Students with high-incidence disabilities (SWDs) experience academic challenges in multiple content areas (U.S. Department of Education, 2014). With growing recognition of the importance of science education in preparing students to be well-rounded, global learners in the 21st century, it is crucial that SWDs receive supports for succeeding in a…

A commonly used method for supporting the writing of students with learning disabilities (LD), graphic organizers have been shown to effectively support instruction for students with LD in a variety of content areas (Dexter & Hughes, 2011). Students with LD often struggle with the process of developing their ideas into organized sentences; the…

Beginning special education teachers today are highly likely to be asked to co-teach with general education teachers at some point in their career. Besides supporting their students, new special education teachers may be tasked with persuading their colleagues to try out both new methods of collaboration and unfamiliar models of instructional…

Evidence based reading instruction and intervention are essential for students with disabilities. The authors recommend that elementary special education teachers emphasize both code-based and meaning-based skills as part of delivering intensive reading interventions, including providing explicit and systematic decoding and vocabulary instruction.…

Special educators can play an essential role in the development of students' understanding of and capacity to do mathematics. Whether a special education teacher's goal is to help kindergartners develop counting skills or to support 10th graders in constructing geometric proofs and whether instruction will occur in co teaching, consulting, or…

Students with disabilities often find writing extremely challenging (Harris & Graham, 2016). Special educators can, however, promote tremendous gains in students' ability to write by understanding common challenges students face and mastering specific teaching techniques. Students' writing success depends on reducing how much attention and…

During the first years of teaching, new special education teachers (SETs) face many unique challenges as they work to establish themselves as professionals. Upon entering the classroom on the first day of instruction, SETs are expected to be prepared, and they are presented with a daunting list of responsibilities and expectations, including the…

Expository, or informational, text can be defined as a type of nonfiction that describes a topic categorically by moving from subtopic to subtopic with the intent to teach content or convey information (Maloch & Bomer, 2013). One vehicle for teaching the text structure and language of expository text to preschool-age children is through…

Proficiency in mathematics involves the seamless synchronization of conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, computational fluency, and problem solving (NMAP, 2008). Clearly, fluency with mathematics facts is one element embedded within mathematical proficiency and important for students with disabilities to develop. As more and more…

Price comparison is a functional mathematics skill involving purchasing, use of money, and budgeting, with the goal of selecting the best deal based on a person's financial resources (Browder, Spooner, & Trela, 2011). The operational definition of "price comparison" is to compare the magnitudes of the price numbers and then select…

This article discusses two strategies to improve reading outcomes for middle and high school adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The first is providing secondary students a choice of accessible, engaging activities to more actively engage them during reading instruction and foster intrinsic motivation to engage in literacy…

When students read more, vocabulary knowledge increases (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003; Krashen, 2004). Out of every 100 unknown words that students encounter while reading, they learn an average of 15 of them from text alone (Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999). In addition, as students age, they are more likely to infer word meanings, indicating…

It is understandable that misuse of the terms "specially designed instruction" (SDI), "high-leverage practices" (HLPs), "explicit instruction" (EI), and "intensive instruction"(II) has bred confusion among professionals, and this confusion may lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings in the field.…

English language learners (ELLs) with learning disabilities (LD) can find navigating the content areas quite difficult due to challenges involving limitations in English language proficiency, gaps in English academic vocabulary, difficulties with working memory and long-term memory, and limited background knowledge on content area topics. However,…

Educators express an almost universal desire for students to exhibit self-control--that is, manage, monitor, and assess their own social and academic behaviors. These skills comprise self-regulation, a complex set of functions derived from several fields of research, including social cognition (Zimmerman, 2000), self-determination (Wehmeyer &…