EALA

Disability: Deaf-blindness

  • Meeting Students Where They Are: Strategies for Adapting Services for Students with Disabilities

    —

    by

    A paraprofessional at a rural high school discusses how she has adapted her services to a virtual learning environment. She shares specific strategies she has used with her three students, who have social and emotional disorders, significant physical disabilities and dyslexia, respectively. She discusses how she has tailored her services not only to accommodate her…

  • Providing Services to Students who are Deafblind: Coming together as a field

    —

    by

    In this case study, an expert in special education and mother of a child who is deafblind describes replicable strategies that can be leveraged with deafblind students in distance learning. The author uses her family’s experience to discuss the struggles deafblind students face when moving to the virtual learning world, as well as the potential…

  • Supporting Students with Significant Needs in Distance Learning

    —

    by

    A school leader at a full-time special education day school discusses critical strategies for distance learning with students who have significant needs. Transitioning technology, communicating with parents, establishing routines, prioritizing engagement, and implementing many ways for students to show what they know as learning demands are increased are addressed with illustrative examples. 

  • Using Pets to Meet Occupational Therapy Goals in the Virtual Setting

    —

    by

    This case study explores the calming and motivating presence of pets during virtual learning, particularly within the context of school-based occupational therapy. In it, an occupational therapist talks about the benefits of leveraging students’ surroundings in their virtual environments to keep students engaged.

  • Occupational Therapy in the Park: A Creative, Socially Distant Solution for a Child With a Learning Disability and ADHD

    —

    by

    This case study describes my work with Lucy, a 5-year-old child with working memory weaknesses, visual spatial difficulties, ADHD, and sensory processing disorder. Because Lucy struggles with attention, she finds it difficult to retain what letters and numbers look like. Before the pandemic, we had been doing a lot of multisensory work to help her…

  • Uplifting Student Voices: Using Accessible Templates and Tools for Virtual Presentations

    —

    by

    This case study describes a middle school special education teacher’s creative solutions for pushing students to create and virtually present using Google Slides in a self-contained classroom. Students present projects they develop and are proud of during the time of distance learning. The use of paced Google Slides templates, word banks, sentence starters, select-to-speak tools,…

  • A Study in Augmentative Communication in Distance Learning

    —

    by

    This case study describes a speech and language pathologist’s experience supporting a middle school student with complex communication needs and behavioral challenges. Strategies for mapping student needs to clinician strategies are discussed, with an emphasis on how to leverage student agency in the teletherapy process. The use of augmentative communication in distance learning is explored.

  • The Push-In Model in a Virtual Classroom

    —

    by

    This case study describes a speech-language pathologist’s transition from face-to-face push-in sessions to an online push-in format in virtual classrooms. Technology resources and new strategies are trialed with a middle school–age student working on writing and comprehension at a school for students with language-based learning differences. Screen sharing, breakout rooms, chat feature, whiteboard features, and…

  • Transforming the Parent-Teacher Relationship in Remote Learning

    —

    by

    Brittany Moser, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) coach at Neighborhood Charter Schools, shares a resource aimed at partnering families and schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this case study, Brittany shares how her resource, “Tips and Tricks for Remote Learning,” became a foundational launchpad for supporting families in educating their children remotely. 

  • Virtual Writing Lesson for an Inclusive Classroom

    —

    by

    This case study describes distance learning with an inclusive classroom for writing at the 2nd grade level. The strategies and approach described reflect the Universal Design for Learning approach to inclusive education design and were designed to explicitly build student knowledge, skills and engagement in navigating the new virtual classroom. The use of Book Creator,…