essay writing for special education students

How ELA and Special Ed Collaboration Can Produce Great Student Writing

July 25, 2021

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essay writing for special education students

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One September morning in a writing workshop class, Jack, a 5th grader, was telling me about a funny “small moment” he witnessed on an airplane. Apparently, two young 20-somethings sitting in front of him had started up an initial conversation and by the end of the flight, they were kissing.

“And I mean—a lot of kissing! It was sooo awkward!” he squealed.

Where most 5th graders were planning their narrative writing about the time they broke their arm/wrist/ankle or their game-winning shot/hit/goal, I thought Jack’s idea was so refreshing. After his detailed description of eavesdropping, I felt certain his piece would be funny and weird-in-a-good-way—a joy to read. I left him to write and went to help other students. When I returned, Jack’s writing teacher (my friend and colleague) stood beside his desk with a hand on her chin, looking perplexed. Jack had sat for 45 minutes with only this written on his page:

On tim on a plaen…

Jack’s accommodation plan said he had dyslexia and graphomotor difficulties, which was one reason I was in his writing workshop that morning: He was one of many students I had the privilege of working with as a learning specialist. Sometimes we would meet in a small group outside of class, and other times I would work with him in his regular 5th grade class. As a learning specialist, my role was to help Jack’s English/Language Arts (ELA) teacher figure out how to help him write. Her role was to help me figure out what skills to focus on with Jack during my intervention time with him. Over years of doing this work, I discovered some essential elements to improving students’ writing through this kind of collaborative practice between regular classroom writing teachers and learning specialists.

If you’re part of a similar partnership, you may find some of these helpful in your work as well.

Why Writing is Especially Challenging for Students with Learning Differences

Writing is an incredibly complex task. It involves the instant integration of several components—handwriting and letter formation (and later typing), spacing and formatting on the page, spelling, grammar, sentence formation, adding punctuation—all while holding your ideas, and some sort of organizational scheme for those ideas, in your memory. It’s a difficult enough task for most students, who aren’t reading as much as they once did due to our instant access to visual media. But it’s particularly challenging for people with language-based learning disabilities, who often continue to struggle with writing even in adulthood.

Students with learning differences often experience a more severe “cognitive bottleneck” first described by theorists who studied attention in the ‘50s and ‘60s . Some conventions of written language make it to the page while others…don’t quite make it. Did Jack know how to spell “one,” “time,” and “plane” in 5th grade? Yes, he did. He had years of multi-sensory phonics and reading intervention behind him. However, the other cognitive demands of the writing process caused his spelling to get caught in the bottleneck.

Other students with learning differences also struggle with writing. Students with ADHD sometimes struggle to organize language, keep track of their ideas, or explain with enough detail. Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders often struggle to understand writing from the point of view of their readers.

Helping these students become proficient writers takes the synergy of a skilled language arts teacher and a skilled learning specialist. And that synergy can be enhanced if certain elements are in place.

Essential Elements of Effective ELA-Specialist Collaboration

1. a common planning time .

The biggest impact a school leader can make in the quality of instruction for ALL learners is to give co-teachers common planning time. I was lucky to start my career as a special educator in a school where my division head handed me a blank schedule with two periods already filled in. It said, “Common planning time with the 5th and 6th-grade Humanities teams.” For 55 minutes once a week, three humanities teachers and myself gathered around the student work table in my office with coffee (lots of coffee), books, laptops, and a last-minute Post-It note agenda.

As a result of these meetings, reading and writing workshops were problem-solved, social studies lessons were well designed, student work was analyzed, student needs were met, and friendships and co-teaching relationships I will cherish forever were formed. The cast of characters changed over the years as teachers left and were hired, including myself, but the value stayed the same. More recently we’ve had to have these meetings as floating heads on a screen, but the value in sitting down together to talk about how we would teach has never wavered for me.

2. An Equal Partnership

Collaboration works best when the ELA teacher and the specialist work on equal playing fields. I like to think of it as a psychologist and a sociologist working together: One is focused more on how an individual is functioning; the other needs to be focused on the good of the group. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Sometimes our ideas will seem out of touch with each other’s roles, and that’s okay as long as we honor the value in each other. As a learning specialist, I am not an island in knowing what’s best for students, even students with learning differences. It works best when there is shared ownership; when we can see their growth as “our” shared goal!

One practical way to accomplish this goal is to rotate groups. There were times when I would work with the most talented writers in the class, giving the ELA teacher more time with our struggling writers. My colleague and I would always have lots to talk about afterwards, and the kids did not feel the stigma of being the only ones asked to work with the specialist.

Another way the specialist can reduce stigma is by taking part in some of the fun that happens with the class—help judge a competition, give feedback on a project, participate in a class celebration and connect with students other than the ones you are there to serve. Students will come to see you as just another one of their teachers, and as a resource for all.

3. Reading Student Work Together

Whenever possible, both teachers should analyze student drafts together to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of students’ writing. Doing this together will help you see different strengths and weaknesses in a piece, and the student will then learn to see these as well.

Sharing the writing load also means you can divide up written feedback on student drafts. By rotating which teacher gives feedback to which students, you give students the benefit of both sets of eyes and continue to establish an equal partnership with all students.

4. Practicing ‘Less is More’

With a task as complex as writing, all students—but especially those with learning differences—can experience cognitive overload. So it works best to tackle one chunk, one scene, one paragraph at a time.

When it comes to feedback, many students are overwhelmed by too many comments just as they used to be with too much red ink. I rely heavily on giving students genuine praise—for a descriptive adjective, a well-crafted phrase, an attempt to apply the lesson to their writing—and then I follow it up with one or two suggestions for revision. Psychologically, all students have to feel they have something to say; they have to feel positive about the effort they’re making, so very specific, authentic praise will earn you a lot of effort in return.

Another way to reduce the quantity of written feedback is to give some of it verbally, which allows for the levity and nuance that “Insert Comment” can’t achieve. In-person conferencing is ideal, but in the last 6 months, I’ve learned to record quick screencast videos explaining my feedback, highlighting sentences, and typing comments to illustrate different areas for improvement.

5. Use of Models

ELA teachers tend to read widely! One of the most effective things we can do together is figure out some interesting examples to use with our students who are struggling—the perfect opening paragraph, the perfect fight scene, an example of suspense building, describing the setting, the expert’s quotation being explained. If we have these at the ready, we can pull them to discuss and analyze with students. I also always recommend saving exceptional work (de-identified, of course) to use as models for the next year. For remote learning, I always have models or visuals pulled up as separate tabs and ready to be screenshared as needed.

6. Use of Word Lists

I have an entire library of word lists where students can look for the perfect word or phrase. I always end up lending these to the writing classroom. A more specific word for walked , blue , big , or sad can make an emerging writer feel like a poet. This is especially effective when working on writing poetry and descriptive writing, but it can also be used for older students writing analytical pieces as they struggle with transitional language and tying their points together. Why not have a list of templates at their disposal, i.e., “According to…”, “This demonstrates why…” etc.)?

The act of scanning the lists for just the right word or phrase improves the student’s ability to clarify meaning and see possibilities. The student with a learning difference is also sometimes not well-read and needs exposure to two things: (1) new ways to say things and (2) the nuanced difference in the meaning of certain words or expressions. I will often practice this act of list scanning with students… “Hmm, let’s try out some different words here and see if you can find one that makes you feel something… or seems like the perfect fit!”

7. Staying Together

Try not to remove a kid who struggles with writing from writing instruction. Students who struggle learn more than you think from their peers, even if their writing skill is not comparable. Instead of pulling students who struggle from the classroom during writing, work with the specialist to make the instruction more accessible and more enjoyable. Sometimes the specialist can arrange to physically or virtually be in the classroom working with students, and at other times he or she might “asynchronously” design a graphic organizer, outline, or checklist, or make a plan for integrating assistive technology like speech-to-text accessibility features or dictation apps for certain students.

8. Letting ELA Work Guide Intervention

Specialists can reinforce mini-lessons, genres, and concepts taught by the ELA teacher in the writing lesson—and add a touch of language remediation. If my students are working on persuasive essays in writing class, every sentence I have them analyze for word study or work on reading fluency will be from a persuasive writing sample and as closely aligned with their personal interests as I can plan for that week. This builds confidence and familiarity with the writing genre in addition to the skills I am targeting.

There is magic in teachers working together to reinforce the same knowledge and skills. I love it when a student I’m working with exclaims, “Wait a minute, we just talked about this in a writing workshop today!” Then, depending on the student, you can sarcastically feign shock “REALLY?” or just give them a knowing side-eye! We all need all the magic we can muster right now.

9. Showing Progress Through Writing Samples

Progress towards the achievement of IEP or SMART-style goals can be made visible through a timeline sequence of writing samples. I once taught a student who wrote with no punctuation. Even when this student re-read to add periods, he could not distinguish where a sentence began and ended. It was difficult for him to hear the natural pauses in speech; complex grammar concepts such as subject and predicate or even “being verbs” were difficult for him to grasp.

His teacher and I came up with a weekly routine that balanced getting his ideas on the page sans punctuation in writing class, and working on dictated sentences (from his own writing!) with me until his natural sense of pause and punctuation improved. We were able to demonstrate this progress by simply sequencing the drafts of his writing throughout the semester and showing him the changes over time. Working online, it is easy to annotate a student’s digital writing portfolio, pointing to their progress with certain skills. When you can show a student their own progress in this way, and have them reflect, it tends to increase their motivation tenfold.

