Unit 4: Curriculum for students with ID

4.1. Curriculum Designing for Students with Intellectual Disability

4.2. Personal, social, functional academic and occupational, recreational skills

4.3. Curriculum development for pre-primary, primary and secondary levels

4.4. Curricular adaptation -accommodation, modification for inclusive settings

4.5. Curriculum evaluation process.

4.1 Curriculum Designing for Students with Intellectual Disability

The curricular content of children with Intellectual disability requires a different focus. Due to the intellectual impairment, they cannot study like the other disabled children upto high school or beyond and hence the curricular focus here should be function oriented. This demands content as well as the process planned differently, considering each child with the unique characteristics, individualized educational programming (IEP) is required for each retarded child with the objective to achieve independence in his functioning in the age appropriate activities.

There are different approaches used and found successful for students with Intellectual disability.

 Ideally, in special education, as in regular education, the curriculum should be derived from an analysis of the needs of society. Therefore, a good curriculum should focus on imparting social competencies to children with Intellectual disability so that they may perform as independently as possible in the community. With the trend toward integrated education, the curriculum for mildly retarded children is generally an adaptation of the regular education curriculum with a focus on vocational education. This training allows for appropriate job placement of the child when he/she grows up. These curricula include functional reading, writing, arithmetic, time, travel money and other related skills. Generalization or transfer of classroom learning to application of skills in natural environments is an important aspect of these curricula, as Intellectual disability children often do not automatically generalize the skills they have learned.
Curricula used with children who are moderately and severely retarded emphasize training is functional activities. The content of the curricula are chosen from among the various tasks that have a high probability of being required in day-to-day living. These tasks include personal, social, occupational and recreational activities. Academic skills are incorporated when the children have the ability to learn them.
Behavioural approaches for increasing desirable Behaviours and decreasing undesirable Behaviours are currently in practice in most of the special educational units. The methods used include task analysis, modeling, shaping, chaining, prompting and fading and reinforcement. For the past two decades, behaviour modification techniques, based on operant conditioning principles have been widely popular and implemented in many school systems all over the world. These applications included aversive and non-aversive techniques. The use of aversive techniques were highly criticized as unethical. As rightly pointed out by Kazdin (1975) the target behaviour may be eliminated by aversive techniques, the consequences resulting directly form punishment may be worse than the original behaviour. Considering such views, `gentle teaching’ was introduced. This included concepts and processes such as ecological manipulation, errorless learning, environmental engineering, teaching which considers modality strengths, and individualization and flexibility with the learner and staff. Special teachers in India are updated with such current concepts and trends through periodic in-service training workshops, to enable them to adapt teaching methods suitably.

4.2 Personal, social, functional academic and occupational, recreational skills

Personal skills
Personal skills include eating, drinking, toileting, bathing, dressing and grooming. However, to perform these activities, other skills such as motor (gross motor and fine motor) and language and communication skills are also required. Take the example - take water from the water filter and drink. The girl has to walk to the kitchen, identify glass and take the glass, open the tap (finger grasp) fill the water, close the tap and drink. Another example is when the family goes to their friend’s house and the girl feels thirsty, she has to tell her mother (communication) that she needs water. Therefore, we need to remember that skill areas are not isolated, but they all overlap.

Eating and drinking

• Give opportunity to children to understand that we eat food when we feel hungry and we drink water when we feel thirsty.
• Use lunch time and break time to teach.
• Let children identify their lunch boxes/bags. After completing the meals, let them take care of their belongings.
• Ask parents to give a plate and glass for each student which can be kept in school.
• Prepare a duty chart indicating the name of the student and the activity to be performed.

Specific skill related points

Drinking:

• Use a cup/glass with handles on both sides if the child has difficulty in holding the glass.
• Take one fourth of water in the glass in the initial stages of teaching and later increase the water level.
• Use fruit juice, or buttermilk (in addition to water) while teaching drinking. Child’s choice of drink motivates him to drink.
• Give a small jug/bottle with less water while teaching pouring water into glass for drinking. Eating:
• Begin teaching independent eating with non-sticky food items like poori/dosa.
• See that the children eat chapatti with curry, dosa/idli with sambar/chatni; rice and dall/curry and other items to be eaten with side dish. Often it is noticed that children with Intellectual disability have difficulty in taking proper proportion of the food along with the side dish. They tend to eat curry and chapatti or rice separately.
• Before teaching the student to mix and eat rice, mix rice and curry/dall and make small balls for student to pick up with fingers and eat. If he needs physically guide by placing your hand on top of his right hand and help in picking. Be behind the child so that your right hand and his right hand are in same direction.
• Tell students what they are eating during training.
• See that you do not serve all the food in the plate at a time. Serve a little. Name the food items. After he finishes the food first served, ask the student whether he would like to be served more food
• Tell the parents to give opportunity to their son/daughter to ask for food and also which item he/she wants. Generally parents serve the rice/chapatti with all side dishes and keep in front of the child, not giving him a choice. Before serving, if we ask the child to name the food items, the child will be able to associate the name to the food item in the long run. It facilitates learning language.
• Eating activity also involves washing and wiping hands, washing plate and glass, tiffin box and wiping table. These activities should also be taught to students as part of training in eating skills.

