Special Groups Accommodations & Modifications

Name: Christoforos Gentzis Date: 5/15/2025

Class: ED 5500

Certification: 4-8 Social Studies

Semester: Spring 2025

1. For Gifted and Talented students:

TEK Standard:

S.S. 8.8(C) Explain significant events of the Civil War, including the firing on
Fort Sumter; the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg; the
Emancipation Proclamation; Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House; and the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

How I would teach this:

For their assessment, students would create their own booklet about the
most significant battles, sieges, campaigns, and other events of the American Civil
War. For each event, they would mention the date, location, the political leaders,
social figures, and military commanders involved, strength and casualty figures (for
military engagements only), and outcomes, along with a summary of the event itself.
 While creating their booklets, students would also come up with their own
low and high-level thinking questions of Bloom’s Taxonomy, similar to the ones on
my PowerPoint slides that I would have my students engage with during lecture. As
during lecture, I would encourage the students to analyze each event from multiple
perspectives (Union, Confederate, neutral, abolitionist, pro-slavery, African
American, etc.), and present and defend an argument (supported by evidence) of
what factors they believe could have influenced the outcome of each event, how,
and why.

Accommodations and supports and how they would benefit this special student
population:

1. Arrange for field trips to battlefields of the American Civil War with
the cooperation of American Battlefield Trust.

Visiting Civil War battlefields in person would not only provide the gifted
and talented students with something to do to prevent them from being bored in
class, but would also lead to them examining the Civil War from both points of view
(that of the Union as well as that of the Confederacy). Each battlefield tells its
own unique story about the civil war because no two battles were exactly the same.
By analyzing and examining the archeological remains found at these sites,
students would be able to form challenging, original, field-based research
questions, and begin exploring the battlefields to find answers. For example, what
can the particular locations of the battlefields tell us about what the main
objectives of the Civil War were for both the Union and the Confederacy? From
letters, diaries, pamphlets, books, and other personal affects, what can students
learn about what the men in both blue and grey had thought about their
circumstances, how they viewed themselves in relation to one another as fellow
Americans, and what they believed their place was in both the American
experiment, and the world?
 Visiting American Civil War battlefields extends the knowledge and skills of
gifted students beyond the confines of the classroom and serves as an opportunity
to examine the events of the American Civil War in a holistic manner. By reading
and evaluating primary source material left on the field of battle from a variety of
people (Union and Confederate soldiers and officers, abolitionists, pro-slavery
advocates, civilians, immigrants, African Americans (both free and slave), etc.),
students are exposed to viewing the war through a multitude of perspectives that
they would not otherwise receive within a more closed and confined traditional
learning environment (e.g., four classroom walls and a textbook). Simply put, there
is information about the American Civil War that one can only obtain by visiting the
grounds where officers and soldiers lived and died.

2. Organizing pods of classes where all the gifted and talented students
are taught with additional innovative education strategies appropriate for
their level within an accelerated curriculum.

For gifted and talented students who are frustrated with having to work
with students who are neither strong in U.S. History nor history buffs (Spoiler:
this author is a history buff), there is a solution. Because gifted and talented
students have similar levels of ability, they can be grouped together in pods to
work outside of classroom hours, enriching their learning with independent, self-
directed research projects and cross-grade collaboration, all while the traditional
curriculum is either condensed or accelerated for these students. For example, in
an eighth grade U.S. History class, instead of having gifted students going over the
same battles and events of the American Civil War that they already know, these
students can work together in groups of four on producing a podcast episode or
short podcast series on lesser-known aspects of the American Civil War that many
people do not know very well (e.g., female spies, Unionist and pro-Confederate
guerilla warfare/terrorism in the border states, the Baltimore Plot (the earlier
conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln in February 1861), Native Americans in
both the Union and Confederate armies, etc.).
 Because only the gifted students would be working together, and such
independent research projects are outside the traditional curriculum of the well-
known battles, personalities, and events (aspects of history that have been
examined so thoroughly and where much ink has already been spilled to the point of
exhaustion and redundancy), these students would not find themselves easily
bored, would not have to worry about being exposed to the same information over
and over again (to the point of “dropping dead” in class out of sheer boredom), and
would not have to worry about working with students who are struggling to learn
even the most important and major battles, events, and personalities of the
American Civil War (i.e., those students who do not easily “get it.”). Instead, the
gifted students would be using their imagination and creativity (along with their
research skills) to explore new topics and perspectives and further expand their
social studies skills (e.g. evaluating sources, critical thinking, reading between the
lines, etc.) while working collaboratively on an independent research project of
their choice.
 2. For English Language Learners:

TEK Standard:

S.S. 7.3(B) Explain the roles played by significant individuals during the
Texas Revolution, including George Childress, Lorenzo de Zavala, James Fannin,
Sam Houston, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Juan N. Seguín, and William B. Travis.