10. Prioritizing Revision and Editing

Students with learning differences that impact writing often struggle with clarity and mechanics. Once students write to get their ideas on the page first, they can develop a multi-step process for what I call the R’s: re-read , revise , and sometimes I use the word revisit .

Ideally, each student would have their own checklist for this process, and it would be generated with and not for the student. For example, I might advise them to start by revisiting their punctuation/ sentence boundaries. Next, they could revisit their spelling. (For a student who doesn’t recognize their own disordered spelling, this can be even more scaffolded by the teacher putting a number of misspellings on the line and asking the student to find them.) The list would include each of the aspects we discussed through our mini-lessons for that particular genre of writing. Through this process, the ELA teacher and the specialist may have different suggestions for revision and improvement, and that’ll only make the writing better!

Another way to teach revision as a process is to have students re-visit their writing with each square of a single-point rubric , which can be especially valuable if generated by the class. Revisiting writing with a rubric (all the R’s!) can be fun to do in peer-revision stations, where peers are assigned a specific aspect of the rubric to give the writer feedback on.

Another tip: I often instruct students who struggle with sentence boundaries, to re-read their piece backward, from the last sentence to the first. This eliminates the memory of what they think they have said and lays bare the sentences as they were written. Students tend to go, “Oh yeah, this is definitely too long to be one sentence!”

11. Combatting Anxiety and Perfectionism

Some students struggle with writing because subconsciously, the fact that they cannot write on the level of the books that they love to read frustrates them (e.g., If I can’t sound like J.K. Rowling, I’m a failure, and so why even get started? ). For a student with this mindset, I work with the ELA teacher to come up with very specific models. (See #5). And always, always show them the timeline of their drafts to reinforce progress (See #9). I also borrow a favorite phrase from my colleague, the ELA teacher: “No matter what kind of a writer you are, when you think you’re done, you’ve just begun!”

As we know, writing is an endless, limitless, boundless creative task. Students who are uncomfortable with this type of endeavor have to be taught some strategies to wade into it and find some comfort with themselves, with feedback, and with change.

These are the tenets of what helped Jack eventually write that narrative piece, one of the most original, giggle-inducing stories in his class. He needed the mini-lessons his ELA teacher taught about leads and dialogue, “juicy” details and setting the scene, creating a movie in the reader’s mind, etc. He also needed the language support, the remediation, the accommodation of some writing by dictation, and the editing and revision strategies taught by the specialist. He needed two writing teachers who were encouraging him to use and develop his comedic voice to write.

In addition to being good for the diverse young humans we serve, this type of healthy collaboration between educators is a game-changer for teaching practice. I have always found it helps me bring the art and the science together; it’s creative and innovative and validating. It can make you feel like you are on fire in your teaching again, especially if you’ve been teaching alone for a long time. As with all things teaching and learning, it’s not always neat or easy, but it is ultimately pretty dang rewarding.

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What to Read Next

Categories: Instruction , Podcast , Working Together

Tags: English language arts , special education

I am presently taking a course, “Teaching Reluctant Writers,” through John’s Hopkins. This podcast reinforced, reminded, reinvigorated.

I agree that co-teachers should be given common planning time. People tend to forget that planning is essential for teachers. Otherwise, they could fall into a spot where they have nothing to teach or their students refuse to learn.

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Disciplinary Approaches to Composing Texts

Writing in Special Education

By professor leanne syring.

Writing in the field of education is essential to share insights and information. A teacher may want to research a topic to teach. The research may include the history of the topic, the current status of the topic, or how to best teach the particular topic. Perhaps you, as a teacher, have taught a lesson or a unit in the area and it worked well. You may write a blog, design a curriculum, or write a journal article on the subject. Sharing knowledge, expertise, and experience aids in the development of others.

Types of writing in Special Education

All types of writing are done in the field of education. There are textbooks to guide teaching such as Harry Wong’s The First Day of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher. There are also specific curriculums' a school may follow, such as Core Knowledge Curriculum by E.D. Hirsch. Books of nonfiction are also included in the field of education as a source of knowledge and enlightenment, such as A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin’s Mother Tells the Family Story by Eustacia Cutler. Journal articles for research, practical magazines for ideas, blogs, tweets, websites, and Facebook pages, are other varieties of writing in the education field.

The areas that have the most impact on the field on a daily basis are the blogs and social media posts (such as tweets) that share instantaneous information. A writer than can convey a message succinctly and with high interest can spread information more quickly and across a broader audience than research journals. However, the research being done in education is important in advancing the field, formulating new ideas and proving or disproving the worth of the idea.

Writing in the Special Education classroom

Students in the education classrooms write essays, research articles, policy papers, and teaching assessments. A variety of writing styles is required. These skills transfer outside of the university experience for teachers as they assess their students, write articles for school news, correspond with parents, research topics, and advocate for their students or school. Funding for schools is also an issue at times and the ability to write grant proposals is also a sought after skill.

Tips for writing well in Special Education

Key markers in the field of educational writing include a succinct, yet descriptive title. Also, citation of sources and adherence to the formatting that is included in APA. A paper that is formatted correctly is instantly recognizable. It is important to use the APA manual when writing.

View a video on Writing in Special Education.

Special Education: Disciplinary Perspective

Reading in Special Education

Research in Special Education

Documentation in Special Education

Introduction to the Text
Writing is Important in your Major
Advice from Students
Making Your Writing Work: Ethos & Commonplaces
Professional Associations
Scholarship as Conversation
Genres and Finding Sources
Genres, Metagenres, and the Rhetorical Situation
Analyzing Scholarly, Trade, and Popular Sources
Library Research Overview
Introduction To Research
Research Process
Choosing a Topic
Determining Genres
Trouble Finding Sources
Videos Overview
Special Education
Annotated Writing Samples
Agricultural Education Overview
Documentation
Scholarly Writing Sample
Business Administration Overview
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Student Writing Sample
Computer Science Overview
Education Overview
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Integrated Writing Instruction

Introduction

Students with writing disabilities typically find the act of writing to be both difficult and unrewarding. These students' resulting lack of motivation to write can lock them into a downward spiral, in which they avoid most writing tasks and fail to develop those writing skills in which they are deficient. Indeed, for some students, a diagnosed writing disability may not be neurologically based but instead can be explained by the student's simple lack of opportunities to practice and build competent writing skills.

This issue of The Practical Teacher provides an integrated approach to classroom writing instruction designed to accommodate the special needs of disabled writers, as well as those of their non-disabled peers.

NASET Members may access this Practical Teacher by Logging in (see Login area to the right). Visitors can access a sample issue by Clicking Here