Toileting skills: Teaching of toileting skills should happen at appropriate time in school and at home.

• Teaching privacy is an important step in teaching toileting skills. Always remember to teach the student to close the toilet door while he uses the toilet. When you are teaching him to remove pants to use the toilet or wear pants after using toilet, see that you teach him with door closed.
• Make an effort to teach him to unfasten. In case, it is beyond the students capacity to learn, use adaptations such as elastic velcro in place of buttons/hooks.
• Some children refuse/hesitate to use the toilet with the fear of falling. You can fix the handles on either side of the walls in the toilet so that the child can hold the handles and sit without fear.
• Washing after defecation, pouring water/flushing toilet, washing hands after toileting are part of toileting skills and to be taught to the students.
• Train independent use of left hand for cleaning after toileting when adult pours water. When he perfects that train in pouring water by himself using right hand. It he can not do both together adapt by attaching hosepipe for use by right hand.

Bathing skills: Teaching of bathing skills is generally done at home by parents/family members as it may not be possible for teachers to teach bathing skills in day care centers. Inform parents/family members on the following points:

• It is always important to see that children select and take their clothes and towel to the bathroom before they take bath. This activity will help in identifying their own clothes and naming of the clothes.
• Children should be allowed to mix cold water and hot water to check the required temperature.
• Privacy needs to be maintained while training in taking bath and wearing clothes.
• Initially sponge can be used for applying soap on the body to avoid more usage of soap or slipping of soap from hands.
• Use a napkin or small towel fixed to rings at the two edges for cleaning the back for those children who have difficulty in reaching the back with hands.

Brushing: This activity can be taught in schools after lunch to those children who have difficulty in brushing teeth.

• Thicken the brush handle with cloth/plaster/fix a wood handle for holding in case there is a need for good gripping.
• Use mirror as far as possible (standing in front of the mirror) while training children in brushing.
• Initially children may eat the paste. A little paste swallowed does not harm children. Gradually train to spit.
• Give a small mug or glass of water for gargling after brushing teeth.
• Teach children to identify their brush, and paste. Teach squeezing the paste from the tube, as the last step as it needs fine motor coordination. Waste of paste should be avoided.
• Children should also be taught to brush their teeth without reminder as it is expected of any non-retarded child above the age of 6 years.

Dressing skills: Dressing activities include removing and wearing clothes including unzipping/zipping, unbuttoning, buttoning, unhooking and hooking and tying lace/ribbon.

•  Use stool/chair/box (size depending on the height of children) to sit while teaching children to remove or wear pants. For example the child removes pants upto knee level and sits on the stool, or box. He can remove the pants easily without having to balance on one foot. Often children with Intellectual disability have problems in balancing on one foot and may fall. In case of children with cerebral palsy with Intellectual disability, this method of teaching is very useful.
• First teach removing of clothes after unfastening (by trainer) and then wearing of clothes. 
•  Use large buttons on shirts while teaching unbuttoning and buttoning of clothes.
• Teach fastening of buttons, zips, hooks directly on self after wearing clothes rather than teaching using frames. If needed, give physical prompt by standing behind the child and extending hands.
• Use stickers/labels already on shirts, banians or pants for teaching identification of correct and wrong side of clothes.
• Use adaptations such as Velcro/elastic bands if children have difficulty in buttoning, zipping/tying.

Grooming skills: Applying oil, combing hair, applying powder, fixing bindi (in case of girls) wearing chappal/shoes are all activities to be taught under grooming. Generally, by the time children are 8-9 years, they learn all the above mentioned activities by themselves through observational learning. However, children with Intellectual disability  need to be taught all the activities using special methods.