How I would teach this:

Each day would be devoted to covering a notable figure of the Texas

Revolution. I would deliver lecture for about twenty minutes, and the rest of the
time would be devoted to students creating their own pamphlets about each of
these personalities. Alongside biographical information, the pamphlets would also
include opportunities for students to position themselves in the shoes of those
notable figures and present evidence-based arguments of how they personally
would have handled major decisions and events (e.g., Fannin at Goliad, Travis at the
Alamo, Seguín as mediator between Anglos and Tejanos, Houston in dealing with
the Comanche, etc.), and what the likely outcomes of their actions would have been.

Accommodations and supports and how they would benefit this special student
population:

1. Provide sentence stems and dual-language word banks.

For ELL students, sentence stems and word banks actually make matters
easier when understanding the lesson content and completing assignments. This is
because sentence stems and word banks are meant to help the brain get started
when it comes to thinking, learning, and applying pre-existing knowledge and skills
to answer new questions (in this case, about the Texas Revolution).
 Not only would the sentence stems and word banks be written in English, but
the words in the word bank would also be written in Spanish, so that the ELLs can
better comprehend what the sentence stems are asking of them or what event,
place, individual, or concept the terminology within the word banks point to. For
example, here is a sentence stem "I agree/disagree with ___ because ___." This
sentence stem is meant to have a student articulate a position regarding a
particular event, issue, or process, and explain his/her reasoning for holding that
position (with basis in evidence, of course). Let’s say a word bank has the following
terms, in both English and Spanish:

Goliad massacre ① Masacre de Goliad ①

José de Urrea ② José Cosme de Urrea ②

Antonio López de Santa Anna ③ Antonio López de Santa Anna ③

James Fannin ④ James Fannin ④

Battle of Coleto ⑤ Batalla de Coleto ⑤

Republic of Texas ⑥ República de Texas ⑥

Texian Army ⑦ Ejército Texano ⑦

Mexican Army ⑧ Ejército Mexicano ⑧

Mexico ⑨ República Mexicana ⑨

From these terms and the above sentence stem, the students start thinking about
what argument they would like to articulate. They combine the sentence stems with
the words in the word bank, together with their pre-existing knowledge of Texas
history to articulate a complete argument. For example, a native, English-speaking
student can write “I disagree with the Goliad massacre because James Fannin and
his surrendered Texian Army soldiers should have been treated fairly as prisoners
of war.” The corresponding statement written by an ELL student would be “I do not
agree with the Masacre de Goliad because James Fannin and his soldiers of the
Ejército Texano surrendered should have been treated fairly as prisoners of war.”

Writing word banks in both Spanish and English would not only support individual
ELLs in their work but would also enable ELLs to help each other out in clarifying
lesson content and correcting misinterpretations pertaining to it. ELLs who are
advanced or advanced high in terms of their English proficiency would offer help
and assistance to ELLs who are either beginners or intermediate in English
proficiency. The end result would be that all ELLs would succeed in class because
they would understand unambiguously what the topics of the lessons and the
student learning objectives that come along with them.

Every word in the word bank would be highlighted in one color for English and in
another color for Spanish, with small, circled numbers above each word, so that
ELLs can easily match a Spanish-language word with its corresponding English
counterpart. For instance, the Spanish-language term for the Texian Army-
‘Ejército Texano’ would be highlighted in pink with circled numbers, while the
English-language term ‘Texian Army’ would be highlighted in yellow with circled
numbers. These small, circled numbers would indicate that, for example, the term
‘Ejército Texano‘ in the Spanish-language would be a direct (or at least
approximate) translation of the English-language term ‘Texian Army.’

