Special Education Teacher Professional Development SETPD Pilot Program Fitting the Elements of Readi

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Special Education TeacherProfessional
Development (SETPD) Pilot ProgramFitting the
Elements of Reading and the Components of the
SETPD Program Together for Special Education
Students Success
Presented byDiane Haager, Ph.D.California
State University, Los Angeles
California Departmentof Education
California TechnicalAssistance Center
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• Expert teachers will have the knowledge,
  strategies, and materials to judge what to do
  with particular children, not on the basis of
  ideology, but on the basis of observation, logic,
  knowledge of child development, knowledge of
  content, and evidence for what works.
• Louisa Moats

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Special education reading instruction is not
always specialized

• Two classic observation studies documented the
  lack of differentiated reading instruction in
  special education
• Moody et al., 2000
• Vaughn, Moody Schumm, 1998
• Special education is not always special. That
  is, it does not always mean individually
  tailored, remedial instruction on specific
  reading skills.
• Zigmond, 2003

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Dispelling special education myths

• The Modality/Learning Styles Myth
• The Alternative Method Myth
• whole word instruction versus phonics
• brain-based learning
• colored lenses
• other gimmicks
• The Theyll Never Get It Myth
• The Dont Hurt Their Self-Esteem Myth

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Why is SETPD important?

• Reading failure continues to be the single most
  common occurrence leading to special education
  referral for both native English speaking
  children and ELLs (August Siegel, 2006 Donovan
  Cross, 2002 Snow, Burns Griffin, 1998).
• Minorities are disproportionately represented in
  special education (Artiles Trent, 2000 Oswald
  et al., 2000)
• Most students who are identified after two or
  more years of experiencing reading difficulty
  fail to fully benefit from special education
  help, (Vaughn, Wanzek, Woodruff Linan-Thompson,
  2007)

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Overview

• What are the reading needs of students with
  disabilities and what are we currently doing to
  address them?
• What does high quality reading instruction look
  like for students with disabilities?
• What are the critical issues in providing
  effective leadership for special education
  reading instruction?

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How do we define reading difficulty?
RD occurs along a continuum
Severe dyslexia
Competent reader
Struggling reader
Reading disability Severe difficulty, over an
extended period of time, despite intervention
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A model of language and reading processing
Auditory analysis
Phonological representation
speech
Comprehension
Learning Disability
Sentence/ text processing
Word meaning
Visual analysis
print
(adapted from Catts Kamhi, 2005)
Visual representation
Discourse-level Processing
Perceptual Analysis
Word Recognition
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Factors that affect reading development for
students with LD

• Visual/spatial abilities
• Orthographic processing (RAN)
• Auditory discrimination
• Phonological/ phonemic awareness
• Cognitive ability
• Physical factors

• Language development (L-1 and L-2)
• Memory
• Attention
• Background experience
• Social-emotional factors

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Three Tiers of Reading Instruction
SETPD
Tier 3
4-6 need intensive intervention
Intensive and specialized instruction
Tier 2
15-40 need supplemental intervention
Differentiated instruction in core supplemental
instruction in small groups
Tier 1
Evidence-based core program and ongoing
assessment to monitor reading and language
learning for ALL students
Instruction for ALL students
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• If we were to walk into an exemplary special
  education reading lesson, what would it look
  like?
• Focus on essential skills
• Appropriate pacing of instruction
• Setting high expectations
• Maximizing time on task
• Small group size
• Strategic role of paraprofessionals
• Proactive behavior management

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Findings from observation studiesin special
education

• When students with disabilities are engaged in
  intensive, explicit instruction, they are more
  likely to achieve more. Many special education
  students, however, do not spend sufficient
  portions of time in intensive, explicit and
  engaging instruction.
• Brownell, Bishop, Gersten, Klingner, Penfield,
• Dimino, Haager, Menon Sindelar, 2008

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Knowledge of Special Education Teachers

• Big Picture SET were fairly knowledgeable about
  reading but struggled to enact it.
• Difficulty matching knowledge with appropriate
  practice
• Over-reliance on personal experiences
• Knowledge linked to accessible curriculum or
  school based support
• Preparation Reported lack of preparation in
  reading instruction

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Knowledge of Highly Effective Special Education
Teachers

• SET integrated multiple sources of knowledge to
  match purposeful instruction with student needs
• reading content expertise
• pedagogy
• multiple curricula
• assessment
• student

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Classroom Practice

• SET practices were emerging but uneven
• Delivered in a well managed environment
• Generally effective instructional practices
• Heavily Influenced by curricular support
• Uneven - within lessons and across components of
  reading

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Practices of Highly Effective Special Education
Teachers

• Practices were well-tuned, multi-faceted, highly
  engaging, purposeful and student driven
• Adjusted to meet students needs
• Multi-faceted
• Assessment driven
• Cohesive and consistent
• Highly engaging (continuous and intensive)
• Comprehensive
• Delivered within a learning community

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Where are we headed?