• For children, who do not know to identify left and right, fix stickers/marking on the inside of heel of the footwear to help in identifying left and right chappal or shoes.
• Tying shoe lace is a very complex activity. There are variety of shoes available in the market without shoe lace, which can be bought for use. Our aim of education is to train students to take care of their personal needs by themselves.
• Use cloth puff to teach applying powder evenly on face. Encourage children (girls) to use bindi stickers which are easy to fix.
• Select comb with a thick handle convenient to hold convenient to hold for teaching combing hair.
• In case of children with low ability, plaiting hair which is a complex activity may be avoided keeping the hair short where one can use rubber band to fix the hair.
• To teach plaiting hair, follow the sequence:

1. Ribbons of 3 colours fixed on undo grill.

2. Wool of three colours.

3. Wool of same colour.

4. False hair.

5. Plaiting other’s hair.

Social skills:
One of the characteristics of children with Intellectual disability  is inappropriate behaviours which make them look different in groups. In addition, due to lack of proper socializing skills with the age appropriate groups, they tend to play with younger children. Therefore, they need to be taught the manners group behaviour in various situations and environments.

• Use situations in school, in neighbourhood and in community to teach children social skills. For example, we can teach saying thank you during the activities involving distribution of materials to children in the classroom, playground, lunch room.
• Standing in a queue, waiting for their turn, sharing, playing cooperatively, taking leadership role are some activities which happen routinely in school. However, teachers should make conscious effort to make use of all these situations to impart the curriculum content to students who need training.
• When bullied, beaten or in distress, getting help/managing the situation is also a social competency to be taught.
• Parents/family members need to be informed to practise the same at home. It helps in developing appropriate, acceptable social behaviours among children with Intellectual disability .
• Travelling by bus involves getting into the bus, finding a seat and sitting, holding the rod and standing if there is no seat for sitting, paying ticket money or showing bus pass. Similarly, shopping at this stage involve dressing up, taking money, going to the shop, identifying/asking items (which costs smaller amounts) for buying, and carrying the items back home. Training in all these activities is necessary for performing the tasks by themselves. (See SESM-03, Block-1, Unit-4B)
• Taking care of personal belongings, not to get cheated by others and understanding rights are essential social skills for independent living.

Functional skills

Functional skills are those skills a student needs to live independently. An important goal of special education is for our students to gain as much independence and autonomy as possible, whether their disability is emotional, intellectual, physical, or a combination of two or more (multiple) disabilities. Skills are defined as functional as long as the outcome supports the student's independence. For some students, those skills may be learning to feed themselves. For other students, it may be learning to use a bus and read a bus schedule. We can separate the functional skills as:

• Life Skills
• Functional Academic Skills
• Community-Based Learning Skills
• Social Skills

Life Skills

The most basic of functional skills are those skills that we usually acquire in the first few years of life: walking, self-feeding, self-toileting, and making simple requests. Students with developmental disabilities, such as Autism Spectrum Disorders, and significant cognitive or multiple disabilities often need to have these skills taught through modeling, breaking them down, and the use of Applied Behavior Analysis. The teaching of life skills also requires that the teacher/practitioner complete appropriate task analyses in order to teach the specific skills.

Functional Academic Skills

Living independently requires some skills which are considered academic, even if they do not lead to higher education or the completion of a diploma. Those skills include:

• Math Skills - The functional math skills include telling time, counting and using money, balancing a checkbook, measurement, and understanding volume. For higher functioning students, math skills will expand to include vocationally oriented skills, such as making change or following a schedule.
• Language Arts - Reading begins as recognizing symbols, progressing to reading signs (stop, push), and moves on to reading directions. For many students with disabilities, they may need to have reading texts supported with audio recordings or adults reading. By learning to read a bus schedule, a sign in a bathroom, or directions, a student with disabilities gains independence.

Occupational skills

To prepare an individual with Intellectual disability for independent living, training in overall development of skills is important. Occupational skills include activities such as cooking, shopping and house keeping. However, the curriculum content at primary level will be minimum when compared to secondary and prevocational level.
Shopping and travel skills are interrelated, ie., if one has to go for shopping, he/she has to go using the right mode of travel to the respective place. Therefore, a teacher can select related curriculum content in both the areas for teaching. For example, if students are taught to read and write numerals from 1-5. The teacher can teach identifying and naming rupee notes/coins and using money to buy things which costs within Rs.5. Reading price tags, selecting item and paying bills, all with your support.

Involve in domestic activities such as washing plate, glass and tififn box, wiping the table, sweeping the floor, dusting separating vegetables and placing them into boxes/plastic bags.

Arranging for breakfast, lunch, dinner by placing plates, glasses and serving water, can form part of the routine.