To make things easier for the ELLs, the Spanish-language and the English-language
terms for the same word bank would be printed on the same page, but in two
separate columns, with the Spanish-language terms on the right-hand side, and the
English-language terms on the left-hand side). The printed word banks would also
be in larger-sized Sans-Serif font, with 1.5 spacing for easier reading. This means
that not only can the ELLs read the terms easier, but they could easily correspond
the Spanish-language terms with the English-language ones and not have to spend
extra time or energy to try to comprehend their meaning.
2. Use Visual Supports & Graphic Organizers.

Within my classroom, I would use graphical supports, particularly large maps

and timelines for the ELLs to understand various events of the Texas
Revolution, particularly battles, military campaigns, important Spanish
monuments, fortresses, settlements, and territorial extents of various
cultural/demographic groups and geopolitical entities. I would make sure not
to make the maps or the timelines too complicated (i.e., crammed) to the
point where the ELLs become confused or find it hard to comprehend the
subject matter because there is too much information shown on a map or a
timeline. Therefore, only the most important events and details would be
shown. These typically include names of events, groups, and places, dates of
events, the primary causes of events, brief summaries of the events, and
their outcomes. Sometimes even I struggle to keep matters brief and end up
cutting A LOT of information.

I would use different types of graphic organizers to convey different types

of information. A cause-and-effect chart would be used to demonstrate
cause-and-effect relationships among events, ideas, and policy outcomes
during the Texas Revolution itself. For example, a cause of the Texas
Revolution was the Centralist Republic of Mexico’s ban on further American
immigration into Texas in the belief that such a ban would prevent the influx
of Anglo-American settlers and stem the tide of their growing socio-political
influence. But what was the unintended effect of this ban? It was the
growing popular appeal among Anglo settlers in Texas of Texian separatist
rebels and the first shots fired at the Battle of Gonzales (“Come and Take
It!”).

Another graphic organizer would be a timeline of events, among the most

common types used in Social Studies. Although timelines are usually linear,
not all are. A timeline is pretty straight-forward for all students to
understand, but especially so for ELLs (as timelines contain minimal text and
complex terminology, and many have illustrations). Timelines normally flow
left-to-right, with earlier events to the left, and later events to the right.
For instance, a timeline of the Texas Revolution would accurately show that
the well-known and famous Battle of the Alamo was the tenth, not the first,
military engagement of the Texas Revolution. Therefore, the siege and
battle of the Alamo (February 23, 1836 - March 6, 1836) would actually
appear further to the right on the timeline.

The nine other events, shown further to the left in the timeline, in their
correct chronological order were:

1) San Felipe Incident (fought on September 1, 1835, and a Texian victory).

2) Battle of Gonzales (fought on October 2, 1835, and a Texian victory).
3) Battle of Goliad (fought on October 10, 1835, and a Texian victory).
4) Battle of Concepción (fought on October 28, 1835, and a Texian victory).
5) Battle of Lipantitlán (fought on November 4, 1835, and a Texian victory).
6) The Grass Fight (fought on November 26, 1835, and a Texian victory).
7) The Siege of Béxar (fought from October 12, 1835, to December 11,
1835, and a Texian victory).
8) Battle of San Patricio (fought on February 27, 1836, and a Mexican
victory).
9) Battle of Agua Dulce (fought on March 2, 1836, and a Mexican victory).

Therefore, prior to the siege and battle of the Alamo (which was a defeat
for the Texians), there were seven Texian military victories and only two
Mexican military victories, a ratio of roughly 3 : 1. From this data, students
would probably infer that the cause of the Texian rebels received
significant popular support, which was why it ultimately succeeded in the end
(with the Battle of San Jacinto, fought on April 21, 1836, and a Texian
victory).
 3. For students with Dyslexia:

TEK Standard:

S.S 6.7(B) Compare and contrast free enterprise, socialist, and communist
economies in various contemporary societies, including the benefits of the U.S.
free enterprise system.

How I would teach this:

When teaching my students about the various economic systems around the
world, I would devote at least three days to each one. My pure lecturing time would
not last more than fifteen to twenty minutes maximum on any given day, and the
rest of class time would be for the students to fill out information on an ‘Economic
Systems of the World’ worksheet while going from station to station, with each
station representing one economic system. Students would later use this
information to complete group projects in the form of creating and designing
posters, with each poster comparing and contrasting two economic systems (e.g.,
mixed economy vs. socialist economy, free-enterprise vs. command economy, free-
enterprise vs. mixed economy, etc.).

