Everyone Learns Differently
CSD Speech-Language Pathologist Ms. Thaker was awarded a DEF Teacher Innovation Grant to purchase materials for her adaptive classroom at Glennwood Elementary. The grant funded starter sets of TEACCH® task boxes for students to practice their pre-academic skills. The TEACCH method was developed in the 1960s to help students with Autism achieve their education goals. Glennwood’s current adapted classroom has five Kindergarten students and one first-grader. The students in the adaptive classroom spend the vast majority of their day in the classroom where they are taught an “adapted curriculum”. They need additional supports and a more specialized version of the curriculum to be able to advance academically and/or developmentally. At present, CSD has adaptive classrooms at Glennwood, Winnona Park, Westchester, Talley Street, F.AVE, Beacon Hill, and DHS.
The TEACCH materials will support students with significant disabilities in acquiring the skills they need to be successful in the classroom. The research-based TEACCH approach uses “Structured TEACCHing,” a method designed to support Autistic students with higher support needs, especially those with significant communication challenges and reduced attention and executive functioning skills. The grant also funded the creation of an adapted book library for teaching students who are non-speaking or minimally verbal. Because of their interactive nature, adapted books can be helpful in supporting students’ sustained attention to a shared storybook reading, while also exposing them to core vocabulary meant to help them communicate their wants and needs. Ms. Thaker hopes to catalog and share the materials with other adapted classrooms and plans to train current teachers and paraprofessionals on the TEACCH system.