Recreational skills

In the past, western societies have tended to devalue people with disabilities and as a result, these individuals were less likely to be accepted and have valued social roles in their community. Negative stereotypes such as being regarded as: a dependent person, an object of charity, an object of ridicule and pity, a menace or an object of dread were commonly expressed in the literature of that time. This dominant view that people with disabilities were seen as helpless victims was based on their functional limitations, and as a result needed to be effectively excluded from mainstream society. This became known as the ‘functional limitations’ perspective on disability which supported the view that people with disabilities were a ‘problem’ and in need of ‘cure or care’.

Perhaps nothing reveals so much about individuals as how they choose to play - how they invest their time and energy for leisure time. Leisure is that time free from demands of school, work, or required activities of daily living. Everyone needs regular recreation that develops skills, promotes good health, relieves stress, facilitates social interactions, and provides a general joy for living.

The physiological benefits of recreation participation were derived from studies where people engage in physical activity of some kind (e.g., exercise, cycling, swimming, walking, jogging, running, hiking, weight lifting, etc). Specific results from involvement in a physical recreation activity are an increased lung capacity, reduced resting heart rates and lower blood pressure levels. Other benefits consist of decreased body fat mass, increased lean body mass, increased muscle strength, and improved structure and function of connective tissues (ligaments, tendons, cartilage) and joints. Weight-bearing and strength-building activities help sustain bone mass and reduce the incidence of trauma-induced fractures (Paffenbarger, Hyde, & Dow, 1990). Moderate physical recreation activities are known to reduce the symptoms of mild or moderate depression and anxiety through improved self-image, social skills, and mental health (Taylor, Sallis, & Needle, 1985). Noted psychological benefits of recreation activity are as follows:

• perceived sense of freedom, independence, and autonomy,
• enhanced self-competence through improved sense of self-worth, self-reliance, and self-confidence,
• better ability to socialize with others, including greater tolerance and understanding,
• enriched capabilities for team membership,
• heightened creative ability,
• improved expressions of and reflection on personal spiritual ideals,
• greater adaptability and resiliency,
• better sense of humor,
• enhanced perceived quality of life,
• more balanced competitiveness and a more positive outlook on life (Academy of Leisure Sciences & Driver, 1994).

Involvement in recreation activities releases stress and tension from the perils of society. Braum (1991) recalls the findings of researchers that state,"relaxation tends to alleviate many of the symptoms of stress. Activities that fill leisure time, performed within a group, strengthen social support ties known to negate stress" (p. 407). The idea of choice in leisure presents opportunities where one can recreate.

4.3 Curriculum development for pre-primary, primary and secondary levels

Curriculum development for pre-primary (2-6 years)

Early intervention is an early stimulation and enrichment programme for infants and young children with varying types and degrees of disability. It is primarily used for children with developmental disabilities offering services which will enhance the development of young children. In developing countries, where health services are lacking in urban slums and deprived rural populations and where poverty is widespread, such early intervention services form the basis of ensuring proper care and management of at-risk infants.

The early years are the most significant years for human growth, development and learning of all children including those with special needs due to disability conditions. The all-round capacities that emerge in 3 to 6 years age group are the pre-requisites for later success in school and life.

National Council of Educational Research and Training has framed the Pre school curriculum that aim at helping the teachers, administrators, policy planners and other stakeholders to provide good quality preschool education to children.

Encouraging the development of children with disabilities through early intervention minimises learning difficulties and accelerates child development. It also reduces the expenses by minimising the need for special education services. Early intervention includes a system of services tailored to individual needs, that aim to help children directly and also through providing support to their parents. Early intervention can be offered in several forms:

• Speech and language therapy can help in improving hearing and using hearing aids.
• Physiotherapy can help in development of motor skills such as, balance, sitting, crawling and walking.
• Development and work therapy can help develop motor skills of hands, play, cognitive, social emotional and development for self care.
• Assistance technology equipment that a child may need.

Inclusion provides an opportunity to treat children with disabilities equally and focus on their abilities. This empowers them with adequate facilities, infrastructure and personal support. Hence,

• Carry out the early developmental screening of all children and identify their strengths.
• Understand the significance of early identification and intervention.
• Make adjustments in the physical environment to ensure it is barrier free.
• Make curriculum flexible and accessible to children with different impairments.
• Develop appropriate assessment and evaluation procedures.
• Build the capacity and empower all the stakeholders to revisit their own attitudes and work towards changing them if required. Gradually encourage them to use positive terminology when working with children with disabilities.
• Use age appropriate play and learning material.
• Sensitization; orientation; training; and counseling of parents and community should be done.

Children between the age group of 6 to 9 years are considered as belonging to the primary level. Due to the intellectual impairment, children with Intellectual disability  show delays in all developmental areas, which reflects in learning academics and deficits in adaptive behaviour. Hence curricular emphasis should be learning skills and behaviours that are necessary to function independently as far as possible and in a socially acceptable manner.

