Children on the autism spectrum often experience difficulty generalizing social skills across environments and contexts, which can make developing friendships challenging in early childhood. This means that, in addition to initial social skills instruction, children with autism may need specialized supports to promote the generalization of newly…

Problem solving is one of the main competences we seek to teach students at school for use in their future lives. However, when dealing with mathematical problems, teachers encounter a wide variety of difficulties. To foster students' problem-solving skills, the authors developed "strategy keys." Strategy keys can serve as material to…

Emojis . . . avatars . . . icons . . . Our world is becoming increasingly reliant on visual communication. Yet our classrooms still heavily focus on traditional oral and written instruction. In this first-of-its-kind resource, Dr. Susan Daniels channels over twenty years of research and experience into a comprehensive guide of visual learning…

Classroom conversation plays an important role in the development of children's language and reasoning. However, studies show that classroom talk relies too much on directives and close-ended questions. "Conversation Compass" provides the tools to strengthen your language-learning environment: (1) The Compass: guide high-quality…

The purpose of this guide is to provide brief explanations of practices that can be implemented when working with students in need of intensive intervention in mathematics. Special education instructors, math interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with mathematics may find this guide helpful. Specific topics covered…

This article focuses on biliteracy development of English and Spanish through the practical strategy of systematically labeling the classroom within the context of daily classroom activities and providing children with various opportunities to use the words throughout the day. Using the foundational work related to classroom labels from Pinnell…

Visually based interventions such as video modeling have been demonstrated to be effective with students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This approach has wide utility, is appropriate for use with students of a range of ages and abilities, promotes independent functioning, and can be used to address numerous learner objectives, including…

Special education professionals and teachers of students with autism face many behavioral and instructional challenges. In addition to teaching content to a demanding population, teachers are often faced with particular circumscribed and special interests that often take up time and divert attention from the students. It is an educators job to…

Assessing children's learning is a key part of teaching. In all curriculum areas it is used for informing planning of future learning experiences and assessing pupil progress. Specifically in science, it identifies knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts, reasoning, and practical skill development. There are various ways to assess,…

A primary goal of substantive art education is to communicate visually--to decipher art for meaning and to construct meaning through images and objects. Strategies available to engage students are the interdisciplinary activities found in performance, visual and written forms of creative expression, and related disciplines such as ethnography,…

Word walls are designed to serve as visual scaffolds and are a common classroom tool used to support reading and language arts instruction. To support vocabulary development in science and support students who are ELLs, Husty and Jackson (2008) created interactive word walls that resemble semantic maps (Masters, Mori, and Mori 1993). Semantic maps…

"Bella is a 5-year-old girl with autism who attends a reverse inclusive preschool class. She primarily uses gestures and a communication binder to communicate with others. In addition, she is not toilet trained even though her teachers and her parents have tried numerous attempts over a 3-year period to train her. Bella also has gastrointestinal…

One may have heard of Bowland maths and will know something of the "case studies" that were published in 2008. These are substantial mathematics projects, taking five hours, or more, to complete. Most are set in real or realistic contexts, like "designing a smoothy"--Product Wars, or "devising plans to improve road safety"--Reducing Road…

The development of language and literacy is the foundation for all other learning. This statement is the guiding philosophy at the Iowa School for the Deaf (ISD). Teachers at ISD believe that intensive, highly structured early intervention and education work best to support cognitive and communication development in their students. However, little…

In this article, the author describes his categorization of practical mathematical tasks using drama, body maths, and a host of outlandish props. He categorizes the lessons under three headings--demonstration, teamwork, and creative display--partly as a means of furthering the invention of more activities within each classification. His…