Publications

Utilizing the Token Economy in a Special Education Classroom
What Happens When Children Who Do Not Respond to or Struggle Greatly with Phonics, More of the Same?
Combining Phonics and Whole Language for Reading Instruction
Utilizing the Math Routine, “Would You Rather,” to Support Meaningful Classroom Interaction for ALL Students
Teaching Self-Advocacy Skills to Students with Autism and Other Disabilities
How Rhyming and Rappin’ Can Improve Reading and Writing: Improving Poetic Intelligence
U.S. Department of Education Releases New Resource on Supporting Child and Student Social, Emotional, Behavioral and Mental Health during COVID-19 Era
How Spelling Can Help Reading Learning Common Core Words Quickly and Easily
Special Advice for Special Educators
An Alignment of Interactive Notebooks with the Principles of Universal Design
Comparing and Contrasting Research-to-Teaching Practices: A Critical Analysis of Highly Restrictive Special Education Placements for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities
Parental Involvement within Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families: Misconceptions, Barriers, and Implications
The Effects of Parent Therapy for Disruptive Behaviors: A Review of the Literature
Children’s Literature + DI + UDL + Mathematics = Success for Students with Disabilities
Positive Student-Teacher Relationships: An In-Depth Look into a Behavior Program and its Implications for Teachers of Students with EBD
A Classroom Without Walls: A New Method for Teaching Life Skills
7 Things Secondary Special Education Teachers Need to Know Concerning Career Technical Education
Understanding and Achieving Collaboration in Special Education*
Intervention for Struggling Writers in Elementary School: A Review of the Literature
Fire Safety: How to Teach An Essential Life Skill
Reciprocal Peer Tutoring: A Review of the Literature
A Collaborative Approach to Managing Challenging Behaviors of Students with Disabilities: A Review of Literature
Students with Disabilities in Postsecondary Institutions: What Higher Education Should Be Doing to Support Them
Hospitality in an Inclusive Classroom
UDL and Art Education for Students with Disabilities and Physical Impairments
Truly Experiencing Teaching and Learning for the First Time: Snails are Introduced to a Community of Learners Patricia Mason, Ed.D.
Disproportionate Representation of English Language Learners (ELLs) in Special Education Programs
1+1= iPad Math Apps for Teachers
Using Music to Teach Reading to Kindergarten Students
Creating a Classroom for Diverse Learners
The Challenges of Special Education for Parents and Students: A Literature Review By Reshma Mulchan
Transitioning From School to the Workplace for Students with Disabilities By: Dr. Faye J. Jones
Practical Social Skills for Special Education Students
Effective Communication for Students with Hearing, Vision, or Speech Disabilities in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools
Educational Services for Immigrant Children and Those Recently Arrived to the United States
Resources within the Medical and Health Care Community
Inquiry - Based Learning: Special Education Applications By Jillian F. Swanson
Intensifying Intervention By Peter Dragula, M.Ed., Doctoral Candidate Capella University
Special Education Research: Where to Start?
Intellectual Disabilities in Your Classroom: 9 Tips for Teachers
Common Core State Standards - Overview
Multiple Disabilities in Your Classroom: 10 Tips for Teachers
Supports, Modifications, and Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
The Five Secrets to Being a Special Education Teacher and Still Loving Your Job
Bridging the Great Divide: Best Practice Ideas for the Resource/Inclusion Teacher
Enjoying Favorite Books with Struggling Readers: Part 2
Trauma Informed Teaching in Special Education By: Joshua A. Del Viscovo, M.S., B.C.S.E.
Enjoying Favorite Books with Struggling Readers: Part I
A Proper Fraction Museum
A Review of Financial Literacy Programs for K-12 Students with Intellectual Disabilities: Utilizing the Principles of Universal Design for Learning
Winnowing the Internet: Websites for Teachers of Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities
Students Who Have Difficulty Learning to Read with Phonics
Positive Communication Strategies for Collaborating with Parents of Students with Disabilities
Five Aspects of Teacher influence on Student Behavior
Teaching Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities (EBD)
A Primer on Behavior Management
Is There Only One Way to Teach Reading? Learning to Read in a Different Way
Anxiety Disorders by Robin Naope Student at Chaminade University Hawaii
Schedule A Hiring Authority: Tips for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilties Interested in Starting a Career with the Federal Government
Trusting Information Resources
College Planning for the Child with Special Needs: A Parent and Teacher Collaboration
Latin and Greek Word Root Study to Accelerate Spelling, Vocabulary, and Reading Proficiency for All Students
Dignity, Function, & Choice: Ethical and Practical Considerations on Best Practices for Education Learners with Developmental Delays
Peer Tutoring: A Strategy to Help Students with Learning Disabilities
Henrietta's Workshop
Mental Health Resources
Centers for Literacy in a Multi-Level Special Education Classroom
Rapid Reading Cards
Science Brain Efficient Word Lists
Brain Efficient Word Lists for Word Sorts, Puzzles, and More
Plain Language Writing
Teaching to the Students' Abilities
World History Brain Efficient Word Lists for Word Sorts, Puzzles, and More
Tips for Calling on Students in Class
Tips for Building a Course Website
The Fourth Grade Slump
The Brain, Prosody, and Reading Fluency
Games, Contests & Puzzles: Entertaining Ideas for Educating Students
A Reading Strategy for Content-Area Teachers
Using Pen Pal Writing to Improve Writing Skills and Classroom Behavior
Trouble-Shooting Reward Programs: A Teacher's Guide
Transforming Schools from Bully-Havens to Safe Havens
Best Practices in Mathematics
School-Wide Strategies for Managing Reading
Applied Math Problems
Breaking the Attention-Seeking Habit: The Power of Random Positive Teacher Attention
The Good Behavior Game
Victims: Preventing Students From Becoming 'Bully-Targets'
Math Problem-Solving: Combining Cognitive & Metacognitive Strategies in a 7-Step Process
Bullies: Turning Around Negative Behaviors
Creating Reward Menus That Motivate
Points for Grumpy
Bystanders: Turning Onlookers into Bully-Prevention Agents
Finding the Spark: More Tips for Building Student Motivation
Encouraging Student Academic Motivation
Teacher Behavioral Strategies: A Menu
Establishing a Positive Classroom Climate: Teacher Advice
Talk Ticket
Positive Peer Reports
Preventing Graffiti and Vandalism
School-Wide Strategies for Managing Mathematics
What Every Teacher Should Know About Punishment Techniques and Student Behavior Plans
Strategies for Working With Emotionally Unpredictable Students
Managing Test Anxiety
Entertaining Ideas for Educating Students
Working With Defiant Kids
Breaking the Attention-Seeking Habit
Guided Notes
Reducing Problem Behaviors Through Good Academic Management
Creating Safe Playgrounds: A Whole-School Approach
Paired Reading
Strategies for Managing Defiance and Non-Compliance
Extending Learning Across Time & Space
Forced-Choice Reinforcer Assessment: Guidelines
Response Effort
Smooth Classroom Traffic
Strategies to Prepare Classrooms for Substitute Teachers
Effective Teacher Commands
Respectful Classroom
Establishing a Positive Classroom Climate
What Teachers Need to Know About Annual & Triennial Reviews
Training and Working with your Assistant Teachers and Paraprofessionals
Error Correction & Word Drill Techniques
Tools to Build Student Text and Lecture Comprehension
Study Skills Package
Homework Contracts
Classwork & Homework
Finding the Spark: Tips for Building Student Motivation
Dodging the Power-Struggle Trap
Introducing Academic Strategies to Students
Group-Response Techniques
School-Wide Strategies for Managing - HYPERACTIVITY
School-Wide Strategies for Managing.......BUS CONDUCT
Behavioral Contracts
Determining Measurable Annual Goals in an IEP
Parent Teacher Conference - 10 Strategies
Behavioral Interventions - ADHD Students
Understanding Extended School Year Services
Accommodating All Students: 'Classic' Ideas That Teachers Can Use to Diversify Classroom Instruction
School-Wide Strategies for Managing OFF-TASK / INATTENTION

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Creative Writing Activities for a Special Needs Student

I always assigned creative writing activities on the first day of school to start the year off on the right foot. For instance, I wanted the students to share something from their Summer vacation right after lunch this particular school year.

However, one of my students had a hard time with the assignment.

“I can’t do this!” John said, slamming his pencil down. “These writing assignments are just too hard for me,” he continued.

“What is it about the assignment that makes it too hard for you, John,” I said.

“I’m just not good at writing, and I don’t know what to write about,” John said.

Writing is one of the hardest tasks for children who have special needs. The process of getting their thoughts and ideas down on paper is overwhelming for students.

Creative Writing Activities for a Special Needs Student

Although writing can be a tedious process, there are many different ways for students to express themselves through writing. Here are eleven great writing activities to try with your students.

Want One-On-One Expert Help?!

Check this out.

11 Writing Activities Your Special Needs Students Will Enjoy

#1 comic book writing.

I have found that some of my students love writing comic book stories. They don’t feel overwhelmed like they do when they are assigned a five-paragraph essay. In addition, it is a creative way to practice writing in smaller sentences.

You can find comic book-creating websites or templates online to help you plan the assignment. I have found that Make Beliefs Comix is a great online resource for those wanting to explore and write creatively. I have a student who uses this website, and he loves being able to create his own comic book.

#2 Sensory Writing

Sensory writing is an engaging way to encourage students to use all of their senses in their writing.

Begin by offering your students a variety of sensory experiences, such as:

Smelling different scents
Touching various textures
Listening to different sounds
Looking at things in different ways, like under a microscope, magnifying glass, or in the dark with a flashlight

Then, have them describe these experiences using vivid language and detail. Sensory writing activities help students to develop their descriptive writing skills and connect their experiences to their writing.

#3 Memory Writing

Memory writing is an activity where students can reflect on something they read earlier in the week. The reading could be something that they read or experienced in reading groups.

The students have a time limit to reflect and write so that everyone has an opportunity to write about what they remember. This creative writing activity is important because it encourages students to recall their memories, which builds stronger connections in the brain.

#4 Reading Response Journals

As a student, I hated work that seemed like a waste of time. One thing that I remember was that each week we had to write a reading response about something that we had read that week.

A reading response journal is a series of entries from students’ reflections, opinions, and reactions to readings. This active learning technique encourages them to examine things thoroughly and relate what they’ve read to their prior knowledge and experiences.

Tips for Reading Response Journals

Let your student know this is his journal. No one else has to read it, and he will not be graded on what he writes in it.
Give ample time for each student to write in their journal immediately after reading time when it is fresh on their mind.
Provide journal prompts so your students aren’t sitting there staring at the blank page, overwhelmed with what to write. Here are a couple of reading response journal prompts:
Reader Response Journal Prompts
Reader Response Journal Questions

#5 Picture Storytelling

Visual aids can be a powerful tool to engage special needs students in creative writing. Provide your students with a selection of interesting images, such as landscapes, animals, or scenes from everyday life.

Encourage them to choose one image and write a short story based on what they see. This activity allows students to practice their descriptive writing skills while simultaneously stimulating their imagination.

Get the free Silly Sentence and Story Maker Creative Writing Activity for kids.

#6 Group Storytelling

Group storytelling is a collaborative and interactive way to help your students practice their writing skills.

First, divide your students into small groups and give each group a story prompt or a sentence to start with. Then, have each student take turns adding a sentence or two to the story.

This activity helps students learn to work together, practice writing coherent narratives, and develop their listening skills.

#7 Sentence Structure Writing Activities

There are many ways to practice writing skills. However, as a teacher, I always think of ways to get my students to work on their sentence structure that is not so boring or overwhelming.

Ideas for Practicing Sentence Structure

Give them a topic that they have to write about in under 100 words.
Provide them one word to write a paragraph about what they know about that word.
Give them unique writing prompts that could have fun and creative endings. For example, “If they were to have a dinosaur for a pet, what would they do with their dinosaur?”
Have them map out an outline of their paper using a specific topic.
Do a brainstorming activity using their research topic.