Curriculum for the primary group is an extension of that of the pre-primary class. Therefore emphasis will continue to be on the areas like self-help, language, communication, social, functional academics, domestic/occupational and recreational skills. The extent of coverage of activities to be stressed at primary level again depends on the exposure and achievement at the pre-school level by the children and also the activities have to be age appropriate. For example, an 8 year old non-retarded child is not expected to cook a meal but can help mother in laying table, serving food or arranging utensils in the shelf. In case of academic skills, we need to follow a sequence. For example, after a student learns to do addition sums, subtraction sums are taught.

Personal skills
Personal skills include eating, drinking, toileting, bathing, dressing and grooming. However, to perform these activities, other skills such as motor (gross motor and fine motor) and language and communication skills are also required. Take the example - take water from the water filter and drink. The girl has to walk to the kitchen, identify glass and take the glass, open the tap (finger grasp) fill the water, close the tap and drink. Another example is when the family goes to their friend’s house and the girl feels thirsty, she has to tell her mother (communication) that she needs water. Therefore, we need to remember that skill areas are not isolated, but they all overlap.

Social skills:
One of the characteristics of children with Intellectual disability  is inappropriate behaviours which make them look different in groups. In addition, due to lack of proper socializing skills with the age appropriate groups, they tend to play with younger children. Therefore, they need to be taught the manners group behaviour in various situations and environments.

Occupational skills

To prepare an individual with Intellectual disability  for independent living, training in overall development of skills is important. Occupational skills include activities such as cooking, shopping and house keeping. However, the curriculum content at primary level will be minimum when compared to secondary and prevocational level.

Children between the ages of 10 to 13 or 14 years are grouped under secondary level. Once the primary group of children achieve 80% of the curriculum content in the primary level, they can be promoted to secondary level. In case of children with low ability the teachers have to continue teaching in those tasks which the students have not achieved. They are grouped as Primary II. Though the same domains/core areas as in the primary level are included in curriculum at secondary level, the content and complexity of the activities is increased keeping in mind the learning characteristics of children at this level. This is also noticed in general education. For example, in every class, students have to study the subjects English, regional language, Hindi, mathematics, science and social studies/environmental science. The complexity of content in each subject is increased in every class keeping in mind the learning characteristics of children. Similarly, for children with Intellectual disability also, the curriculum content in each domain/core area is the extension of curriculum at primary level.

Personal skills
With systematic planning and teaching, the high ability group of children with Intellectual disability learn to eat and drink, dress, brush and bathe on their own by the time they reach secondary level. However, some of them may require minimum assistance in bathing and dressing. At this level the following curriculum content needs to be covered as an extension of primary curriculum.

The curriculum content should cover activities such as eating of different types of breakfast items and sweets appropriately (eg. Eating gulab jamon/rasagulla/payasam with spoon, taking a small piece of chapatti with right hand and taking a small quantity of curry/dal and eating), showing appropriate eating/table manners when children participate in social functions and cafeteria, carrying water, filing water in bottles, folding manageable clothes, bed covers/sheets, cutting pictures, pasting, folding papers and inserting them into covers and the other routine activities. Never underestimate student’s ability. Expose him to various activities and assist in learning.

• Provide opportunity to children to eat different types of breakfast and snacks items which are commonly prepared at home and available outside as eating of different items need different skills.
• Take them to eating places as a part of school activity to expose them to various types of eating environments.
• Allow children to decide what they want to eat and order the items.
• Give them an experience of folding letters and inserting them into envelops and pasting. Every organization has a lot of correspondence to do. The students can be given them activity after initial training.
• Folding of napkins, towels, aprons or table cloth can be taught at school as these materials are used during organizing various programmes at school.
• Schools celebrate national festivals, birthday parties, sports day, annual day and such functions through out the year. Students at this level can be involved in decoration, seating arrangement, food/snacks arrangements.
• Inform parents/family members to involve their children in all these activities at home also so that transfer of training and generalization is achieved.

Social skills
To be accepted as a member of the group and part of the community, one needs to have smooth interpersonal relationships for which adequate language and communications skills are required. Often children with Intellectual disability fail to interact with groups meaningfully in an acceptable manner. It is observed that most of the children with Intellectual disability have limited vocabulary and have difficulty in speaking in sentences, understanding and following instructions and narrating incidents in a sequence. Various activities should be planned to develop these skills at secondary level.

Acceptable behaviour towards persons of opposite sex needs to be taught subtly and constantly during social situation at this state. Do’s and dont’s should be clearly specified to avoid embarrassment. This training should be continued into prevocational stage also.

