Perkins Activity and Resource Guide - Chapter 4: Functional Academics: Second Edition: Revised and Updated

By Mary Jane Clark

This chapter is designed to address the needs of individuals with visual and multiple disabilities who may not be able to follow all parts of a traditional academic curriculum. As educators, our primary goal should be to provide students with skills that will be of use throughout their lives. Skill acquisition often takes longer for students with multiple disabilities, and they are not always able to generalize them into other settings. For this reason it is important to identify skills that will help prepare students to lead the most independent lives possible and to provide many opportunities to practice them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780988171343

Book preview

Massachusetts

Contents     

CHAPTER 1

Teaching Children with Multiple Disabilities: An Overview

CHAPTER 2

Foundations of Learning: Language, Cognition, and Social Relationships

CHAPTER 3

Motor Development: Gross and Fine Motor Skills

CHAPTER 4

Functional Academics

CHAPTER 5

Vocational Skills for All Ages

CHAPTER 6

Daily Living Skills

CHAPTER 7

Independent Living Skills

CHAPTER 8

Sensory Integration

CHAPTER 9

Developmental Music

CHAPTER 10

Orientation and Mobility

CHAPTER 11

Enhancing the Use of Functional Vision

CHAPTER 12

Adaptive Technology: Handmade Solutions for Unique Problems

CHAPTER 13

Techniques for Lifting Students Safely: Body Mechanics and Transfers

CHAPTER 14

Assistive Devices and Equipment

GLOSSARY

INDEX

CHAPTER 4

Functional Academics

by Mary Jane Clark, M.Ed., COMS

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the following individuals who read this chapter and offered ideas, information and helpful criticism: Lisa Jacobs, Marianne Riggio, Nancy Haley, Alex Truesdell, Priscilla Chapin, Kimberly Carey, Chrys Peralta, Kim Charlson, Cynthia O'Connell, and Dianne Curry, and Mary McCarthy.

Chapter Outline

Introduction

Educational Guidelines

Integrated Skills

Laundry

Cooking

Grocery Shopping

Phone Calls

Eating Out

Daily Journal

Budgeting

Mathematics

Basic Number Concepts

One-to-One Correspondence

Counting Cups

Rote Counting

Give Me Game

How Many in Cups

Counting by Fives

More or Less

Money Skills

Money Bags

Coin Identification

The Price Is Right

Time Concepts and Calendar Skills

Daily Calendar

Personal Calendar

Time

Braille and Reading

Find the Objects/Beginning Sound Identification

Texture Matching

Familiar Name Match-up

Finger Isolation

Beginning or End

How Many Cells?

Which Letter Is Different?

Sorting Braille Letters

Copy Cat

Alphabet Books

Letter Confusion

Supplemental Activities

Spill the Beans

Race Through the Month

Calendar Bingo

Memory

Braille Lotto

Read Across

Go Fish

Initial Consonant Activity

Little Fish Card Game

Alphabet Line

Build a Word

Stump the Class

Resources

Suggested Materials

Sources for Braille and Large Print Children's Books

Distributors

Developmental Screening Checklists

Annotated Resources

Tools For Assessment

Bibliography

Introduction

This chapter is designed to address the needs of individuals with visual and multiple disabilities who may not be able to follow all parts of a traditional academic curriculum. As educators, our primary goal should be to provide students with skills that will be of use throughout their lives. Skill acquisition often takes longer for students with multiple disabilities, and they are not always able to generalize them into other settings. For this reason it is important to identify skills that will help prepare students to lead the most independent lives possible and to provide many opportunities to practice them.

Finding a wide range of activities in which to teach and practice new skills may at times be challenging. It is most effective to teach skills in a natural setting (e.g., money concepts while shopping), however, it is often not possible to provide students with a day filled with real-life learning situations. The most practical approach is one that integrates teaching skills in natural settings and incorporates lessons and activities from the standard curriculum.

As educators we often struggle to find ways to make lessons accessible to students with visual and multiple disabilities. If a student is unable to follow the scope, sequence, and pace of a standard academic curriculum, it does not mean that academics must be totally eliminated from the educational plan. One should not view it as an all-or-nothing situation. In actuality, a student's ability to access the standard curriculum is only limited by the creativity of the teacher and the educational team.

Traditional textbook lessons are not effective for many students, yet we must find a way to allow them to access as much of the curriculum as possible. For example, although a student may not be able to follow or retain the sequential information presented in a history textbook, he should not be excluded from exposure to the information, ideas, or concepts included in these lessons. In most cases it requires a shift in the way we view what we are currently doing with our students. For example, cooking activities are a great way of integrating math, reading, and science concepts. Daily calendar activities teach math skills and are a natural way to incorporate social studies into the curriculum through identifying and exploring holidays and customs. For other students, social studies, science, and geography may be addressed through a weekly news magazine for children such as Weekly Reader or Time for Kids. These weekly magazines are available on different academic levels and provide a way for students to be exposed to concepts from the standard curriculum.

This chapter combines activities for teaching traditional subjects (reading, braille, math) with the functional application of integrated skills. Some activities may not be functional in and of themselves, however, they help to develop preliminary skills needed to perform more functional activities. Braille reading and writing activities, for example, may be used to reinforce other skill areas. For a student who is not yet reading braille letters, full braille cells (the for contraction) may be used to work on teaching skills such as basic counting or left-to-right concepts. For others, braille writing may be a way to work on time on task, finger strength, and finger isolation rather than on the