#8 Mad Libs

Mad Libs is an activity that helps students practice their grammar and vocabulary skills in a fun way without pressure.

Create a simple story template with blanks for various parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.). Have your students fill in the blanks with their own choices of words.

When they’re done, read the completed Mad Libs story aloud, and enjoy the silly and creative results!

#9 Letter Writing

Letter writing can be an enjoyable way for students to practice their writing and communication skills. Encourage students to write letters to friends, family members, or even fictional characters.

Teach them about the different parts of a letter, such as the greeting, body, and closing. Letter writing helps students practice organizing their thoughts, expressing their feelings, and writing in a clear and structured manner.

You can even check out these pen pal programs for kids to write to astronauts, authors, and deployed soldiers.

#10 What If” Scenarios

Encourage your special needs students to think outside the box by presenting them with “what if” scenarios. Provide prompts that ask students to imagine alternate realities or situations, such as “What if…”

You could become invisible for a day?

The world was made of candy, you discovered a secret door in your house that led to a magical land, technology suddenly ceased to exist, everyone had the power to fly, you could communicate with animals, there was a potion that could grant any three wishes, humans could breathe underwater, time could be paused for an hour each day, you found a map to a hidden treasure.

Have your students write a short story or paragraph describing the scenario and its consequences. This activity fosters creativity and helps students explore new perspectives and ideas in their writing.

You could make this a What if Wednesday activity that your students would look forward to each week.

#11 Rewrite

Lastly, another creative writing activity that is fun and gets children to think creatively is something I call “rewrite.”

Many stories over the years have been rewritten with new endings. For example, Cinderella is a story that has multiple different endings.

Give students a short story to rewrite that would change the story in some way. This assignment can be an excellent writing activity to teach them about plagiarism. In addition, you can instruct them on the best way to write the story without copying the author’s ideas or information.

What Creative Writing Activities Do You Use In Your Classroom?

Writing can be difficult for special needs students. However, creative writing activities can be a fun way for students to learn the basics of writing. Choose from any one of these five writing exercises, or try them all!

No matter which you choose, we’re confident that they will help your student develop their language skills in ways that are both enjoyable and challenging.

Do you have an idea for another creative exercise or activity not listed here? Drop it in the comments below so we can add it to our list. We look forward to hearing how this helps your students!

Additional Resources

Writing Strategies Made Simple
How to Easily Create Social Stories to Successfully Teach Children
Reading And Writing Our Way Through Thanksgiving

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Writing Instruction for Special Needs Students

Read Time 2 mins | Mar 26, 2020 9:49:59 AM | Written by: Toolbox

Download the research report below

We all know that one effective strategy is to break down a task into smaller, more manageable tasks. Teachers often segment a five paragraph essay, by asking students to ‘just write the introduction.’ But it’s the word ‘just’ that’s almost laughable. (In fact, do you ever notice how anytime the word ‘just’ precedes a task, it’s usually in attempt to make a difficult process appear easy?) “Just writing” an introduction can be so overwhelming and anxiety-producing for a special ed student that they simply shut down. The question becomes HOW to teach these skills.

Research has shown that focusing on the discrete skills and aspects of the writing process produces higher student achievement and success rates than writing taught with a holistic focus on product. When not overwhelmed with having to ‘fill’ an entire page of lined paper, special needs students, after direct instruction that includes teacher modeling and guided practice, can celebrate being successful at writing an interesting beginning for a story, or writing an enticing lead for an expository piece. A segment of elaborative detail, or of suspense. Small successes along the way encourage them and build confidence.

7 Steps to Teaching Writing Skills to Students with Disabilities

Written expression is a huge part of life inside and outside the classroom. When students with disabilities learn to write, type, and/or select appropriate communicative responses, it opens the door to greater opportunities to reach their learning goals, communicate their preferences, and establish rapport with the people around them.

Today’s post shares 7 important steps to consider when designing programs for teaching written expression to students with disabilities. These are excerpted and adapted from the excellent guidebook More Language Arts, Math, and Science for Students with Severe Disabilities, edited by Diane M. Browder and Fred Spooner.

Assess Students’ Current Repertoire

Which words and communicative responses does the student already use? Before you select a student’s instructional targets, start by determining his or her current writing and communication repertoires through formal and standardized assessments. An assessment of communicative functioning should target:

Speaker skills, or expressive skills: communication skills that affect the behaviors of others
Listener skills, or receptive skills: communication skills that involve responding to the words of others

To help you easily determine instruction objectives, you might also use a curriculum-based assessment tool that uncovers information about a broad array of skills relevant to writing, such as a student’s fine motor skills, communication, visual discrimination, and imitation.

Make Writing Meaningful

Ask what’s important and potentially reinforcing to students, and use the answers as engaging topics for written narratives. Try presenting pictures of characters from a book and asking the student, “Whom would you like to write about?” Let the student select their three most preferred characters to focus on during writing instruction.
Teach students to request desired objects by exchanging pre-written words for preferred items. For example, you might instruct a student to get a cookie by handing the written word cookie to a partner. Once the student masters this, he or she can be taught to combine the written words big and cookie to communicate a desire for a larger cookie. This is a powerful way to give students direct control over their environment as they learn the functional use of written words. As a bonus, it allows students to use pre-written words without having to learn more complex fine motor and cognitive skills first.
Deliver reinforcement right away. When your student displays any type of writing or prewriting behavior—holding a crayon, scribbling, pressing keys on a computer, drawing on a SMART Board—follow it up with immediate praise and reinforcement. This will hopefully increase the frequency of their writing behavior and improve the fine motor skills they need for handwriting or keyboarding.

Encourage Imitation

When learning to copy words, some students may need assistive technology to circumvent weaknesses in fine motor skills. You may need to use adapted keyboards (alphabetical, onehanded, large print), AAC selection displays, and/or scanning technology for students who have physical disabilities that affect their gross and fine motor functioning.

Teach Spelling Skills

Backward chaining strategy. Present the spoken word and then provide a written model for the student to trace. Fade the written model by incrementally removing the letters in the word from the last letter to the first.
Computer-assisted instruction. Show the student a word/picture combination, and then ask him to select letters from a computer-based array to construct the word shown.
Cover, copy, compare (CCC) technique. Give the student a piece of paper divided into four columns. The first column contains the targeted spelling word. The student copies the word and writes it in the second column. Then the student folds the first column on the left toward the center (covering the second column) and writes the word from memory in the third column. The student unfolds the paper and compares, and if she’s made an error, she copies the word three times in the final column.
Video models. Record a video of yourself writing new words on a chalkboard, and display the video on a computer while students type or write the words. Insert a pause in the video to allow the student time to copy the word. Then insert a blank screen, during which the student writes the word from memory, and show the original model once more. (Share the videos with parents to help them support their child in practicing writing skills outside the classroom.)

Encourage Sentence Construction

Once students have acquired a small word-to-picture repertoire of about 50 words, start using sentence starters (“I see a _____,” “The boy is ______”) to expand the length of these responses.
Fade the sentence starters gradually so that students are independently constructing sentences.
Once students can write a single sentence about a picture, encourage them to write multiple sentences about a picture. Present pictures containing a variety of stimuli and highlight features of the picture to help students identify content in which to describe or label. These prompts can then be faded to ensure students can choose to write about the stimuli that they deem important.
Fade the use of pictures so that students can eventually write about things they have learned. Slowly increase the amount of time between the observation of the picture and the writing response. This fading is important, since students will rarely be asked to write about things immediately present in their environment.

Note: If students have not acquired sufficient spelling skills to write sentences, then they may require the use of selection-based writing software in which words or combinations of words are presented within arrays on a computer screen.

Teach Narrative Writing

Student in a classroom at elementary school

Begin by teaching students to write simple paragraphs. Show them that a paragraph names a topic and then tells more about that topic.
Teach students to apply this rule when writing a paragraph about a picture. Help the student to identify the content of a topic sentence by highlighting a key element within the picture.
Present a visual organizer and show the student how to use it during planning and while writing his or her paragraphs.
To give students a model for simple storytelling, show them a series of pictured events or video recordings of real-life events (e.g., child plays ball, child falls down, child cries). You might also give students a series of pictures to sequence themselves before they write a story.
Once students can write or construct a paragraph about a picture or other visual aid, fade the use of visual supports.

Provide Editing and Revision Instruction

After teaching a student to write simple sentences, instruct the student to identify whether he or she has included both a person or a thing and something more about the subject.
Direct the student to look for ending punctuation.
Ask students to identify missing elements in their stories. Have them practice by presenting a variety of examples and having the student record the presence or absence of the elements.
Teach students to use checklists to increase the inclusion of critical elements during writing activities.
Show students how to graph their use of writing elements and monitor their own progress, so they can become more independent and effective writers.

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MULIANI BT ABU BAKAR says

I need an advice(s) the teaching strategies to kids with learning difficulties. Starting by teaching phonics , hoe else should I proceed. Fitzroy Readers are so far very effective. Tqvm

jlillis says

Hi! You can find our complete list of books related to teaching children with learning disabilities here: https://products.brookespublishing.com/Learning-Disabilities-C1059.aspx. Many of these have sections on teaching literacy skills, including writing, to students with learning difficulties.