•  Take students on trips to various places (shops, cafeteria, railway station, post office, place of worship, place of entertainment) during the year. Let students narrate their experiences after you return from the trip. Write it on the board in simple words at their level of undersanding and let children copy in their notebooks. This can become a reading journal for students. As they are real life experiences, children enjoy narrating the events.
• On rotation teachers can assign to students, the job of delivering messages to other staff members in school, taking telephone messages, talking of current news, conducting group games.
• Plan games which require listening skills.
• Teach students short plays wherein students have to speak 2-3 sentences relevantly.

Occupational skills
At this level the children start helping parents/family members in many of the household activities. Performing these activities require application of functional reading, writing and arithmetic skills. For example, when the student is asked to measure two cups of rice, he should have learned counting as a part of number skills which he applies while performing the activity. In case of low ability children (Primary II – 7-14 years, Prevocational-II – 15-18 years) measuring of two cups of rice can be an activity for teaching counting. Identifying and reading labels on edible items/writing a shopping list are other examples. Similarly activities such as washing clothes, moping floor, wiping, storing, or packing requires knowledge of functional academics and fine motor skills.

• Sweeping, mopping, dusting, and washing utensils can be regular activities in school. After completion of art and craft/cooking activities children need to be taught to clean up.
• Include classes in home science at least once a week, which involves pealing, cutting, cleaning of pulses and rice, arranging for lunch, cleaning up after lunch, washing and stacking utensils.
• On rotation, the students can be made responsible for maintaining cleanliness of space outside classrooms and playground.
• A small kitchen garden can be maintained by students. This can be a part of teaching environmental science, as well as an occupational activity.

4.4 Curricular adaptation -accommodation, modification for inclusive settings

Inclusion is “a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and from education. It involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children.” (UNESCO, 2005) Inclusion is the full acceptance of all students and leads to a sense of belonging within the classroom community. By the practice of educating all children together, children with disabilities have the opportunity to prepare for life in the community, and the same practice also helps the society to make the conscious decision to operate according to the social value of equality. Inclusive education is the best method of promoting wider social acceptance, peace and cooperation.

A strategy describes how the goals will be achieved by the resources. Strategy is important because the resources available to achieve these goals or usually limited. Strategy generally involves setting goals, determining actions to achieve the goals and mobilizing resources to execute the actions.

There are various strategies for curriculum adaptation discussing below

Instructional strategies 

· Instructional strategies may be defined as instruction in how to learn and perform." Learning strategies help students learn and perform by providing them with a specific steps for: 

· approaching new and difficult task

· guiding thoughts and actions

· completing task in a timely and successful manner

· thinking strategically

· Learning strategies may include organizing materials, memorizing information, taking notes, reading text, and taking tests.

Inclusive classroom strategies

· While planning the students in regular Classrooms, their age is to be taken consideration rather than their academic level to foster friendship. 

· The teachers should often evaluate both the groups with the same tasks. 

· The general students and students with special needs are paired together common assignments to build cooperation. 

· Games and problem solving make the classes more active. 

· Curricular, co-curricular and extra - curricular activities are made community oriented. 

· Giving teaching tasks to the students and helping them become part of learning activity. 

· If she/he is co-teaching, commit to planning at least once a week with your co-teaching partner and determine your respective teaching responsibilities.

6 Steps to Adapting Curriculum and Instruction

1. Choose the activity.

2. Identify your curricular goals for this activity. What do you want the children to learn, to experience, to be engaged in?

3. What is your instructional plan for this activity? How do you want to present the information to the children?

4. Identify the children in your classroom who might need adaptations for this activity.

5. Based on your knowledge of each child’s goals and skills, choose and appropriate adaptation or group of adaptations. Start with the most natural, least intrusive adaptations.

6. Observe and adjust your adaptations as needed during the activity.

                        * A change in the type of adaptation used,

                        * A change in the amount of adaptation needed.

                        * A change in the number of adaptation used.

Use a variety of team teaching methods, including 

· Interactive teaching: Teachers alternate role of presenting, reviewing, and monitoring instruction. 

· Alternate teaching: One person teaches, reteaches, on enriches a concept for small group, while the other monitors or teach the remaining students. 

· Parallel teaching: Students are divided into mixedability groups, and each co-teaching partner teaches the same material to one of the groups. 

· Station teaching: Small group of students rotate to various stations for instructions, review, and/or practice. 

· Be aware of students needs and provide the accommodation listed in your students individualized education programmers.

