This issue of the Occasional Papers Series aims to draw attention to the use of storytelling as a medium for provoking dialogue about inclusive classrooms and school communities. It offers readers stories of classroom life that provide insights into understanding the complexities that make up the lives of children with disabilities, their…

The practicum was designed to increase the usefulness of psychoeducational data provided by the school psychologist for educational decision making concerning handicapped students at the elementary level. The first goal was to provide staffing committee members with psychoeducational data in a more useful form than data provided through…

The paper describes techniques of developing and implementing speech-language individualized education programs to speech/language impaired students by means of "whole class" language experiences in regular elementary classrooms. (Author/DB)

This module was developed as part of a federally funded study group project, to answer the question of how students with severe disabilities can actively participate in lessons within regular elementary classrooms alongside their nondisabled peers, while still meeting their individualized goals and objectives. The module presents a brief overview…

Knowledgeable teachers, enhanced environments, appropriate programs and materials, appropriate technology, adequate assessment, and sophisticated notions of individualization are suggested as factors that will provide a "least restrictive" environment for mainstreamed nonverbal handicapped children, as required by the Education for Handicapped…

The DURABLE (Discussing, Understanding, Reinforcing, Adapting, Building, Learning, Evaluating) Approach, an organizational intervention that is designed to facilitate implementation of individualized evaluation program (IEP) evaluation, is presented. The need for school psychologists to become actively involved in organizational-level matters in…

Examples are given of how teachers of students with hearing impairments can incorporate standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics into the mathematics curriculum. Possible adaptations for teaching measurement skills to students with hearing impairments in grades K-4 and patterns and functions in grades 5-8 are…

A study examined the behaviors exhibited by 17 teacher trainees with elementary school pupils identified as having special learning problems. These teacher student relationships were examined during a twice-weekly practicum and one full week of full-responsibility teaching. The trainees provided self-report data on specified behaviors and…

Two student self-management techniques, student charting and student selection of instructional activities, were applied to ongoing data-based program modification. Forty-two elementary school resource room students were assigned randomly (within teacher) to one of three treatment conditions: Teacher Chart-Teacher Select Instructional Activities…

This guide provides practical and specific step-by-step methods for developing and using curriculum-based assessment (CBA) in an educational setting. It is organized into six basic skills chapters. Chapter 1, "Assessment: An Overview" (Carroll J. Jones), includes the basic reasons for assessment and types of special education assessment, as well…

The accuracy of predictions of future student performance on the basis of graphing data on semi-logarithmic charts and equal interval graphs was examined. All 83 low-achieving students in grades 3 to 6 read randomly-selected lists of words from the Harris-Jacobson Word List for 1 minute. The number of words read correctly and words read…

The curriculum guide was developed to serve hearing impaired children at the Kendall Demonstration School elementary/middle school in Washington, D.C. An introductory section explains the purposes of the curriculum which provides a comprehensive format for the development of all areas of auditory and speech skills, i.e., audition, speechreading,…

In special education, a merger between assessment and instruction is mandated by Federal law (PL 94-142), wherein teachers of handicapped pupils are required to specify individualized educational programs that include procedures for assessing students' progress toward goal attainment. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of…

The purpose of this study was to explore whether, and if so how, ongoing measurement and evaluation procedures affect the instruction that special educators provide and the educational decisions that they make. Eighteen experimental group teachers employed specific continuous evaluation procedures while 21 contrast group teachers employed…

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the effects of two factors, the data base used for instructional decision making and the structure of instruction, on student achievement. The dependent data were the number of words read correctly by 117 elementary school students on three basal reading passages. Students were rank ordered in two ways:…