Daisy Simpson says

Amazing article. All the 7 steps are just wonderful for students. I want to add one more method by which you can try to teach them writing skills. You can ask students to read some story of their choice and ask them to write the same story in their own words, it will help them to write on the beginning stage because they know the story and just need to write by themselves. Writing a story without reading can be difficult for students but if they have read the story can write it.

Thank you, Daisy! Great suggestion!

maheshsea says

Thanks for sharing the significant information. It helped my children and will help others a lot. Nice.. ...All the 7 steps are just wonderful for students

Basudeb Das says

Well explained

Andi Duferense says

Amazing article. All the 7 steps are just wonderful for students. I want to add one more method by which you can try to teach https://www.google.com/ writing skills. You can ask students to read some story of their choice and ask them to write the same story in their own words, it will help them to write on the beginning stage because they know the story and just need to write by themselves. Writing a story without reading can be difficult for students but if they have read the story can write it.

7 Tips for Teaching Writing Skills to Autistic Students

By Maria Langford

May 22, 2024

Teaching writing skills to autistic children poses various challenges. Therefore, it’s crucial to consider individual needs, academic ability, and personal characteristics when deciding how to help an autistic child write.

Learning to write involves many complex physical and cognitive processes, which can challenge all learners, but ASD students can experience these challenges more acutely. For example, fine motor skills impairments can make holding a pencil difficult, while visual motor skills impairments can hinder copying words.

If a comorbid learning disability is present, vocabulary may be limited, and anxiety or stress about writing tasks can lead to resistance or avoidance. So, how can we mitigate these challenges? Let’s explore some possible strategies.

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Homeschooling a Child With Autism

1. Create a supportive environment for learning

To teach an ASD child writing skills, you must create a supportive, inclusive , and comfortable environment.

To do this, focus on the following areas:

Promote independence in their work – this can boost an autistic child’s self-esteem and is a crucial life skill.
Reduce their anxiety – this is crucial as anxiety is a significant problem for ASD students, which can be heightened during writing tasks.
Foster creativity in writing tasks – this is important as some ASD students may need extra help to tap into their creativity.

The examples explored in the next sections will help with this.

2. Incorporate some fun hand exercises

These strategies are aimed at ASD learners who are struggling with the physical challenges posed by writing .

When ASD children struggle to hold a pencil properly, writing can be stressful and painful. It may also mean that they’re behind their peers in mark-making.

While wrist weights and pencil grips can help ASD students later on, it’s important to start with fun activities to develop their hand strength and fine motor skills .

Play dough disco is a popular activity for this. The students are given soft modeling dough and encouraged to mimic the hand exercises demonstrated in an interactive video.

Here are some other activities you could try:

Digging with a small spoon
Having egg and spoon races
Using tongs or tweezers
Playing with peg boards

If these physical barriers to writing are severe and persist throughout school, technology can help ASD students overcome them.

3. Start simple

When teaching writing skills at any level, it’s important to start simple and gradually increase the challenge by scaffolding the task, breaking it into manageable steps.

This will also help to build your students’ independence and help them understand how to sequence the stages of a task. This is something that ASD students often struggle with.

Although this is standard teaching practice , ASD students may need to spend longer than their peers on each step. Allow them to progress at their own pace to avoid anxiety.

For example, if you’re teaching an ASD child how to form letters, they could start by tracing simple shapes and then move on to copying them freehand. When they’re comfortable with this, you can slowly introduce letters for them to trace and copy.

If they’re struggling with their pen grip, you could experiment with other forms of mark-making first.

For example, they could use their finger or a stick to draw letters and shapes in sand or shaving foam.

4. Use their special interests

Incorporating ASD students’ special interests into lessons can engage them in learning. Writing tasks that refer to relevant contexts are more effective than generic ones.

For example, students may initially prefer to write the letters from their name or the names of objects/people that interest them.

For more academically advanced ASD students, this can also be a great way to foster creativity . You could let them pick their own writing topic or plan themed writing tasks for them.

For example, if they’re interested in space, they could create an encyclopedia page about a planet of their choice.

In creative writing tasks, the story prompts should be imaginative and fun, encouraging ASD students to step outside of themselves and think in abstract or creative ways.

As our understanding of ASD increases, it’s becoming evident that autistic people can be uniquely creative. However, all such tasks should be appropriately scaffolded for individual students’ needs.

5. Use visual aids

Many ASD children are visual learners , so using visual stimuli is a great way to foster creativity.

Pictures are great for teaching various writing skills, like descriptive writing or characterization.

They can also help an ASD student to engage their senses. For example, you could give them a picture of a rainforest and help them imagine how it would feel if they were there.

Using verbal or written prompts could help your students to access this task:

“Is it usually hot or cold in the rainforest?”
“Can you remember a time when you were really hot? How did it make you feel?”
“Do you think it would be hot where this picture was taken?”

Utilizing technology to access multimedia resources can also help to overcome many challenges. Videos are effective writing prompts that can inspire creativity and engagement in non-fiction writing.

For example, if you’re teaching a module on writing to argue, you could use a short documentary to generate ideas.

Watching adverts can also be great fun for exploring persuasive techniques, particularly in a speak-to-write teaching model.

Video models have also proved effective in helping ASD students develop functional writing skills, such as sentence construction, spelling, and letter formation.

6. Use social stories

Social stories can be used to teach writing skills like perspective-taking and narrative form.

For example, you could tell social stories based on difficult social interactions so your students can explore perspectives and feelings. This can be applied to creating characters or writing dialogue.

Moreover, verbally retelling their favorite stories or recounting the events of their day can help them develop their narrative, sentence structure, and sequencing skills.

To help them organize their thoughts into writing, you could provide sentence starters like these:

“When I woke up this morning, I felt…”
“However, when I …”
“After this, I…”

You could also play word games like these to foster creativity and remove focus from physical writing skills:

Fortunately/Unfortunately: verbal game for narrative flow
The Minister’s Cat: verbal game encouraging ambitious vocabulary
Boggle: spelling and word recognition
Pictionary: visual vocabulary practice
Story cubes: narrative structure

7. Use positive reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is another important tool in motivating individuals with autism to engage in writing tasks.

It could take many forms, such as:

verbal praise,
rewards ,
token or sticker systems,
preferred items and activities.

By creating positive associations with writing, you can help relieve ASD students’ anxiety and resistance in the short and long term.

To maintain their motivation and focus, it’s important to identify and acknowledge incremental progress and effort, rewarding students immediately after they’ve achieved each goal.

When deciding what reinforcement strategies to use, consider how your students’ preferred items or activities could motivate them.

For example, if a child loves reading, give them 10 minutes in the reading corner with their favorite book if they achieve their goals.

They could also collect motivational stickers as they progress through each stage of their writing project, which can be exchanged for small rewards.

Teaching writing skills to autistic students should be fun!

Teaching any form of writing to ASD students should be enjoyable and engaging. Incorporating creative and interactive activities into your writing lessons is key to this.

By helping an ASD child overcome their physical, emotional, and cognitive barriers to writing, you can enable them to achieve their future goals and provide a valuable outlet for their emotions, ideas, and thoughts.

Q: Does autism affect writing skills?

A: Autism can affect writing skills due to challenges such as fine motor skill impairments, sensory sensitivities, and difficulties with organization and abstract thinking. With patience, understanding, and tailored strategies, you can support the development of writing skills in autistic children.

Q: Why do children with autism struggle with writing?

A: Children with autism struggle with writing due to challenges with fine motor skills, visual motor skills, sensory sensitivities, organizational issues, and barriers to creative or abstract thinking, often leading to distress and avoidance

Q: How do you teach an autistic child to hold a pencil?

A: Teaching an autistic child to hold a pencil involves using adaptive grips or techniques that accommodate their fine motor skill challenges. Patience and practice are key as you provide gentle guidance and positive reinforcement to help them develop a comfortable and functional pencil grasp.

Accardo, Amy L., et al., ‘Writing Interventions for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Research Synthesis’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (2020) 50:1988–2006 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03955-9

Asaro-Saddler, Kristie (2016), ‘Using Evidence-Based Practices to Teach Writing to Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders’, Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth , 60:1, 79-85, DOI: 10.1080/1045988X.2014.981793, https://doi.org/10.1080/1045988X.2014.981793

Baixauli, Inmaculada, et al., ‘Reading and Writing Skills in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder Without Intellectual Disability’ (2021), Frontiers in Psychology. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646849 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646849/full?fbclid=IwAR3ZC642yig3L-J2ssDNXj10eQTcitQh5Ujj2yBS96WASn-8MCrvPxwPOWY

Pennington, Robert C and Carpenter, Megan (2019), ‘Teaching Written Expression to Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Complex Communication Needs’, Top Lang Disorders, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 191–207, https://alliedhealth.ceconnection.com/ovidfiles/00011363-201904000-00005.pdf

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6 Tips for Incorporating Visual Schedules in School

9 effective ways to motivate students with autism, 8 tips for literacy development in autism, 4 ways to help your autistic teen prepare for high school, tips for dealing with an autistic child disrupting class, 8 tips on how to get a child with autism interested in school, preschool programs for autistic children: 5 questions to consider, three tips for homeschooling nonverbal students, 5 ways to advocate for your child’s iep, 5 classroom activities for nonverbal autistic children, 11 ways to build an autism-inclusive classroom, privacy overview.