UDL (Universal design to learning)

UDL is an approach to designing curriculum including instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessment that are flexible enough to accommodate learner differences. According to Meyer and Rose (2005), “UDL is built on the premise that barriers to learning occur in the interaction with the curriculum they are not inherent solely in the capacity of the learner. UDL represents a shift in how educators look at learner differences. It emphasizes the need for a curriculum that can adapt to student needs for a curriculum that can adapt to student needs rather than requiring learners to adapt to an inflexible curriculum.” The UDL is increasingly drawing the attention of researchers and educators as an effective solution for filling the gap between learner ability and individual differences. UDL framework can be used to proactively design lessons that address learner variability. Using UDL guidelines, teachers can integrate flexible options and supports that ensure that standards – based lessons are accessible to a range of learners in their classrooms. To understand what UDL is, it helps to understand what it’s not. The goal of UDL is to use a variety of teaching methods to remove any barriers to learning and give all students equal opportunities to succeed. It’s about building in flexibility that can be adjusted for every student’s strengths and needs. Teachers can create a more nurturing, equitable and inclusive space by using different strategies. These includes the 3 major principles / guidelines such as: first one is Engagement: which is for purposeful, motivated learners, stimulate interest and motivation for learning, Second one is Representation: for resourceful, knowledgeable learners, present information and content in different ways, Third one is Action & Expression: For strategic, goal – directed learners, differentiate the ways that students can express what they know as well as reflecting diversity in teaching and supporting the social justice goals of fellow teachers. So it is to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights in to how humans learn. It capitalizes in new technologies and electronic devices and provide a new way of looking at students with disabilities.

FUNCTIONAL READING

Functional reading is defined as a student’s actions or responses resulting from reading the printed word.
The following are the goals of reading for persons with Intellectual disability .

The primary goal is the development of their ability to read for protection – sign boards, labels, directions and so on (concept of survival).

The second goal is teaching them reading for information and instruction – newspaper, telephone book, job application and so on.
The third goal is giving training in reading for pleasure – magazines, comics, story books.

All persons with Intellectual disability may not be able to achieve all the three goals. Some may achieve one of the goals and some may achieve all of the three goals It depends on the severity/level of Intellectual disability i.e., the ability/capacity to understand and learn the tasks. Further, children to become effective readers they must be able to.

• see a clear and unblurred image projected on the flash card and hear the sound of the letters and words uttered (auditory-visual sensory input).
distinguish one symbol from another and recognize these differences consistently (auditory-visual perception).

• remember the sounds or images of the symbols in sequence (auditory-visual memory).

• relate these symbols to meanings based on experience and synthesize the visual and auditory clues with the meaningful words for integrative learning (language symbolization).

Teaching Reading
Various approaches have been used by professionals in teaching reading to children with Intellectual disability. Among them whole word approach is extensively used.

Whole word approach (sight word/paired reading)
Whole word approach is a widely used method in teaching functional reading. Through the whole word approach, the students learn to recognize and read words and later receive decoding instructions (to spell). A variety of strategies have been used in teaching sight word vocabulary. Recent attention has been focused on the imagery level of the word to be learnt. High imagery words are usually concrete and include nouns such as ball, mango, fan and house. Low imagery words include abstract terms such as beautiful, good and have. In some instances, high imagery can be provided for low imagery words by using the word in context. For example, consider the word “sour”, “I ate mango. It is sour”, becomes more concrete and students can remember better. Pairing of words with concrete objects and/or pictures will facilitate development of a high imagery level in the students. Here, the concrete word `mango’ helps in learning the abstract word `sour’. Following are the steps to be followed while using whole word approach. When we are teaching any concept to children, we follow three steps – matching/grouping, identification and naming.

Error analysis in generalization

The sustained ability for generalization does not just lie in analysis of success achieved, but also in that of the errors committed. When a student performs consistently a certain task after structured training, he is exposed to a non-trained condition, which will have certain similarities to the trained conditions. When the learnt response is performed in a non-trained condition, errors may occur. The teacher should be sensitive to the factors that contribute to the occurrence of the error and the ways in which they can be prevented. For example, we teach `3’ and help the child to discriminate `3’ from 5, 7, 13, 30, 53 and so on. The student understands that when the symbol ‘3’ appears all by itself, only then it is called ‘3’. On a clock dial, when the child is asked to identify 1, he is right when he shows 1 after 12 but not at 10, 11 and 12 as the latter have accompanying numbers with them. This approach would limit to prevent errors from occurring right in the beginning during the acquisition stage itself, thereby making generalization easier. This helps in differentiating similar looking words and similar sounding words.
Teacher should

• Provide sufficient examples
• Be sensitive to learner’s readiness before communicating.
• Demonstrate a range of variations within a given concept.
• Reward the student for his right responses.