Accommodations and supports and how they would benefit this special student
population:

1. Audiobooks and text-to-speech software:

For students with dyslexia, having lesson content within a

presentation or questions on a worksheet, quiz, or test read aloud to them is
much easier for them to interpret than having to read the questions typed
on a worksheet. This is because reading has a greater cognitive load than
hearing. More specifically, reading requires a greater amount of mental
 resources and energy devoted to both concentration on the task at hand,
and deriving meaning from printed text. Hearing something and deriving
meaning from it requires less cognitive resources, especially for students
with dyslexia.

Within my classroom, I would provide students with dyslexia with

audiobooks on the various economic systems of the world and would go the
extra mile in providing them with audio recordings of my own lectures ahead
of time, so that all they have to do in class is listen to what I am teaching
the rest of the students. This makes it easier for students with dyslexia to
follow along, because they have less trouble listening or hearing than they do
reading or writing.

I would also provide students with dyslexia with text-to-speech

devices such as OrCam Pro, LyriQ Assistive Text-to-Speech Reader, Smart
Reader, and OrCam Read. All the students would have to do is go over and
scan each individual sentence within the five-page worksheet, and the words
would be read aloud to them! Instantly, the students would figure out the
meaning of each sentence. Furthermore, because students with dyslexia
would be provided worksheets with simplified vocabulary, this process of
deriving meaning from printed text is made much easier still.

2. Provide extra time and modified assignments, allowing for students to

demonstrate their understanding in different ways, like oral reports,
posters, and video presentations.

Because they have trouble reading and decoding meaning from written
words, I would not provide too much written work for students with dyslexia. I
would provide students with dyslexia with extended time to complete assignments,
projects, and tests, which is an accommodation that I would provide to special
education students in general (but with modifications for students with dyslexia).
For example, (particularly work that requires a lot of reading and writing), I would
provide students with dyslexia the ability to schedule their own due dates for
assignments (provided that the timeframe be reasonable and not too lengthy).
Students belonging to other special populations (e.g., Section 504, Special
Education, etc.) may or may not get this specific accommodation depending on their
circumstances. Each student’s case is different, but generally I am willing to
provide students up to one more week of extra time to complete assignments, but
no more than that (I must follow the curriculum schedule too, and I do not want to
fail the students, but help them).

Allowing for students with dyslexia to create and present group project
posters rather than written papers or PowerPoint presentations makes their
assignment easier. Posters could primarily consist of visual materials (graphics,
photographs, diagrams, schematics, etc.), where little to no text would be involved.
The vast majority of this presentation would consist of oral explanations on the
part of the students as to what their poster shows about the comparison of the
two economic systems that they chose to research. I would grade students on the
knowledge and accuracy of their explanations rather than on neatness or
organization (these are procedures, not TEKS, and so I cannot take a grade on
those particular skills, although I could still teach them).

For example, a diagram of a command economy could show a photograph of a

government building at the center, with arrows pointing out in all directions
towards photographs of different products and services (e.g., computers, vehicles,
clothing, grocery items (foods), medicines, etc.). Each product or service would
have a price tag and a quantity shown above it. This would indicate that in a
command economy, the central government dictates how much of each product or
service is produced. Students could paste flags of countries today that have
command economies, with Cuba and North Korea being the most notable examples.
 4. For students with ADHD:

TEK Standard:

S.S 8.17(A) Analyze the arguments of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists,

including those of Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and George
Mason, and explain how their debates exemplify civil discourse.

How I would teach this:

Because there are two sides here, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, I would
divide the class of twenty-eight students into two groups of fourteen. There would
be fourteen Federalists and fourteen Anti-Federalists. Over the course of ten
days, I would have the student study and then re-enact the most important and
consequential debates and discussions found within the Federalist Papers (e.g.,
Federalist 10, 39, 51, 68, and 78). To make sure that this assignment would not
become overwhelming, I would assign students to perform only two twenty-minute
debates per day. Every two days, the students would reverse roles (Federalists
would become Anti-Federalists and vice-versa).