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Special Needs Education: Interview Summary and Reflection Essay

Leaders in special education have a professional and moral responsibility to ensure that students with physical, mental, and learning difficulties are assisted in achieving their optimal potential. I interviewed a school board member certified by the American Academy of Special Education Professionals (AASEP). He then referred me to a special needs teacher with a leadership role in her school. The two interviewees offered insightful advice on the challenges facing special needs students and the efforts that they are making to enhance performance improvement.

Regarding staying current with issues concerning special education, both respondents stated that they are members of the AASEP, which gives them up-to-date communication on any legal changes or information that is vital for their functions. In addition, the news media helps in getting landmark changes. The two responded that they regularly attend board meetings to share their experiences, propose policies, discuss challenges, and devise improvement plans. Whenever there is news to relay to other employees, an internal memo can be used, followed by email notifications to each worker. Sometimes, the news is only relevant to one professional, and a one-on-one meeting is used to pass on the information.

The interviewees hinted that keeping all employees up-to-date with the current special needs practices and recommendations is challenging. Some professionals need more interest and may fail to attend staff meetings, open their emails, or even read the notice boards. Moreover, some teachers are not members of any professional bodies for special needs students. In a few cases, the information may be relayed when an employee is on leave. There are several ramifications that the respondents stated as repercussions for failure to adhere to the policies, including drop-in students’ performance, revocation of licensure, parents asking for compensation of their fees and ruining the reputation of individual teachers or the school.

One of the interviewees stated that the best advice he received was that teaching special needs students requires passion, commitment and patience. The other was motivated by a counsel that all students deserve a quality education regardless of their challenges. The respondents inspired me to take special education as a calling to respond to a dire and growing human need. I will encourage other people pursuing a career in a similar field to look past the students’ weaknesses and see their talents and potential.

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The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

Special education teachers fill out mountains of paperwork, customize lessons for students with a wide range of learning differences, and attend hours of bureaucratic meetings.

It’s easy to see why it would be tempting to outsource parts of that job to a robot.

While there may never be a special educator version of “Star Wars”’ protocol droid C-3PO, generative artificial tools—including ChatGPT and others developed with the large language models created by its founder, Open AI—can help special education teachers perform parts of their job more efficiently, allowing them to spend more time with their students, experts and educators say.

But those shortcuts come with plenty of cautions, they add.

Teachers need to review artificial intelligence’s suggestions carefully to ensure that they are right for specific students. Student data—including diagnoses of learning differences or cognitive disorders—need to be kept private.

Even special educators who have embraced the technology urge to proceed with care.

“I’m concerned about how AI is being presented right now to educators, that it’s this magical tool,” said Julie Tarasi, who teaches special education at Lakeview Middle School in the Park Hill school district near Kansas City, Mo. She recently completed a course in AI sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education. “And I don’t think that the AI literacy aspect of it is necessarily being [shared] to the magnitude that it should be with teachers.”

Park Hill is cautiously experimenting with AI’s potential as a paperwork partner for educators and an assistive technology for some students in special education.

The district is on the vanguard. Only about 1 in 6 principals and district leaders—16 percent—said their schools or districts were piloting AI tools or using them in a limited manner with students in special education, according to a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey conducted in March and April.

AI tools may work best for teachers who already have a deep understanding of what works for students in special education, and of the tech itself, said Amanda Morin, a member of the advisory board for the learner-variability project at Digital Promise, a nonprofit organization that works on equity and technology issues in schools.

“If you feel really confident in your special education knowledge and experience and you have explored AI [in depth], I think those two can combine in a way that can really accelerate the way you serve students,” Morin said.

But “if you are a novice at either, it’s not going to serve your students well because you don’t know what you don’t know yet,” she added. “You may not even know if the tool is giving you a good answer.”

Here are some of the areas where Park Hill educators and other school and district leaders see AI’s promise for special education—and what caveats to look out for:

Promise: Reducing the paperwork burden.

Some special education teachers spend as many as eight hours a week writing student-behavior plans, progress reports, and other documentation.

“Inevitably, we’re gonna get stuck, we’re gonna struggle to word things,” Tarasi said. AI can be great for busting through writer’s block or finding a clearer, more objective way to describe a student’s behavior, she said.

What’s more, tools such as Magic School—an AI platform created for K-12 education—can help special education teachers craft the student learning goals that must be included in an individualized education program, or IEP.

“I can say ‘I need a reading goal to teach vowels and consonants to a student,’ and it will generate a goal,” said Tara Bachmann, Park Hill’s assistive-technology facilitator. “You can put the criteria you want in, but it makes it measurable, then my teachers can go in and insert the specifics about the student” without involving AI, Bachmann said.

These workarounds can cut the process of writing an IEP by up to 30 minutes, Bachmann said—giving teachers more time with students.

AI can also come to the rescue when a teacher needs to craft a polite, professional email to a parent after a stress-inducing encounter with their child.

Some Park Hill special education teachers use “Goblin,” a free tool aimed at helping neurodivergent people organize tasks, to take the “spice” out of those messages, Tarasi said.

A teacher could write “the most emotionally charged email. Then you hit a button called ‘formalize.’ And it makes it like incredibly professional,” Bachmann said. “Our teachers like it because they have a way to release the emotion but still communicate the message to the families.”

Caveat: Don’t share personally identifiable student information. Don’t blindly embrace AI’s suggestions.

Teachers must be extremely careful about privacy issues when using AI tools to write documents—from IEPs to emails—that contain sensitive student information, Tarasi said.

“If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard outside of the school, you should not be putting it into any sort of AI,” Tarasi said. “There’s no sense of guaranteed privacy.”

Tarasi advises her colleagues to “absolutely not put in names” when using generative AI to craft documents, she said. While including students’ approximate grade level may be OK in certain circumstances, inputting their exact age or mentioning a unique diagnosis is a no-no.

To be sure, if the information teachers put into AI is too vague, educators might not get accurate suggestions for their reports. That requires a balance.

“You need to be specific without being, without being pinpoint,” Tarasi said.

Caveat: AI works best for teachers who already understand special education

Another caution: Although AI tools can help teachers craft a report or customize a general education lesson for students in special education, teachers need to already have a deep understanding of their students to know whether to adopt its recommendations.

Relying solely on AI tools for lesson planning or writing reports “takes the individualized out of individualized education,” Morin said. “Because what [the technology] is doing is spitting out things that come up a lot” as opposed to carefully considering what’s best for a specific student, like a good teacher can.

Educators can tweak their prompts—the questions they ask AI—to get better, more specific advice, she added.

“A seasoned special educator would be able to say ‘So I have a student with ADHD, and they’re fidgety’ and get more individualized recommendations,” Morin said.

Promise: Making lessons more accessible.

Ensuring students in special education master the same course content as their peers can require teachers to spend hours simplifying the language of a text to an appropriate reading level.

Generative AI tools can accomplish that same task—often called “leveling a text"—in just minutes, said Josh Clark, the leader of the Landmark School , a private school in Massachusetts serving children with dyslexia and other language-based learning differences.

“If you have a class of 30 kids in 9th grade, and they’re all reading about photosynthesis, then for one particular child, you can customize [the] reading level without calling them out and without anybody else knowing and without you, the teacher, spending hours,” Clark said. “I think that’s a super powerful way of allowing kids to access information they may not be able to otherwise.”

Similarly, in Park Hill, Bachmann has used Canva—a design tool with a version specifically geared toward K-12 schools and therefore age-appropriate for many students—to help a student with cerebral palsy create the same kind of black-and-white art his classmates were making.

Kristen Ponce, the district’s speech and language pathologist, has used Canva to provide visuals for students in special education as they work to be more specific in their communication.

Case-in-point: One of Ponce’s students loves to learn about animals, but he has a very clear idea of what he’s looking for, she said. If the student just says “bear,” Canva will pull up a picture of, for instance, a brown grizzly. But the student may have been thinking of a polar bear.

That gives Ponce the opportunity to tell him, “We need to use more words to explain what you’re trying to say here,” she said. “We were able to move from ‘bear’ to ‘white bear on ice.’”

Caveat: It’s not always appropriate to use AI as an accessibility tool.

Not every AI tool can be used with every student. For instance, there are age restrictions for tools like ChatGPT, which isn’t for children under 13 or those under 18 without parent permission, Bachmann said. (ChatGPT does not independently verify a user’s age.)

“I caution my staff about introducing it to children who are too young and remembering that and that we try to focus on what therapists and teachers can do collectively to make life easier for [students],” she said.

“Accessibility is great,” she said. But when a teacher is thinking about “unleashing a child freely on AI, there is caution to it.”

Promise: Using AI tools to help students in special education communicate.

Park Hill is just beginning to use AI tools to help students in special education express their ideas.

One recent example: A student with a traumatic brain injury that affected her language abilities made thank you cards for several of her teachers using Canva.

“She was able to generate personal messages to people like the school nurses,” Bachmann said. “To her physical therapist who has taken her to all kinds of events outside in the community. She said, ‘You are my favorite therapist.’ She got very personal.”

There may be similar opportunities for AI to help students in special education write more effectively.

Some students with learning and thinking differences have trouble organizing their thoughts or getting their point across.

“When we ask a child to write, we’re actually asking them to do a whole lot of tasks at once,” Clark said. Aspects of writing that might seem relatively simple to a traditional learner—word retrieval, grammar, punctuation, spelling—can be a real roadblock for some students in special education, he said.

