Multiple Methods for Multiple Students

Shanks 1

Multiple Methods for Multiple Students

As you walk into any classroom and look around the room at students working at their desks, you make the observation that can be made in any classroom across the country: each student is learning in a different way. You may see students focusing on a textbook, while other students need someone to aurally explain material to them, while still others are focusing on pictures that illustrate the meaning of the assignment or topic. The underlying message is that not everyone can be taught in the same way and as an educator, we need to be aware of that. Part of the struggle of so many teachers today is finding ways to reach all of their students, leaving no student behind. This struggle more or less became the focus of my action research project.

I decided to focus on my special needs students and accommodations that should and can be met for them in my classroom. My mentor teacher has previously set plans in place for many of our special needs students, but this is the first year that the students are coming to music class with their grade level instead of with a class at the level of their cognitive or emotional ability. In my experience teaching my students over the last few months, I’ve seen some of my students fall through the cracks because of this. Through research and discussion with other teachers, I came up with several accommodation plans to meet the needs of some of my most cognitively and emotionally impaired students. I decided to focus my study on two of my students from Walters Elementary School in 2nd grade, and for the sake of privacy, I will change their names to Katie and Nathan.

Katie and Nathan are both severely emotionally impaired with Nathan having more cognitive impairments than Katie. Both students lose focus in my classroom, have trouble following activities, are not comfortable interacting with their peers outside of one another, and show signs of behavioral issues that were not present in past years. These are all problems that I saw while teaching and observing, and began to address through research and lesson plan modification.

I started the process by discussing what had been done in the past for these students and what was set up in their IEPs for accommodations with my mentor teacher Stacy Root. Stacy showed me the accommodations that the school gives to her and how she transfers them into her classroom. She also told me that one of the hardest things to do and what most non-Music teachers do not understand is that many preset accommodations that work for the general education classroom work differently in our music classroom. As music educators, we have to try different ways of teaching to see what works best with each student. In the past, Stacy has had Katie and Nathan come with a first grade class because developmentally, they can get more out of the lessons without the material being above their cognitive level. However, with the changes that have been made this year to have each student with their grade level at all times, Katie and Nathan are put into a classroom atmosphere where the content of the class is over their heads. Stacy also struggles to have the students gain understanding and knowledge in this type of setting. Her accommodations are to have a lot of movement activities because Katie and Nathan pick up on visual cues very quickly. They are able to participate in activities, receive the same educational values in these activities as the other students, and the same content. However, Katie and Nathan often need reminders to participate in class, which I believe stems from the feelings they have when they do not understand something and their response is to zone out in class.

After speaking with Stacy, I did further research into working with students with disabilities, both physically and cognitively and came across an article by Pamela Wolfe and Tracey Hall, Making Inclusion a Reality for Students with Severe Disabilities. This article focuses on the importance of having all of our students learning with no exclusions. They stress the importance of having students with disabilities receive instruction in content area like all other students, not just focusing on if the student is successfully socially integrating. I thought this was a very important concept to focus on because from an outsider’s perspective, many of the activities that I do in my class look like they are oriented around social activities, but looking closer, my students are gaining vital musical experience and knowledge from each activity we do. Another key concept from the article that I can apply to making accommodations in my classroom is summed up in the following quote:

“Inclusion of students with disabilities requires the provision of curriculum and classroom adaptations. But inclusion does not require that the student with special needs perform at a level comparable to peers without disabilities.”(Hall 60)

I need to remember that when I am making accommodations for my students, I want them to gain knowledge from my activities, but I cannot expect my special needs students to meet the same standards as my general education students in the exact same way and I therefore need a more flexible method of evaluation.