The reason for teaching the lesson this way is because it is much easier to
understand the two sides of a debate if the debate itself is performed
professionally, and the fundamental issues imprint much better in someone’s brain.
For example, a person might not remember what was said in the abstract (in words
alone), but someone certainly remembers the words that someone said when he/she
can see the person saying those words (i.e., someone can match a face to the words
spoken). Aside from this, the activity itself is incredibly engaging, and the
probability of student participation, excitement, and enthusiasm is much higher.
The lesson transforms from a more abstract, traditional, ink and paper exercise to
a more relatable, lively, interactive exercise where students themselves can
actively take on the roles of the Founding Fathers themselves and create their own
original answers to all the most important issues and questions that the Founders
had grappled with.
Accommodations and supports and how they would help this student population:

1. Minimize distractions

Students with ADHD tend to be easily distracted, at which point they then
struggle to stay on task once derailed. As someone with ADHD, I can say that, at
times, I too have become distracted from work (even while taking medications to
improve my concentration). The probability of a student with ADHD becoming
distracted during class increases whenever there are any objects, locations, or
items in the room that pre-occupy his/her attention for a prolonged period of time
(typically one minute or more). As a Social Studies teacher, I could do my best to
eliminate these distractions entirely (or at least mitigate their impact). First, I
would ask the student with ADHD what is distracting him/her from the classwork.

Once I have an idea of what is causing the distraction, measures could be

taken to reduce its presence. Sources of such distraction can range from the room
being too noisy, to the temperature being irritating, to the presence of allergens,
to monotony and boredom, to fixed student location and/or desk arrangement. To
reduce the noise level of the classroom, I would signal to the rest of the class to
lower their voices down. To fix the temperature to become more agreeable, I
would simply adjust it. For allergens, I would simply remove them. To break the
monotony and boredom, I would allow short, but frequent (every fifteen or twenty
minutes) five-minute breaks (more on that to come). Finally, to readjust student
seating and desk arrangement, I would simply assign students to different areas of
the room (so that they do not become bored or distracted with being in the same
location talking to the same people every single day).

The only thing that I could not adjust would be for the student to avoid
doing the assignment. To make the assignment more manageable (and to improve
student information retention and learning), I would assign students to perform
only two debates per day, each lasting for only twenty minutes. The first debate
would occupy the first twenty minutes of class (when the students have maximum
concentration and clear minds). The second debate would take place between the
halfway point of class (which is usually after lunch) and the middle of the second
half of class. This would guarantee maximum student attention and engagement
with the lesson content and the debate performances.

2. Allow for short, but frequent breaks

I would allow students with ADHD to take frequent, but short breaks during
the lessons. This is particularly true for younger students who typically have
shorter attention spans than older students. Everyone needs a break from activity
in order to “recharge” or “refuel.” The human body needs this. This is the function
of sleep. But this is also the function of breaks during class. Students are more
likely to be distracted or to tune out if they have been performing the same task
for an extended period of time. I would not set a limit on the number of breaks
that students with ADHD could take in my Social Studies class, although each
break would not exceed more than five minutes at the most (the only exceptions to
this rule would be bathroom breaks, for which I would allow up to eight minutes).
Medical studies and numerous medical professionals say that five minutes is the
ideal amount of time for students to take breaks during class and still be able to
concentrate afterwards (give them more breaktime and they will start to lose
focus and not concentrate on their work).

For the smooth and functioning operation of students with ADHD in my

classroom, there should be enough break time to ensure that the students’ brains
will not break down and go bust, but there should not be soo much breaktime that
students begin to think that ‘class time’ means “free time.” Students could request
breaktime at anytime within the class. All they would have to do is raise their hand
and tell me. I would never say no, unless the students repeatedly demonstrate that
they would not be able to concentrate on their work afterwards. In this case, the
students and I would rework the strategy of taking breaks and adjust the
frequency and length of the breaks to better meet the students’ educational and
socio-emotional needs.
 5. For students with cognitive (intellectual disability):

TEK Standard:

S.S. 6.3 (A) Identify and explain the geographic factors responsible for
patterns of population in places and regions.

How I would teach this:

In this lesson, I would primarily focus on teaching students the five themes
of geography, which are responsible for guiding how humans think about (and
interact with) the world around them (location, place, human-environment
interaction, movement, and region). Each day of the week (five days in a school
week) would be devoted to having students explore one of these five themes. Using
a workstation-like layout within the classroom, students would answer questions on
a five-page worksheet pertaining to how each of these five themes influences the
patterns of human habitation within various locations throughout the world. For
example, page 1 would have questions pertaining to how location influences human
settlement (e.g., humans primarily settle alongside major rivers or on the coast,
next to the sea or the ocean). Although printed information resources would be
available at each workstation for students to use, they would also be able to use
their computers to find information on reputable internet sources that could help
them answer their questions.

