environments offer students opportunities for communication growth with both receptive and expressive language since the natural setting of the general education classroom has many peer role models who provide more exposure to social opportunities and pragmatic conversation. For example, ongoing inclusion environments have a positive influence on the communication weaknesses of learners with Down syndrome as compared to separate special education classrooms (Fraser, 2017; Kurth, Lyon, & Shogren, 2015). Students who are hard of hearing or deaf can also gain communication skills in inclusion classrooms when the appropriate supports and accommodations are in place. Accommodations may include circular seating if a student who is deaf lip-reads, lessons on sign language, or sound-field enhancement or assistive-listening systems. Communication is a lifelong skill people use to express their feelings and interact with their environment. Inclusion classrooms offer students opportunities to advance their communication skills when teachers and accepting peers are present, prepared, and supported.
Students with communication issues might need additional support from speech-language pathologists who preteach unfamiliar content-related vocabulary and appropriate ways to converse with peers. Students with hearing, visual, or physical difficulties require teachers implement individual specially designed instruction in their IEPs (Karten, 2019a). This specially designed instruction must highlight each learner’s competencies, not his or her sensory or communicative differences.
To support students’ varied communication needs, consider doing the following (Fraser, 2017; Kabashi & Kaczmarek, 2019).
• Employ visual supports and manipulatives for vocabulary, directions, responses, and expectations (for example, posters, schedules, and class norms).
• Collect informal data, such as anecdotal records, on a student’s speaking, listening, and language patterns for planning and decision making.
• Provide students choices with diverse communication modalities and engagements, honoring verbal and nonverbal ones.
• Teach social skills to students (for example, how to interact in whole-group and partner-partner discussions and how to take turns).
• Set up and facilitate structured and frequent opportunities for both academic and social conversations.
• Promote and provide frequent school-home communication (for example, via newsletters, phone calls, class blogs, and emails).
In addition, employ assistive technologies to facilitate communication for students who require more intensive communication needs. These include low-tech and high-tech technologies like personal FM systems, which are frequency-modulated assistive listening devices (ALD) that reduce background noises. FM systems use radio waves to deliver sounds from a speaker’s mouth directly to a child’s ears. Other devices and resources include, but are not limited to, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), Boardmaker (https://goboardmaker.com), clip art, magazine pictures, handheld picture rings, online visual dictionaries, and text-speech devices.
The following websites offer more ideas to support students’ communication needs.
• Alvernia University (https://online.alvernia.edu/articles/5-assistive-technology-tools-that-are-making-a-difference)
• Common Sense Education (www.commonsense.org/education/top-picks/top-assistive-technology-for-speech-difficulties)
• The Tech Edvocate (www.thetechedvocate.org/assistive-technology-to-help-students-with-articulation-disorder-succeed-academically)
It is also essential for educators to collaborate with related service providers, as appropriate, for individual student needs, which may include but are not limited to, a speech-language pathologist (SLP), a physical therapist (PT), or an occupational therapist (OT), or a consultation with a teacher of the deaf. For example, a speech-language pathologist could assist a teacher who has a student with articulation or communication differences, or perhaps provide a teacher with in-class strategies to help a student who has dyslexia better learn phonemes. An occupational therapist could offer teacher strategies to better acclimate an autistic student to following classroom expectations and procedures, while a physical therapist could assist staff with a learner who has less physical stamina or needs help to better hold a pencil or properly line up his or her mathematics digits in columns.
The Role of the Educator
At the core of all successful inclusion environments is the connection between the educator and student. Effective educators use a student’s passions, interests, and goals to further maximize his or her engagement in learning. Educators teach the student about consequences and let him or her have a stake in setting up behavioral goals, communicating that the student is an integral part of the social and behavioral processes. That educator’s “Hello” with a supportive smile before jumping into the lesson communicates genuine concern. When addressing inappropriate behaviors, the educator communicates to the student that he or she dislikes the behavior, not the student. This communication may include more conferencing with the student using emotional check-ins, private signals, or individual incentives.
Most important, the educator must build a trusting relationship with the student. Sensitive, well-trained educators who communicate their philosophy of expecting and accepting differences set up nurturing inclusion environments. When teachers take the time to humanize educational experiences, they can motivate students and increase buy-in to the lessons.
Students do not fit into stereotypical patterns or neatly compartmentalized boxes. Yet every day, teachers differentiate their lessons to meet the needs of students they label. It is imperative to spin disability labels about low performance into positive perspectives. For example, you might reframe the following acronyms.
• Autism spectrum disorder or ASD becomes adjust strategies dynamically
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD becomes all days have differences
Full inclusion, which refers to placing students of all abilities in the general education classroom regardless of the type or severity of the disability, has many challenges (Ferguson, 2008; Gilmour, 2018; Karten, 2015). Proponents of full inclusion want the general education classroom to be the only placement, yet without the appropriate adaptations, students may very well end up excluded under the guise of inclusion. Educators must restructure the general education classroom in a way that allows them to meet students’ needs appropriately without taking a deficit approach (Schifter & Hehir, 2018).
Students with special needs who succeed in the general education classroom receive appropriate scaffolding and the necessary academic, physical, communicative, emotional, social, and behavioral accommodations and modifications. Without modified programs, the general education classroom is excluding students with special needs even though they are physically included.
Students with certain disabilities may have similar characteristics and share a disability label with others, but each student is most certainly an individual with his or her own way of seeing the world and his or her own likes, dislikes, and strengths.
