Providing Instructional Supports: Facilitating Mastery of New Skills

Transcript: Challenge

Last month, Ms. Nobella Price’s class competed in the local science fair.

Each student had to perform an experiment and then orally describe his or her results to the judges. Everyone did a great job, including Sasha and James, who have learning disabilities. Since the students were so enthusiastic about the science fair, Ms. Price wants to capture this enthusiasm in their science journals. She gives them an assignment to write a five-paragraph essay describing their science-fair experience. Ms. Price expects Sasha and James to need some extra support for this assignment, but she is surprised to find that many of her students are struggling with the assignment and feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Specifically, they don’t know how to get started, and so they are having difficulty completing the assignment. When she asks her students what they need to be doing, they reply, “I don’t know,” and shrug their shoulders, or they complain that writing is too hard. Ms. Price is at a loss because all of the students expressed themselves quite well during the science fair, and she wonders why they are having such difficulty putting their thoughts down on paper.

In the Challenge you just heard, you learned about a common problem.

If you were Ms. Price, what could you do to help your students when they struggle with a task?

How might Ms. Price provide help to meet the individual needs of all her students, including those with disabilities?