Accommodations and supports and how they would help this student population:

1. Give step-by-step instructions, and use simple language, visuals,

or checklists.

Direct instruction is one of the best supports that you could offer to
students with cognitive disabilities, as they have trouble with reading and
decoding words and syllables, but they have far better understanding of oral
instructions told out loud to them. Students with cognitive disabilities learn
lesson content better with simple language and terminology, short and terse
steps to complete assignments or understand processes (no more than five
words long), neat graphic organizers that display the steps in an organized
but not too cluttered manner, and checklists.

When instructing students with cognitive disabilities on the five

themes of geography, I would make sure to repeat major key terminology
and concepts (e.g., location, place, human-environment interaction, movement,
and region) to make sure that they are familiar with them. The definitions
that I would use and have students repeat within the classroom would be
simplified, easy-to-remember versions of far more complex definitions
usually used by geographers and academia to refer to the five themes of
geography. I would even have students construct their own Frayer Models of
the various terms and concepts within human geography (e.g., push factors,
pull factors, immigration, emigration, borders, nation, country, ethnicity,
culture, etc.) so that they can follow along during class and understand the
terminology better (people tend to better remember terms or concepts
when they write their own definitions of these terms or concepts in their
own words that they can remember more easily).

There would also be a need on my part to clarify directions or

demonstrate the procedures step-by-step, as many times as is necessary to
the point where the students can complete the assignment themselves. I
would complete a sample ‘Major Features of Human Geography’ worksheet of
my own and have the students repeat after me, all the while moving from
desk-to-desk to assist, and provide specific, constructive feedback to any
student who raises his/her hand for help. Please note that this does not
constitute me completing the assignment for these students. Rather, this is
me guiding them in the right direction.
 As is the case with ELLs, students with intellectual disabilities
understand simplified vocabulary much easier than they do more advanced
and complex vocabulary. Students with intellectual disabilities would be
provided with a five-page worksheet that simplifies the questions pertaining
to the five themes of geography. For example, on Page 5, instead of reading
a question such as “Please provide two examples of how the relative location
of an area impact either the centripetal or centrifugal forces within a
society,” the simplified version reads “Please provide two examples of how
the relative location of an area influences people to support a state or to
rebel against it?” In this case, the term “centrifugal” refers to the political,
economic, social, religious, ethnic, and linguistic forces that cause disunity
and unrest within a state, while the term “centripetal” refers to the
attitude of unity amongst people that lead them to throw their support
behind the policies and efforts of the state.

In contrast to more advanced and complex vocabulary, simplified

vocabulary takes less effort to decode and interpret correctly, which is
greatly advantageous to students with intellectual disabilities, who often
cannot handle the cognitive demands of understanding complex terminology.
As a result, these students would spend more time correctly answering
questions than trying to think about what the correct answer would be.
Easier vocabulary on assignments would also provide students with
intellectual disabilities the confidence, trust, and motivation that they need
in order to realize and maximalize on their full potential and succeed within
the classroom.

2. Provide Extended Time & Repetition

In addition to step-by-step direct instruction, I would also offer

students with cognitive disabilities extra time to process the information of
the questions that I would be asking of them before they respond. This is
primarily relevant in oral discussions within the classroom, not as much on
written or non-written assignments. During a classroom discussion, if I were
to ask students with cognitive disabilities, for example, to name me one pull
factor that draws immigrants to the United States, I would give the
students anywhere from two to three minutes to come up with a response.
This is primarily for two reasons 1) Not all answers are obvious, insofar as
many of the less frequently cited answers are also correct (e.g., a person
heard about the reputation of the U.S. as a multicultural nation of
immigrants from another person, without that person mentioning the
country’s democratic foundations), and 2) Because students with cognitive
disabilities are slower to process information compared to students without
such disabilities. If some students have cognitive impairments, their brains
cannot immediately register what the question is asking from them, their
brains need some time to “digest” the question.

