff member, they indicated the

following: 41%, never do; 35% sometimes throughout the month; 3% daily”. The majority of the

teachers reported having worked with individual students on a daily or weekly basis, both special

students and regular students. The reports showed a similar effort for teaching to individual

learning styles of both the special and regular students. When asked if they feel they meet the

needs of their special education students, the majority of the respondents said they felt somewhat

successful at doing so. “It is notable that most teachers indicated that they create and provide

daily curriculum modifications in their classroom for identified special needs students without
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assistance from another professional.” Teachers also reported changing testing when it comes to

special education students and doing things like altering the time, length and mode of the test.

These results show that teachers seem to put a lot of effort into making things easier for special

education students and ensuring that they get an adequate education. “More than half of the

teachers indicated that either daily or frequently throughout the week they perform the following:

alter room arrangements, provide individualized instruction and resources, accommodate to

student learning styles, record directions, change the length and difficulty level of assignments,

and give prompts for the special needs student”. They also typically change their curriculum in

order to accommodate these children. Overall, these results are very encouraging because they

show that teachers are actually making an effort to include special needs students in their

classrooms and curriculum and these accommodations seems to be benefiting everyone in the

class.

This article related to the early childhood profession because accommodating special

needs students is a very important part of being a teacher. There are a lot of students that have

disabilities and as a teacher is it our job to make sure those students are given equal learning

opportunities and are given extra help if needed. I think that knowing how to deal with these

children is very important for someone in this field because you are going to have to either way,

so being prepared is something that will help you to teach those students to your best ability.

This article shows how teachers really make an effort for these students and how it is possible to

effectively teach them in an environment with typical students. Often times, special needs

students are pulled out of normal classes, but this study shows that integrating them into the

classroom can be effective if done properly. This article also emphasizes the important of special

education and why we learn about it in education classes and why teachers are trained to deal
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with this kind of stuff. Seeing these students be able to work effectively with other students due

to the efforts of their teachers is a real encouragement because that is something I hope to do in

my future classroom.

Discussion questions:

Do you think that including special needs students into classrooms with typical students is a

beneficial thing?

Do you think that this study is an accurate portrayal of how special need students are handled in

classrooms?

Do you think teachers can be doing anything more to help special needs students?

Website: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=ejie
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Works Cited

Stevens, Brenda. Everington, Caroline. Kozar-Kocsis, Stacy. “What Are Teachers Doing

to Accommodate for Special Needs Students in the Classroom?” Electronic Journal for Inclusive

Education, Volume 1, Number 6, 2002.