PECT Special Education 7-12 Module 2
A special education teacher is working on basic literacy skills with an 11th grader with a mild intellectual disability who has limited phonemic-awareness skills in English and her home language. Which considerations would be most important for the teacher to keep in mind when planning phonemic-awareness instruction for the student?
The student is likely to have particular difficulty distinguishing English sounds that do not exist in her home language.
A high school mathematics teacher is preparing a lesson on how to write geometry proofs. The teacher knows this mathematical concept will require students to use their deductive reasoning and organizational skills. One of the teacher's classes includes a student with ADHD. The mathematics teacher consults with a special education teacher regarding how to provide SDI for this student. Which strategy should the special education teacher recommend the mathematics teacher include in the lesson plan to help this student succeed at writing proofs?
Giving the student a checklist of steps to follow when solving proofs.
An 8th grader with a learning disability has difficulty in the area of mathematical reasoning and problem solving. He receives instruction from the special education teacher for 30 minutes each school day to address this need. Which strategy for closing each season would best support the student's development of the targeted skills?
Having the student verbalize the concepts he has learned during the session.
A 16 year-old student with a mild intellectual disability spends most of his leisure time watching television. During an IEP meeting, the student's parents express concern that he is developing unhealthful sedentary habits. The team develops a goal aimed at promoting his participation in active recreational activities. Which would be the special educations teacher's best first step in implementing this goal?
Helping he student fill out an informal interest inventory to identify sports or exercises that may appeal to him.
Which area of reading development is considered an essential component of effective reading instruction for both beginning readers and older struggling readers?
Vocabulary development.
Which of the following instructional interventions for high school students with disabilities is most characteristic of a Tier 2 intervention in an RtII program?
A reading specialist works with struggling readers on comprehension strategies several times a week.
Which of the following high school students with disabilities is likely to have the greatest difficulty with reading comprehension?
A student with a language impairment who has good social communication skills but significant deficits in the areas of morphology, syntax, and semantics.
A 14 year-old student with a moderate intellectual disability attends general education classes part time. The student has a limited number of social interactions with peers in this setting. She has trouble initiating such interactions, and her classmates, while friendly toward her, tend not to involve her in their conversations or activities. Which strategies would likely be most effective in fostering the student's ability to engage in social interactions with her fellow students?
Arranging for selected peers to participate regularly with the student in leisure activities, such as board games and art projects.
A special education teacher works with seventh and eighth- grade students on money handling skills such as counting money and making change for given amounts of money. Which teacher strategy would likely be most effective to enable student to understand and apply these math skills?
Arranging for students to run a mini business where teachers and staff can purchase items from the students, requiring them to handle real money.
A 19 year-old student with a mild intellectual disability leaves school at noon every day to go to his afternoon job at a retail store. One day the student's supervisor reports to the special education teacher that the student has not been completing assigned tasks and that his coworkers are starting to complain. The special education teacher's best initial response would be to:
Ask the supervisor to speak to the student about the problem and remind the student of his responsibilities.
An 11th grade student receives special education services due to a specific learning disability in reading comprehension. The special education teacher is listening as the student summarizes a passage that she has just read in her history textbook. Which of the following teacher responses would best support the student's academic-language development in this situation?
Asking the student follow-up questions that require her to clarify or elaborate on certain statements.
A special education teacher has been teaching learning strategies to a tenth grade student with a learning disability. The teacher could best facilitate the student's generalization of these strategies to her content-area assignments by:
Asking the student to start each new content-area assignment by identifying the learning strategy that would be most effective to use.
A 7th grade student with muscular dystrophy uses assisted ventilation to support his breathing. While co-teaching the student's language arts class, his special education teacher notes that a number of the student's classmates seem reluctant to work with him and avoid sitting near him. The teacher suspects that the classmates are uncomfortable with his breathing apparatus and unsure about how to interact with him. The special education teacher can begin to address this situation most effectively by taking which of the following actions?
Assisting the student in explaining to his classmates the purpose of the breathing apparatus and how it works.
An 8th grade student with a specific learning disability in reading has developed decoding skills but has difficulty comprehending what she reads because her reading is slow and laborious. The students is likely to benefit most from a reading intervention designed to improve her skills in which of the following areas?
Automaticity in word recognition.
When teaching a high school student with a moderate intellectual disability how to engage in community-based activities that require social skills, such as eating at a restaurant, it is most important for a special education teacher to:
Break down each activity into discrete steps and tach each step to the student explicitly.