The next step I took was to formulate my own accommodation ideas to try with Katie and Nathan. I wanted to encourage them to interact with more of their peers in the hopes that working with their peers would help them focus through an activity and give them insight into learning rhythms. Because I know they will sing in my classroom, but hardly ever talk, I wanted my peer activity to be movement based. I chose an activity that involved a circle game where Katie and Nathan could participate in a large group without the pressure of partners. I had all my students sit down in a circle next to someone they did not normally sit next to. This forced all of my students to interact with new faces. We then played a stick passing game, originating from Mexico, that focused on keeping the beat, chanting rhythms, singing, and moving. The goal of the activity was to pick up the stick in front of you and place it in front of the person to your left at the exact same time that everyone else is moving and singing. It is a bit challenging at first, but the students catch on really quickly. Instead of specifying left for Katie and Nathan, I asked them to pass their stick to Bobby and Teagan who were sitting next to them. While the other students were more comfortable with left and right, this visual cue gave Katie and Nathan an easier way to process where their stick should go while the game was going on. Katie and Nathan flourished during this activity and were smiling for the first time in an activity that I can remember. Because of the visual aid of seeing 23 other students moving the exact same way, both Katie and Nathan were engaged and were able to participate at the same level as the rest of the class. The following week, I decided to try a different kind of circle activity. It involved keeping the beat with your feet, holding hands to make windows, and having one person walk around the circle to a steady beat while the rest of the class sang the song. This activity was less successful, but a good learning experience for me. I wanted to see what aspects of our previous circle activity impacted the way Katie and Nathan learned and what aspects in a circle activity would they struggle with because both are based on visual cues. I believe this activity was hard for them because it did not involve the whole class working together and moving together as one entity, but had many different facets. There may have been too many things in the circle for Katie and Nathan to focus on.

Through both of these instances, I saw successful and unsuccessful methods of accommodating for Nathan and Katie in my classroom. I am not deterred by my unsuccessful attempt because it is the role of the teacher to see what works and what does not work for his/her students. I need to experiment and gather ways to teach these two students for who they are as individuals and this process is how I do so. Given more time to work out accommodation methods I would have liked to try having a paraprofessional in the classroom. It would be interesting to see if a paraprofessional’s presence would make any difference in the way Katie and Nathan learn. It might help to have another set of eyes and ears to help them focus and participate in music. After reading an article about how paraprofessionals can benefit music class, I really think this could have been a great next step. In the article Paraprofessionals in Music Settings by Elaine Bernstorf, she stresses how “with assistance during even part of the lesson, students with disabilities may have a more successful experience…[and] their participation benefits the entire group” (Bernstorf 38). Students need to be able to experience music in order to learn music and that might be easier with a class of 25 to have a paraprofessional come in to help reinforce my students’ accommodations.

Throughout this whole process, I have learned a lot from my students about becoming a better teacher. I see that my students have very different needs and as their teacher, it is my job to do my best to meet those needs. Accommodations for special needs students are very important in the classroom and there is no reason those students should suffer because their teacher was not prepared for them to learn. Through this research project, my eyes have been opened to new possibilities.

Annotative Bibliography

Bernstorf, Elaine D. “Paraprofessionals in Music Settings.” Music Educators Journal Vol. 87, no. 4 (2001): 36-40. JSTOR. Web. 10 November 2009.

This article talks about the different roles a paraprofessional can take in a music setting to better help students succeed. They are able to lead small groups, reinforce teaching instruction, transcribe information if needed, and support the teacher.

Hall, Tracey E. and Wolfe, Pamela S. “Making Inclusion a Reality for Students with Severe Disabilities.” Teaching Exceptional Children Vol. 35, no. 4 (2003): 56-60. Web. 17 October 2009.

This article stresses the importance of including students with physical and mental disabilities in the classroom for educational reasons rather than social reasons. The authors also present a process for planning curriculum adaptations to make it reachable to all teachers.

Root, Stacy. Personal Interview. 24 September 2009.

During this time, Stacy Root and I went over “Nathan” and “Katie’s” IEPs and discussed what accommodations there already were in the classroom and what accommodations could be made. We discussed how these students were accommodated in their other classes and how that can transfer to music. Stacy gave me copies of “Nathan” and “Katie’s” accommodation forms to keep in my binder to refer to throughout student teaching.