“It’s a huge distraction,” Clark said. The student may “have great ideas, but they have difficulty coming through.”

Caveat: Students may miss out on the critical-thinking skills writing builds.

Having students with language-processing differences use AI tools to better express themselves holds potential, but if it is not done carefully, students may miss developing key skills, said Digital Promise’s Morin.

AI “can be a really positive adaptive tool, but I think you have to be really structured about how you’re doing it,” she said.

ChatGPT or a similar tool may be able to help a student with dyslexia or a similar learning difference “create better writing, which I think is different than writing better,” Morin said.

Since it’s likely that students will be able to use those tools in the professional world, it makes sense that they begin using them in school, she said.

But the tools available now may not adequately explain the rationale behind the changes they make to a student’s work or help students express themselves more clearly in the future.

“The process is just as important as the outcome, especially with kids who learn differently, right?” Morin said. “Your process matters.”

Clark agreed on the need for moving cautiously. His own school is trying what he described as “isolated experiments” in using AI to help students with language-processing differences express themselves better.

The school is concentrating, for now, on older students preparing to enter college. Presumably, many will be able to use AI to complete some postsecondary assignments. “How do we make sure it’s an equal playing field?” Clark said.

A version of this article appeared in the May 22, 2024 edition of Education Week as The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

An illustration of a high school student with blue hair, dreaming of what to write in their college essay.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

Assessments for Writing IEP Goals in Special Education | Evaluations & Move-Ins

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Assessing students for IEP Goals doesn’t have to take forever anymore! Do you ever sit down to write an IEP and wonder what IEP goal you should give them? Do you wonder where to start them in tier 3 intervention? These quick and easy assessments are perfect for finding out your students’ strengths and weaknesses in just a few minutes.

For many special education teachers, we’re responsible for holding move-in conferences and evaluation conferences without having much time to work with our future special education students.

So, where do you start with an IEP goal?!

With these assessments, you’ll be able to tell exactly what goal or goals you need to create for each of your students. Depending on their abilities, most students can be assessed in 5-10 minutes.

From there, you’ll be able to sit in an IEP conference and tell parents exactly what their child CAN do, as well as set IEP goals for them to work on during the upcoming year.

When it's time for a student’s Annual Case Conference, you can repeat the assessment and brag about the results their child has accomplished over the course of the school year.

With these assessments, you can quickly assess your students in:

Letter Recognition
Letter Sounds
Letter Writing
Name Writing
Number Recognition
Number Writing
Verbal Counting
1:1 Correspondence
Hearing and Producing Rhymes
Manipulating Phonemes in Small Words
Decoding One Syllable Words with Typical Spelling Patterns
Reading High Frequency Words
Spelling Words with Typical Spelling Patterns
Writing Sentences
Solving Basic Math Addition Facts within One Minute
Solving Addition & Subtraction with and without Regrouping
Solving Basic Multiplication Facts within One Minute
Solving Multiplication and Division Problems

Use ONE assessment or ALL of them! It's up to you.

Writing IEPs without having a clear idea of what a student can or cannot do is tough. With these assessments, you’ll love how quickly you can determine what your students have mastered.

Here’s Exactly What You’ll Get:

Seven assessments that can be completed in minutes.
Word and letter cards for students to use during assessments.
Three digital assessments to save time printing, cutting, and laminating word cards.
Recommended interventions based on problem areas for students.

Once you have these files in hand, make several copies of the recording pages and put them on a clipboard. I also like to print and laminate the word cards and add them to a book ring.

When a student needs to be assessed, I grab my clipboard and pull them to the hallway for a few minutes. Then, I’m ready to begin writing the IEP and begin delivering my interventions based on their needs.

OTHER SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS HAVE SAID…

Maggie says, "This resource makes my life so much easier !!! I have received a lot of initial IEP students and this makes it quick and easy to assess them."

Allison says, "This resource has been the #1 assessment piece I use for beginning of the year parent conferences. They are easy to administer and don't take a ton of time. They also give great information and parents love them."

Jennifer says, "This resource is a great way to break down learning difficulties to better serve students during small group instruction."

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Tips for Teaching Persuasive Writing for Special Ed Students

Categories : Inclusion strategies for mainstreamed classrooms
Tags : Special ed information for teachers & parents

Modifying the Persuasive Essay

In modifying the persuasive essay for students with learning disabilities, start with having students use their reflective journals to create free-flowing ideas on possible topic areas. Teachers can narrow down topic areas to “Solving Conflicts Over the I-Pod” or “Whether to Buy the Teva Shoes or Not.” Once students have decided on a topic area, then you can teach them how to develop a thesis and scaffold the persuasive essay into doable chunks of learning that include the following:

Title that supports the topic idea
Supporting paragraphs that include chunks of information with cited facts and examples that transition from introduction to conclusion. There could be from 1-4 supporting paragraphs that develop the topic idea.
Conclusion summarizes the topic idea and brings the essay full circle.

Modification the chunks of the essay components can include having students follow the sections below in creating an informative persuasive essay.

Topic Idea and Title

Introduce and explain what a persuasive is so that students have an understanding that the intent of a persuasion is to convince the reader of a point of view. Have students think about topic ideas that interest them and start with one persuasive thought such as, “ I persuaded him that ice cream is better than frozen yogurt because ice cream creates a more positive state of being after eating than frozen yogurt .” There is a certain fun factor in the thought and students with learning disabilities can have fun creating a persuasive argument with a defined topic idea and support that topic idea with a title that stands out. Modify this chunk by having students start with one topic idea and build from that point if indicated by skill level and ability.

The title for the above topic idea could be “ Ice Cream vs. Frozen Yogurt-You be the Judge ” or “ Ice Cream - The Better Dessert Alternative .” Have students brainstorm titles in their journals individually and then have them work in groups of 3-4 to compare title ideas and support each other’s topic idea and titles. Students with learning disabilities can create one or two title ideas as compared to five-seven for their peers. The idea is to keep students focused and invested on generating the first chunk of information needed for the bigger goal of writing a persuasive essay.

Supporting Paragraphs and Conclusion

The body of the essay includes supporting paragraphs that include facts and research citations that provide relevant connection to the topic idea. In modifying this chunk of learning, the teacher can can have students write 1-2 smaller paragraphs with 1-2 facts and research citations. By keeping the paragraphs doable, students will engage in creating smaller chunks of writing and learn about the process of constructing a persuasive essay.

For example, a modified supporting paragraph for the above topic idea on ice cream could look like the following:

Ice cream is better than frozen yogurt because it fills you up quicker. It does this because the cream is heavier and sits in your stomach longer. Ice cream is also sweet and makes you happy except when it’s gone and then you’re sad.

Students are able to write in their own style and on their skill level. Incorporating technology by having students use the computer and a word.doc software program with spellcheck and a “save as” mode will allow students to come back and edit their essay draft and add the conclusion before editing the final essay.

The conclusion restates the topic idea and brings all components of the persuasive essay full circle. Students with learning disabilities can create a two sentence conclusion and be proud of a finished product that contains all components of a persuasive essay that effectively persuades.

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How to Write an Outstanding Scholarship Essay

Winning a scholarship can be a life-changing opportunity for many students. It can open doors to higher education, new experiences, and exciting career opportunities. However, applying for scholarships can be competitive, with hundreds or even thousands of applicants vying for the same award. One of the key components of a successful scholarship application is the essay. A well-written scholarship essay can set you apart from the competition and increase your chances of receiving financial aid.

But what makes a scholarship essay outstanding? How can you craft a compelling essay that captures the attention of the selection committee and showcases your unique qualities and achievements? In this article, we will explore some tips and strategies for writing an outstanding scholarship essay that maximizes your chances of winning that coveted scholarship.

Table of Contents

Understand the Prompt

Before you begin writing your scholarship essay, it is essential to carefully read and understand the prompt provided by the scholarship committee. The prompt will outline the specific requirements for the essay, such as word count, topic guidelines, and any specific questions or prompts that need to be addressed. Make sure to pay close attention to these instructions and tailor your essay accordingly. Failure to follow the prompt could result in your application being disqualified.

Showcase Your Achievements

One of the key purposes of a scholarship essay is to showcase your achievements, talents, and strengths to the selection committee. Take this opportunity to highlight any awards you have received, leadership positions you have held, community service projects you have been involved in, or any other accomplishments that demonstrate your skills and potential. Be specific in detailing your achievements and provide concrete examples to support your claims.

Tell Your Story

A compelling scholarship essay should tell a story that captivates the reader and provides insight into who you are as a person. Consider sharing personal anecdotes or experiences that have shaped your character and influenced your goals and aspirations. Be genuine and authentic in your storytelling, as this will help create a connection with the reader and make your essay more memorable.

Focus on Impact

In addition to highlighting your achievements and sharing personal stories, it is important to focus on the impact you hope to make with the help of the scholarship. Clearly articulate how receiving this financial aid will enable you to pursue your educational goals, achieve success in your chosen field, or make a positive difference in your community or society at large. Demonstrating a clear vision for how you plan to use the scholarship funds shows initiative and commitment.