A high school sophomore with a reading disability hopes to attend a local community college after she graduates. The student is a shy person who dislikes talking about her disability and seldom speaks during her IEP meetings. Her team members are aware that she will need to advocate for herself in college. Which would be the IEP team's best strategy for helping the student begin to acquire effective self-advocacy skills?
Developing a goal specifying that the student will describe her learning needs and express her feelings and opinions during IEP meetings.
A high school English language learner with Asperger syndrome has an advanced level of English proficiency but has difficulty participating in social interactions and class discussions. He has a strong desire to speak accurate English and always carries a bilingual dictionary and a notebook, in which he writes down lists of English words and their meanings. Which teaching strategies would likely be most effective in helping the student improve his English communication skills?
Engaging him in role-play activities that prompt him to practice using English spontaneously for a variety of purposes.
Wide and varied independent reading promotes adolescents' reading achievement primarily by:
Enhancing their vocabulary knowledge and academic language.
A 13 year-old student with an emotional disturbance attends general education classes with the support of a 1:1 aide. A special education teacher provides consultation support to his general education teachers. As part of his IEP, he has a behavior support plan. In managing learning environments for the student, the most important first step for his special education teacher to take is to:
Ensure that each of the student's teachers understands and follows consistently the interventions specified in his behavior support plan.
A high school special education teacher will be conducting a class in the learning support room with a small group of ninth graders who have mild-moderate intellectual disabilities. Which of the following would be the best strategy for helping the students make a smooth transition into the learning support room?
Establishing a regular routine in which the students have a specific sequence of steps to follow as they enter.
A 17 year-old 11th grader who has a mild intellectual disability spends part of the school day in general education classes and part of the day in a resource room for support with functional and academic skills. She reads at a 5th grade level and has mastered various fundamental mathematics concepts, including the operations of addition and subtraction and the use of a calculator. This student works part time in a supermarket stocking shelves and brings home a small weekly paycheck. One of her IEP goals is to learn functional living skills in the area of money management. Which of the following would be the most appropriate strategy for fostering this student's money management skills?
Helping the student open a bank account and teaching her how to fill out deposit and withdrawal slips.
A high school student with spina bifida has a transition goal of living as independently as possible after leaving school. After her transition, the student will continue to need ongoing physical assistance in specific areas of functional living. Which would be the special education teacher's best strategy for addressing the student's transition needs in this area?
Helping the student research what services are provided by various agencies in the community.
A 9th grade student with ASD and an associated intellectual disability is nonverbal and does not spontaneously initiate communicative exchanges. Which of the following would be the best first step in teaching the student to use a picture exchange communication system (PECS) to initiate requests?
Identifying objects and activities that are currently of interest to the student.
Several students in a high school history teacher's classes have specific learning disabilities, sensory disabilities, or attention disorders. The history teacher seeks advice for the special eduction teacher about how to provide accessible instruction for students with this range of needs. The special education teacher can best respond by encouraging the teacher to begin by providing instruction that:
Includes multisensory and various and repeated representations of key concepts and ideas.
A 9th grade student receives special education services due to learning disabilities. In geography class, the student has significant difficulty locating geographic formations on maps. His special education teacher plans an activity during which the student will locate the Allegheny Mountains on a map of Pennsylvania. First the teacher cues the student to find the Allegheny Mountains on the map. Then the teacher waits ten seconds for him to respond. When he does not, the teacher describes how to find the Allegheny Mountains on the map. When the student still does not respond, which prompt should the teacher use next?
Modeling finding the Allegheny Mountains on the map.
A high school history teacher is preparing an end-of-unit essay test to assess students' understanding of the concepts that were taught. The teacher could best apply the principles of universal design in this situation by:
Offering students a variety of other options for demonstrating what they have learned.
A high school special education teacher wants to ensure that students with disabilities are familiar with the resources available to them as they transition out of high school. For those students who wish to transition from high school to the workplace, which resource is likely to be most helpful?
Office of Vocational Rehabilitation
A 9th grade student with ADHD generally comprehends content while reading his content-area textbooks but has significant difficulty retaining and retrieving information after reading. The student would likely benefit most from instruction in which strategy?
Pausing frequently to paraphrase what he has read.
When designing instruction to teach an 8th grade student with multiple disabilities how to purchase an item from a vending machine, a special education teacher should first:
Perform a task analysis of the basic steps involved in using a vending machine.