FUNCTIONAL WRITING

One of the important modes of communication is written expression. Writing demands eye hand coordination, motor coordination, sense of direction and recognition of symbols pictures/letters/numbers/words/ punctuation and so on). Some writing tasks demand horizontal writing (left to write as in writing words) and some demand vertical writing as in arithmetic (addition, subtraction) and some demand a combination of both as in statement sums.

Teaching Writing
Teaching writing involves four stages. They are:

1. Tracing

2. Joint dots (if needed)

3. Copying

4. writing from memory (including learning spelling).

FUNCTIONAL ARITHMETIC

We are in daily contact with situations which require the use of number skills. For example, when we buy half a dozen bananas from the fruit vendor we glance at the bunch to check whether it contains six bananas or not. We use number skills in various settings such as at home, in community and at work place - how many plates to place on the table, which bus number to take to reach work place, how much is the bus fare, how long it takes to reach office and so on.

Strategies for arithmetic instruction

Before beginning with numbers, make sure, the child is aware of pre-math concepts such as more-less, far-near, heavy-light, tall-short-long and so on.

The following are the points to be considered while planning and teaching arithmetic skills.

• The content should be arranged in a sequential order for which the task analytic approach
is applied.

• Concrete materials should be used while teaching to provide meaning for the concepts.

• The selection of materials should be such that they can be used meaningfully both inside and outside the school environment.

• The programme should be structured in such a way that there is a gradual transition in teaching concepts moving from concrete to semi-concrete and abstract levels.

• Instruction must be practical and functional with special emphasis given to a social and
vocational orientation.

• Sufficient practice should be given to deal with the concepts in variety of ways to ensure
understanding.

• Additional opportunities should be provided to generalize the skill to a variety of experiences to note similarities and to establish associations and relations among their experiences.

• Practical experiences and situations should be provided for the application of numerical
skills. However, care should be taken in planning the application of number skills to the real life experiences that they should have relevance to the world in terms of the individual child’s needs.

• A programme must be flexible enough to meet the individual needs of students.

4.5 Curriculum evaluation process.

Curriculum evaluation is an essential phase of curriculum development. Through evaluation a faculty discovers whether a curriculum is fulfilling its purpose and whether students are actually learning.

Curriculum evaluation is an essential component in the process of adopting and implementing any new curriculum in any educational setting. Its purpose is to decide whether or not the newly adopted curriculum is producing the intended results and meeting the objectives that it has set forth. Another purpose of curriculum evaluation is to gather data that will help in identifying areas in need of improvement or change.

Why is Curriculum Evaluation Necessary?

There are several parties, or stakeholders, interested in the process and results of curriculum evaluation.

• Parents are interested because they want to be assured that their children are being provided with a sound, effective education.
• Teachers are interested because they want to know that what they are teaching in the classroom will effectively help them cover the standards and achieve the results they know parents and administration are expecting.
• The general public is interested because they need to be sure that their local schools are doing their best to provide solid and effective educational programs for the children in the area.
• Administrators are interested because they need feedback on the effectiveness of their curricular decisions.
• Curriculum publishers are interested because they can use the data and feedback from a curriculum evaluation to drive changes and upgrades in the materials they provide.

Purpose of curriculum evaluation

Educational prepares future generation to take their due place in the society. It becomes essential that substandard educational goals, materials and methods of instruction are not retained but up-dated in consonance with the advances in social cultural & scientific field. It is also important to ascertain how different educational institutions and situations interpret a given or prescribed curriculum. Hence, arises the need for curriculum evaluation.

Curriculum evaluation monitors and reports on the quality of education. Cronbach (1963) distinguishes three types of decisions for which evaluation is used.

1. Course Improvement  : deciding what instructional material and methods are satisfactory and where changes are needed.

2. Decisions about individuals : Identifying the needs of the pupil for the sale of planning of instruction and grouping, acquainting the pupil with his own deficiencies.

3. Administrative regulations : Judging how good the school system is, how good individual teachers are. The goal of evaluation must be to answer questions of selection, adoption, support and worth of educational materials and activities. It helps in identifying the necessary improvements to be made in content, teaching methods, learning experiences, educational facilities, staff-selection and development of educational objectives. It also serves the need of the policy makers, administrators and other members of the society for the information about the educational system.

Objectives of Curriculum Evaluation

1. To determine the outcomes of a programme.

2. To help in deciding whether to accept or reject a programme.

3. To ascertain the need for the revision of the course content.

4. To help in future development of the curriculum material for continuous improvement.

5. To improve methods of teaching and instructional techniques.