Effective Best Practice for Special Education Students

Special Education teachers are always looking for the latest best practice teaching information to help their students with learning disabilities succeed in school. Over the years new laws and mandates have been put into place to ensure that these students are ensured the proper education that students without disabilities receive. In the past students with learning disabilities have been excluded from the general education classroom or been thought that they just cannot learn. With the use of best practice procedures designed for special education students, these students can be successful in the classroom.

Direct instruction has become the method most commonly used for children with special education needs. “Direct Instruction is an approach to teaching. It is skills-oriented, and the teaching practices it implies are teacher-directed. It emphasizes the use of small-group, face-to-face instruction by teachers and aides using carefully articulated lessons in which cognitive skills are broken down into small units, sequenced deliberately, and taught explicitly” (Carnine, Silbert, Kame'enui, & Tarver, 2004). In the special education classroom setting, a teacher will work with a small group of students which makes this method of teaching ideal. Direct instruction is commonly mistaken for a phonics based teaching curriculum, this is not the case. There are a few direct instruction curriculum that are phonics based but you will also find direct instruction curriculum for writing and math that is widely used. Though models of direct instruction vary somewhat, at the core of these models are similar principles of effective teaching. “The key elements of models of direct instruction include: a) reviews to check student understa...

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