Multiple Disability

Disability Label & Prevalence

Definition

General Characteristics

Identification & Assessment

Educational Approaches

Educational Placement Alternatives

Severe/Multiple Disabilities

1% of General Population

IDEA – Concomitant [simultaneous] impairments (such as mental retardation-blindness, mental retardation-orthopedic impairment, etc.), the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in a special education program solely for one of the impairments. The term does not include deaf-blindness.

Slow acquisition rate of new skills, poor generalization and maintenance, limited communication skills, impaired physical and motor development, deficits in self-help skills, stereotypic and challenging behavior

Depends on the disabilities present.

Students should be taught: functionality, age-appropriateness, communication, literacy, recreation and leisure, making choices, access to general education curriculum, selecting and prioritizing instructional targets.

General Education Classroom

Resource Room Programs

Separate Classrooms

Special schools

Residential Facilities

Home/Hospital

Description of 2 evidence-based strategies

Scaffolding: being situated within a social context whereby the tutor “enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal that would be beyond his unassisted efforts.” (Coyne, Pisha, Dalton, Zeph, & Smith, 2012).

Task Analysis (Wakeman, Karvonen, & Ahumada, 2013): breaking a complex skill or chain of behavior into smaller, teachable units. (Heward, 2012).

Practitioner Based Article related to this area: Include reference and summary of the article.

Teaching the CCSS is that demands for mathematical competence in today’s world have greatly increased. This is true as well for students with moderate and severe disabilities who will face expectations in jobs and daily living (e.g., workplace charts and graphs, using numerically operated machinery). When teaching the CCSS to students with moderate and severe disabilities, it will be important to incorporate real-life examples in daily instruction. Although mathematics instruction could focus on a few of the earliest mathematics skills throughout the student’s school career, research has shown students with moderate and severe disabilities can learn skills that align with the grade level of their chronological age (Saunders, Bethune, Spooner, & Browder, 2013).