Chapter 23 Special Education and the Linguistically Diverse Student

By: Samantha Petree

 

-Many English learners are over identified as having a disability, the gifted are under identified, and many are misidentified.

-Many schools do not have programs to support the disabled students.

-Tests used to identify students with disabilities or who are gifted are usually biased.

-These tests need to be free of biasness.

-When testing, the student should be assessed in both their native language and English. 

-Formal testing should be considered as well as interviews, observations, and visiting the child’s home.

-If a child’s performance is down in the formal and informal testing and observation then it is likely the child has a disability.

-Children should be provided with a multicultural, bilingual, and special education curriculum to achieve.

-To decide what the student needs the parents, general teacher, bilingual teacher, and special education teacher should get together and make a plan, set goals, and set an emphasis on language for the student to succeed.

-When teaching, disabled children should be allowed to use their native language, be provided with visuals, focus on building vocabulary, and use technology.

-Gifted students are typically over looked.

-Students must take intelligence tests, achievement tests and creativity tests to be considered gifted.

-To teach gifted students take advantage of their strengths, use a rich curriculum, use a student centered approach, and focus on oral and written language.

-Both disabled and gifted students can be taught with hand-on activities as well as using Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory to help students do their best.  (Examples page 322-327)

-One of the best ways to see a child’s progress is to use portfolios.

-Website provides lesson plans for gifted and students with disabilities. http://www.education-world.com/a_tsl/archives/spec_ed.shtml