• Students learn what they spend time doing.
• Leinhardt, Zigmond Cooley, 1981
• so, lets make sure our special education
  environments are structured so that students
  spend sufficient time engaging in high-quality
  reading instruction, that is tailored to meet
  their intensive learning needs

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A message of hope

• It is possible and within our reach to provide
  special education instruction that accelerates
  learning for students with disabilities.

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Research Examples

• Explicit, intensive phonemic awareness and
  decoding instruction leads to gains in word
  reading and comprehension
• Torgesen, Alexander, Wagner, Rashotte, Voeller
  Conway, 2001
• Intensive intervention that focuses on both
  word-level and text-level processes is essential
  for students with LD
• Boardman et al., 2008
• Denton, Wexler, Vaughn Bryan, 2008
• Scammacca et al., 2007

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Research Examples

• A synthesis of intervention research showed that
  a combination of direct instruction (including
  such features as explicit instructions, detailed
  feedback, breaking a skill down, and making the
  task concrete) and strategy instruction (e.g.,
  elaborate explanations of process and purpose,
  modeling, teacher-student dialogue, and step by
  step prompts) to have the greatest effect on
  student outcomes.
• Swanson, 2001

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• What does high quality reading instruction look
  like for students with disabilities?
• What should we look for in special education
  instruction?

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Seven Instructional Principles

• Effective instruction is
• intensive
• explicit systematic
• coherent
• responsive
• engaging
• metacognitive
• structured for practice repetition

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What does intensive mean?

• Instruction that is
• purposeful and focused on target skills
• structured to maximize active responding
• Student responds about 11 times per minute--very
  active
• Structured to capture and maintain student
  attention with a rapid pace
• Well planned, with little to no down time
• Designed with systematic review

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What does explicit and systematic mean?

• States the objective clearly
• Gives clear directions
• Models every step
• Breaks activity down into steps
• Allows for practice of every step
• Moves on only when the most fragile reader has
  gotten it

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What does explicit and systematic mean?

• Skills are taught with frequency and consistency
• Instruction follows a step-by-step sequence that
  progresses from simple to complex
• Instruction is thorough

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What is appropriate practice and repetition?

• Task reinforces what was taught
• Task is sufficiently challenging
• Instruction provides sufficient repetition
• Instruction moves from guided to independent
  practice, with appropriate monitoring and feedback

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More on Guided Practice

• We Do It
• Active engagement of students in producing
  responses (completing task)
• Aware of students level of understanding
• Who needs re-teaching? All, some, or one?
• Teacher assesses choral responses, then peer
  practice, then individual responses
• Implement appropriate corrective feedback

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Attending to those who need reteaching
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What is lesson coherence?

• The lesson builds on previously taught concepts
• follows a good scope and sequence
• Lesson components align
• The instruction incorporates consistent cues and
  prompts

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What is responsive instruction?

• The teacher organizes instruction so there are
  frequent opportunities to evaluate student
  learning
• Feedback states what students did correctly and
  validates students responses
• The teacher strategically allows appropriate wait
  time
• The teacher consistently uses data to inform
  instruction
• Instruction continues based on students level of
  understanding

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How can teachers foster active engagement?

• Teacher talk fosters student motivation and
  interest
• Activities are appropriate lengths
• Teachers use methods for getting students
  involved (thumbs up, erase boards, choral
  responding, etc.)
• Teacher maximizes students opportunities to
  respond
• Teacher redirects students who are off task in a
  positive and efficient manner

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What is metacognitive instruction?

• The task encourages students to think actively
  about skill being taught
• The teacher explicitly teaches and then prompts
  students to self-correct
• The teacher explicitly prompts students to use
  strategies
• The teacher questions students about their use of
  strategies

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Leadership Issues

• Improving the knowledge base of special education
  teachers
• Systemic change
• More time, not less
• Group size
• Curriculum materials
• Fidelity of implementation
• Access to coaching (and preparing coaching force)
• Extensive and focused PD
• Assessment- pre/post for IEPs, program
  assessments, progress monitoring assessment

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Critical Questions for Team Planning

• What experiences will develop depth of knowledge
  for SETs?
• What internal structures, or business as usual,
  will need to change?
• Class size, time allocations, range of
  disabilities/skills, range of ages, etc.
• What points of resistance or challenges do you
  expect?
• How do you balance pacing issues speed up versus
  slow down instruction ?