Be Concise and Clear

When writing a scholarship essay, it is important to be concise and clear in your communication. Avoid using unnecessary jargon or overly complex language that may confuse or overwhelm readers. Stick to simple language that is easy to understand but still conveys depth and meaning. Remember that most selection committees review dozens or even hundreds of essays, so making yours easy to read will work in your favor.

Edit and Revise

Once you have written a draft of your scholarship essay, take the time to edit and revise it carefully. Look for any grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, or awkward phrasing that may detract from the overall quality of your writing. Consider asking a trusted friend, family member, or teacher to review your essay as well for feedback and suggestions for improvement.

FAQs about Writing Outstanding Scholarship Essays

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School Education /

Essay on Playground for Children in English for School Students

Updated on
May 21, 2024

Essay on Playground: A playground is a vibrant space where children engage in recreational activities, fostering physical, social, and cognitive development. It serves as a haven for exploration, creativity, and joyful interactions, promoting health and well-being in communities worldwide. Let’s discuss an essay on playground to understand their importance in our lives.

Table of Contents

1.1 Physical Development
1.2 Social Interaction
1.3 Cognitive Stimulation
1.4 Safety Measures
1.5 Community Engagement
1.6 Conclusion
2 Essay on Playground in 200 Words

Quick Read: Write a Letter on Mother’s Day

Essay on Playground in 500 Words

Playgrounds serve as more than mere recreational spaces; they are essential arenas for fostering children’s holistic development. With a blend of physical challenges, social interactions, and cognitive stimulation, playgrounds play a pivotal role in shaping the future generation.

Physical Development

At the heart of playgrounds lies the promotion of physical activity, crucial for developing gross motor skills, balance, and coordination. Climbing structures strengthen muscles, while swings promote sensory integration and spatial awareness. The varied terrain encourages exploration, enhancing agility and proprioception. Additionally, outdoor play fosters a connection with nature, promoting healthier lifestyles and reducing the risk of childhood obesity.

Social Interaction

Playgrounds act as bustling hubs where children learn vital social skills. Through unstructured play, they navigate social dynamics, negotiate conflicts, and develop empathy. Cooperative games foster teamwork and communication, while imaginative play encourages creativity and problem-solving. Moreover, playgrounds facilitate interactions across diverse backgrounds, fostering inclusivity and cultural understanding.

Quick Read: Essay on Voting Rights in India: 500 Words in English for Students

Cognitive Stimulation

Beyond physical activity, playgrounds provide valuable cognitive stimulation. Imaginative play nurtures creativity and divergent thinking as children invent scenarios and role-play different roles. Navigating playground equipment enhances spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills. By experimenting with cause and effect, children learn valuable lessons about risk-taking and decision-making.

Safety Measures

While playgrounds offer numerous benefits, safety remains paramount. Proper surfacing materials, such as rubber mulch or synthetic turf, cushion falls and reduce injuries. Regular maintenance ensures equipment remains safe and functional, while supervision by caregivers promotes responsible play. Furthermore, inclusive design principles accommodate children of all abilities, creating a welcoming environment for everyone.

Community Engagement

Playgrounds serve as focal points for community engagement, fostering social connections among families. They provide opportunities for parents to interact while their children play, strengthening neighbourhood bonds. Community-led initiatives, such as volunteer clean-up efforts or fundraising for new equipment, promote a sense of ownership and pride in local parks.

Playgrounds are indispensable for children’s development, offering a multifaceted approach to physical, social, and cognitive growth. By providing safe and stimulating environments for play, communities can nurture the next generation of healthy, empathetic, and creative individuals. Recognizing the importance of outdoor play in a digital age, investing in playgrounds becomes essential for building resilient and thriving communities. Through collaboration and commitment, we can ensure that playgrounds remain vibrant spaces where children can thrive and flourish.

Essay on Playground in 200 Words

A.1 A playground, playpark, or play area is a place designed to provide an environment for children that facilitates play, typically outdoors.

A.2 My school has the largest playground in the entire city, This playground is better than the other one. We play in the playground in the evening. The playground is swampy because of rain.

A.3 A playground is made for physical and sporty activities like running, jumping, football, cricket, badminton, hockey, etc.

Aayushi Vardhan

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Final Essay: the final essay consisting of three paragraphs or 23 paragraphs (spellchecked) will have a title page with the title, writer's name, teacher's name, course and the date and pages containing content. Each page is numbered and each paragraph is double spaced for easy reading and editing. Teachers can provide the learning ...
Free Special Education Essay Examples & Topic Ideas
Special Education: Goals and Visions. In this way, special education must serve the purpose of inclusivity, while the educators must provide the students with educational and quality-of-life potential and maintain their knowledge and awareness with peer feedback. Pages: 3. Words: 871.
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Writing in Special Education
By Professor LeAnne Syring. Writing in the field of education is essential to share insights and information. A teacher may want to research a topic to teach. The research may include the history of the topic, the current status of the topic, or how to best teach the particular topic. Perhaps you, as a teacher, have taught a lesson or a unit in ...
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Creative Writing Activities for a Special Needs Student
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Essays on Special Education
Inclusion of Special Education Students in Classroom: an Overview. 4 pages / 1643 words. Introduction In this essay, I will discuss and review information on inclusion of special education students and the issues that individuals with disabilities encounter as they progress into adulthood.
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Investigation of the effects of self‐regulated strategy development (SRSD) writing instruction using technology tools implemented by special education teachers on the source‐based argumentative writing performance of middle school students with learning disabilities found it to be an effective writing intervention. Teaching middle school students with learning disabilities strategies for ...
Special Needs Education: Interview Summary and Reflection Essay
One of the interviewees stated that the best advice he received was that teaching special needs students requires passion, commitment and patience. The other was motivated by a counsel that all students deserve a quality education regardless of their challenges. The respondents inspired me to take special education as a calling to respond to a ...
The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education
Some special education teachers spend as many as eight hours a week writing student-behavior plans, progress reports, and other documentation. "Inevitably, we're gonna get stuck, we're gonna ...
What I've Learned From My Students' College Essays
May 14, 2024. Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn't supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they're afraid ...
Assessments for Writing IEP Goals in Special Education
With these assessments, you'll be able to tell exactly what goal or goals you need to create for each of your students. Depending on their abilities, most students can be assessed in 5-10 minutes. From there, you'll be able to sit in an IEP conference and tell parents exactly what their child CAN do, as well as set IEP goals for them to ...
Tips for Teaching Persuasive Writing for Special Ed Students
Teaching persuasive writing for special ed students can include scaffolding details from the title to the conclusion. In this article, modifying the persuasive essay for students with learning disabilities can provide a welcome relief to students who enjoy writing, but who aren't sure how to construct their writing.
How to Write an Outstanding Scholarship Essay
When writing a scholarship essay, it is important to be concise and clear in your communication. Avoid using unnecessary jargon or overly complex language that may confuse or overwhelm readers. Stick to simple language that is easy to understand but still conveys depth and meaning. Remember that most selection committees review dozens or even ...
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Let's discuss an essay on playground to understand their importance in our lives. Table of Contents [ hide] 1 Essay on Playground in 500 Words. 1.1 Physical Development. 1.2 Social Interaction. 1.3 Cognitive Stimulation. 1.4 Safety Measures. 1.5 Community Engagement. 1.6 Conclusion.
Plagiarism
Etymology and ancient history. In the 1st century, the use of the Latin word plagiarius (literally "kidnapper") to denote copying someone else's creative work was pioneered by the Roman poet Martial, who complained that another poet had "kidnapped his verses". Plagiary, a derivative of plagiarus, was introduced into English in 1601 by dramatist Ben Jonson during the Jacobean Era to describe ...
Exchange Programs
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Exchange Programs. Please select what type of information you are looking for: Opportunities for Non-U.S. Citizens. Opportunities for U.S. Citizens. Find U.S. Department of State programs for U.S. and non-U.S. citizens wishing to participate in cultural, educational, or professional exchanges.

How ELA and Special Ed Collaboration Can Produce Great Student Writing

Why Writing is Especially Challenging for Students with Learning Differences

Essential Elements of Effective ELA-Specialist Collaboration

2. An Equal Partnership

3. Reading Student Work Together

4. Practicing ‘Less is More’

5. Use of Models

6. Use of Word Lists

7. Staying Together

8. Letting ELA Work Guide Intervention

9. Showing Progress Through Writing Samples

10. Prioritizing Revision and Editing

11. Combatting Anxiety and Perfectionism

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Writing in Special Education

Types of writing in Special Education

Writing in the Special Education classroom

Tips for writing well in Special Education

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Creative Writing Activities for a Special Needs Student

Creative Writing Activities for a Special Needs Student

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11 Writing Activities Your Special Needs Students Will Enjoy

#2 Sensory Writing

#3 Memory Writing

#4 Reading Response Journals

Tips for Reading Response Journals

#5 Picture Storytelling

#6 Group Storytelling

#7 Sentence Structure Writing Activities

Ideas for Practicing Sentence Structure

#8 Mad Libs

#9 Letter Writing

#10 What If” Scenarios

You could become invisible for a day?

#11 Rewrite

What Creative Writing Activities Do You Use In Your Classroom?

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Make Writing Meaningful

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7 Tips for Teaching Writing Skills to Autistic Students

1. Create a supportive environment for learning

2. Incorporate some fun hand exercises

3. Start simple

4. Use their special interests

5. Use visual aids

6. Use social stories

7. Use positive reinforcement