Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments GT and special ed combined classroom

Hi- I have been searching for an older thread with this topic and can't seem to find it- if anyone can point me to it, I would appreciate it.

The elementary that my younger dd attended for most of her elementary schooling also used an inclusion model for special ed students and was the district designated school for "moderate needs" students. However, there was a wing of the school where there were extra classrooms that housed the GT teacher and the special ed teachers and the kids at various ends of the spectrum were pulled out into these rooms for replacement instruction in some of the subjects.

From what I saw, the kids with significant developmental delays or special needs spent a good part of the day in the pull out classes for maybe the entire language arts and/or math blocks. During the parts where they were in the std classrooms, like maybe social studies, science, etc., some of them had aides who helped as needed.

It sounds like the pull out part isn't happening in your dd's classroom and like the second teacher essentially is in the place of the aides that we saw in our dd's school. I could see this working if a few things are in place:

1) the teacher who is designated to work with the kids with acceleration needs has GT training and experience.
2) they have a plan for different curriculum or different levels of the same curriculum not just extention activities of the straight 6th grade curriculum for everyone.
3) they will also differentiate the curriculum within the groups. i.e. -- the kids who move faster than the avg GT kid can do less repetition or move through faster.

It all depends on how it is implemented, the beliefs of the teachers, the level of support needed by the students, whether any other adults support the room for all or part of the day, and how instruction is organized. If most instruction is large group, this is not a great situation (although I would argue that large group instruction is generally the least effective route anyway). If most instruction is small group, this could potentially be a better situation than a single teacher classroom, assuming the two teachers share ownership for the whole class and work well together. A smart special education teacher is a pro both at recognizing when the regular curriculum is not a fit, and in individualizing both in advance and on the fly. Also, more adults means smaller instructional groups where it's easier to target instruction to different ability levels and interests. No guarantees of course....I hope it works out well for your DD.

Cricket3, Fantastic news!