Teaching Resposibility

In my experience, I've found that many learning support students are not responsible. I think some of it has to do with the fact that they are not engaged. Does anyone have a really good strategy or method that they use to teach responsibility that you've seen work?

Curriculum Design

Today I am working with writing curriculum. One of the issues that has come up concerns adding reading strategies to the curriculum. Does anyone already have specific strategies in their own distict curriculum?

Using Blogs with Special Education Students

Has anyone ever tried using Blogs with special education students? I have seen some examples of on-line Blogs using literature with students responding to reflection questions after reading a chapter. I think I would like to try this in class, but I feel like it will take a great deal of time preparing them to use the blog and how to post. It is hard to determine if the time involved in teaching the kids these skills is worth the investment when they have more pressing educational needs that need to be met. What do you think?

Strategy videos on YouTube

Has anyone used YouTube or Google videos to help teach reading strategies? I've found at least 3 that look promising to use. They are specifically modeled by the teacher with students. These are short videos that don't take longer than 3-5 minutes and they can be useful to both the teacher on how to teach the strategy and also the student on learning the strategy as well as seeing other students use it. Here is one on listening and spelling.

Grouping and Differentiated Instruction

How do you group your IEP students? Are they included in specific subject areas or separated by ability? Just wondering how other schools do this with the NCLB highly qualified issue.

Homework and the MS Special Education Student

Recently in the news, we have seen another trend about homework and the research claiming that it isn't necessary, that too much homework is taking away from the quality of student's lives and that homework being assigned by teachers is not important. I've done research on homework, specifically with special education students and I've found that our students require it. What do you think?

Teaming

How do you communicate with other teachers who teach your special education students? Are you able to attend team meetings? Does your schedule lend to open communication and time for you to answer questions and give suggestions?