When it comes to having students with cognitive disabilities

completing assignments, I would follow the “I do, we do, you do,”
methodology of teaching. This is where I would first complete a sample
portion of an assignment, then have the students and I complete another
portion of the assignment together, and then have the students complete
the rest of it on their own. I would repeat any step of the process where
students feel that they are stuck. There would be no limit as to the number
of times that I would repeat a process until the students become unstuck or
feel as if they understand the process itself. Sometimes, I would provide
ideas to students of what to do or of what I expect from them to do so that
they can get started on an assignment. Let’s say I have the students
complete a map of the major U.S. cities located near the oceans or other
major waterways. I would obviously tell them to label the cities, oceans, and
rivers on the map, and I would instruct the students to best approximate
where these cities, oceans, and rivers are on the map of the U.S. I would not
expect the students to be perfect, however (I would not place a city, lake,
or river on its exact longitude and latitude coordinates on a map unless I had
absolute location details available on the map).
 If a process of identifying and placing a location on a map is more
difficult, or if the questions that I ask of the students are harder (e.g., why
would the most populated cities be located near major bodies of water), I
would provide the students with hints that would point them to the right
direction (but without immediately giving them the answer). In response to
the above question, I would tell the students “For what reasons do you think
that humans would want to have close access to large bodies of water? What
do they provide that humans need.?”
 6. For students with Autism:

TEK Standard:

S.S. 8.10(B) Compare places and regions of the United States in terms of
physical and human characteristics.

How I would teach this:

The United States consists of nine regions as defined by the United States
Census Bureau. I would divide the thirty-six students in the class into groups of
four and have research stations set up, one with information and reading material
for each region. Over a period of two weeks, students would periodically rotate to
different stations every two days, so that they gather all the information on each
region. On the second Friday at the end of the second week, each student group
would create a group presentation to the class summarizing their findings on a
region of their choice and take questions from the class.

Accommodations and supports and how they would help this student population:

1. Create and display large, visual schedules of tasks to be done on each

day.

Students with Autism like a sense of predictability, regularity, and

routine in their day-to-day obligations and activities, and do not deal well
with uncertainty or rapidly changing circumstances. Uncertainty or fast-
paced change increases the anxiety levels of students with Autism, builds up
stress inside of them, and, as a result, they may freeze and shut down, act
out, or leave the classroom entirely. Believe me when I say this (I have
Autism myself, and do not deal well with either uncertainty or fast-paced
change when it comes to fulfilling my obligations).
 Having a large, visual schedule of daily classroom tasks and objectives
provides students with Autism a sense of control when it comes to
completing their work and achieving their learning goals. These schedules
also provide an organized and effective mechanism through which to convey
what tasks these students are to complete, and by what date and time.
Students with Autism often struggle with organization (as I once did in
middle school and high school), and for them, displaying a classroom schedule
with tasks and objectives for each day of the week provides a stable path to
completing tasks on time and in as efficient and efficacious a manner as
possible.

If I set up the classroom schedule where the students would research

each region of the United States for 20 minutes each day (with three
regions being researched by the various student groups per day), followed by
a student progress checkpoint every three days, then that should provide a
sense of balance, certainty, order, and stability to provide students with
confidence that they can proceed with completing their work with peace of
mind, without doubts, fears, or uncertainties. I would make sure to indicate
on the classroom schedule which student groups would work at which
stations, and on what day and time they would rotate. At that point,
everyone would know what his/her responsibilities are, what the
expectations are for class as far as student work is concerned, and how the
various classroom activities would be implemented efficiently to ensure
smooth transitions instead of abrupt halts.

2. Establish a buddy system for students with Autism.

Students with Autism usually avoid working with large groups of

people, largely because they lack adequate social skills to work effectively
within these groups. However, they perform quite well when working with
someone who understands their work habits, learning strategies, and thought
processes, an individual referred to as a “work buddy,” or simply a “buddy.”
Usually, this person is a peer (a fellow student or classmate) who also has
Autism. This is something that I would take into consideration when creating
the student groups. In order for this strategy to work, every group of four
students would need to have two students who are Autistic. Even if not
every student group has an individual with Autism, I would make sure to
rotate the student groups in such a way that, for example, a student with
Autism in one group (let’s say, Group 1) would be paired with another student
who has Autism who originally started in let’s say, Group 2, but who has now
joined Group 1 and is helping the other student with Autism in understanding
and comprehending the lesson material and working collaboratively together.