According to research, the most favorable classroom environment for students with emotional disturbance is characterized by frequent:
Praise and positive reinforcement of desired behavior.
Teaching a student to use manual signs or sign language to communicate wants and needs is most appropriate when the student's disability primarily affects his or her ability to:
Produce oral language.
An 11th grade student with dyslexia has received intensive reading interventions and is making good progress toward achieving some grade-level goals. However, she continues to be uninterested and unmotivated to read voluntarily and therefore has limited exposure to quality adolescent fiction and grade-level vocabulary. Which strategy is likely to be most effective in addressing the student's demonstrated needs?
Providing her with age-appropriate pocket-sized audiobooks on themes of interest to her that she can listen to using headphones.
A high school history teacher consults with the school's special education teacher about strategies for addressing the reading needs of several students with learning disabilities in her history classes. The special education teacher suggests that she teach the students a particular note-taking strategy to use with class reading assignments. The special education teacher then explains the note-taking strategy and models it for her. Which additional steps would be promote the history teacher's success in teaching the strategy to students?
Providing her with support and feedback as she implements the strategy in the classroom.
A 7th grade student with a learning disability makes many spelling errors in writing. Which intervention is likely to be most effective in addressing this student's spelling needs?
Providing the student with explicit instruction in phonics and syllabication skills.
In preparation for an upcoming statewide standards-bases assessment, a special education teacher provides direct instruction in test-taking strategies to a small group of students with specific learning disabilities. Which instructional activities would most effectively help the students build confidence and fluency in using the test-taking strategies they have learned?
Providing the students with a number of tasks and materials that gradually increase in difficulty to practice applying the strategies.
A special education teacher wants to help a group of high school students with moderate intellectual disabilities learn social skills needed for successful participation in school dances and other social events. The teacher could best begin working toward this goal by:
Providing the students with direct instruction and practice in using common social skills.
A special education teacher is helping 9th grade students with disabilities who are struggling readers prepare for a biology lesson on invertebrates. The teacher introduces key vocabulary words (e.g., echinoderm, arthropod, mollusk) and explains the meaning of each word. Which steps would be most effective for the teacher to take next to develop the students' understanding of the words?
Providing the students with examples and non examples of each word.
According to recent research, peer tutoring of secondary students with mild intellectual disabilities is most effective when peer tutors participate in which activities before they begin tutoring?
Receiving training from a teacher in explicit instructional strategies.
A special education teacher decides to use a reciprocal teaching approach with a small group of struggling readers. The teacher begins by leading a dialogue about the content of a given text and modeling four reading strategies: making predictions, generating questions, clarifying meaning, and summarizing information. Over time, as the students become familiar with the approach, the teacher has them take over leadership of the discussions. This approach most clearly illustrates which of the following elements of effective reading instruciton?
Scaffolding students' development of reading skills.
An IEP team is reviewing and discussing data on the setting events, antecedents, and consequences associated with the running away behavior of a 14-year-old student with ASD. In the context of this discussion, individual team members could best contribute to the development of a positive behavior support plan for the student by:
Sharing their ideas about what purpose the behavior may serve for the student.
A teacher wishes to use positive reinforcement to address the frequent out-of-seat behavior of a seventh-grade student with ADHD. Which of the following teacher actions would best serve this purpose?
Smiling at the student when he is working at his desk.
A special education teacher is meeting with two 9th grade students who have reading disabilities. Their science class is about to begin a unit on weather, and the students will soon start reading a new chapter in their textbook. The special education teacher wants to help prepare the students to understand the chapter. Which would be the best initial activity for this purpose?
Talking with students about their relevant background knowledge and experiences.
A 10th grade student with ADHD has difficulty organizing her ideas in writing. Which interventions is likely to be most effective in improving the student's writing skills?
Teaching he student how to use concept mapping that allows her to visually represent and manipulate her ideas.
An 11th grade student with a specific learning disability in basic reading skills has good listening comprehension skills but has extreme difficulty decoding printed text, which impairs his reading comprehension. Providing the student with access to and instruction in the use of which types of assistive technology is likely to best address his academic learning needs?
Text-to-speech software.
A high school student with a learning disability finds transitions between classes confusing. At the beginning of each class, she has difficulty orienting to the subject and attending to the teacher's instructions. The student frequently misses important information and must then either ask the teacher to repeat the instructions or seek assistance from a classmate. Which of the following would be the special education teacher's best strategy for addressing this issue?
Working with teachers to establish a set of consistent cues to help the student become focused when the day's activities are being introduced.