Teaching Students Who Have Special Needs

Diagnostic Assessment

The Ants in the Apple Program provides various assessment packages:

• Kindergarten Checklists.  Early intervention is the key to preventing many long term learning difficulties. The tests in this kit are diagnostic, that is, they do not provide a performance ‘age’ to compare with a student’s chronological age.  Rather, they are designed to locate specific mis-learnings or gaps and to determine a starting point for instruction.

        This book contains:

• questionnaires
• master sheets for reading and spelling
• record sheets for each assessment
• class analysis sheets

The tests are arranged for different times during the year: on entry to school, half-way through the school year, and at the end of the school year.  The tests include phonemic awareness, reading, spelling, numeracy, basic kinaesthetic skills (including handwriting), hearing (a simple do-it-yourself test) and vision (provided by a software package).  The tests do not include social skills or detailed gross and fine motor skills.

• The Programming for Spelling K-6 document contains a series of diagnostic spelling tests that increase in difficulty.  It is recommended that teachers choose the appropriate test for their class at the beginning of the year in order to determine a starting point for the teaching of spelling.

• The Ants in the Apple Assessment Kit contains an extensive set of diagnostic tests for concepts about print, phonemic awareness, reading and spelling (K-6).  The wide range of assessments contained in this kit is especially useful for teachers who are working with students who have special needs and/or learning difficulties.

• The Comprehension Manual provides short assessments, on four levels of difficulty, that focus on a range of comprehension sub-skills such as word meanings, synonyms, antonyms, pronouns, general knowledge, main idea and literal / inferential / predictive questions.

• Each of the four components of the Ants in the Apple numeracy program (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) contains a set of diagnostic / placement tests.

I.E.P.s (Individual Education Programs/Plans)

• An individualised education program is one that is designed to meet the unique educational needs of one particular student.  Specific educational needs are identified through a diagnostic assessment process and teaching/learning interventions are then designed which are based on the findings from the assessments.   The I.E.P. may also contain academic and functional goals, a reporting system, amendments / alterations that need to be made to the learning environment, support personnel, etc.

• Teaching/Learning interventions: The Ants in the Apple Literacy and Numeracy programs are task-analysed and arranged in a scope and sequence based on those task analyses.  This ensures that teaching/learning interventions flow in a logical sequence and that crucial teaching elements are not inadvertently omitted.  Students are taken on to the next step in a scope and sequence when they have demonstrated mastery at the current level.

 
Remediation Programs and Products

The Ants in the Apple specific remediation programs include:

• b/d Reversal Kit:  phonemic awareness, reading, spelling and handwriting.
• Vowel Remediation Kit:  phonemic awareness, reading and spelling.
• Handwriting Remediation Book
• Pencil Grips