Top to Bottom to Top -- Suzanne Milbourne, Chapel Hill, NC, August 2005 Jefferson University, CFSRP Inclusive Classrooms:

Top to Bottom to Top -- Suzanne Milbourne, Chapel Hill, NC, August 2005Jefferson University, CFSRP http://jeffline.jefferson.edu/cfsrp

Inclusive Classrooms: Top to Bottom & Bottom to Top

Presented at theFifth National Early Childhood Inclusion InstituteAugust 3-5, 2005 William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing EdChapel Hill, NC


Today’s Agenda

• Review principles and definitions of inclusion

• Add to your collection of tools – strategies to promote children’s participation in child care


True or False?????????• Children are included when they are part time in

child care and part time in a specialized setting• When children participate in a variety of

community activities or programs but receive their education in a specialized setting, they are included.

• A child is considered to be included regardless of setting if it is the parent’s choice

• Children are included if they attend child care full time and EI services are provided in the home

• When children participate in all activities and routines in the same way as other children, they are included whether they are attending a specialized setting or a child care program.


So – what is inclusion??

When children with special needs (with disabilities, developmental delays, or

special behavioral or emotional needs) participate and learn

in settings with typical children of their own

chronological ages and with supports to guarantee their successful participation and

learning.


Inclusion is not something we do a little

of.

It either is or it isn’t.

Inclusion is the opposite of exclusion.

Inclusion is elegant in its simplicity and,

like love, awesome in its complexity.

Marsha Forest, 1990


Setting: Child Care Programs

• We know that national studies of child care settings (e.g., PA Feine et al. 2002 study) as a whole show that a majority of child care settings provide average or marginal care


Child caregivers, preschool teachers, early intervention staff, and parents hold values and beliefs about practices for young children, generally, and about children with disabilities (Lieber et al., 1998)


What does a quality program look like?

Use Recommended Practices (e.g., accreditation standards, early learning standards, environmental rating scale categories)

Apply a Strength-based Approach

Establish Expectations Through Participation-Based Outcomes

Implement a Child-Centered Viewpoint Handout


• Focuses on what children can do (not what they cannot do)

• Engages children by targeting their capabilities, interests, motivation, etc.

• Frames what children need to learn within a context of engagement

Apply a Strength-based Approach


• Target ways of supporting children’s participation in activities and routines

• Identify skills needed to participate successfully

• Establish accommodations/ adaptations (including use

of Assistive Technology) & teaching-learning strategies to ensure children’s success

Establish Expectations Through Participation-Based Outcomes


• Macie will participate in snack time by interacting with the other children and by feeding herself finger food snacks and drinking from a cup with as much assistance as needed by other children.

EXAMPLE:Establish Expectations Through Participation-Based Outcomes


What may assist Macie to be successful?• Sit in a wooden Rifton type chair for snack so she is

well supported and can use her arms and hands for eating (and not to stay upright in the chair)

• Ask Macie what she needs (or wants) –in order for her to use signs

• Facilitate conversation among the children, encouraging Macie to participate

• Introduce a Sippie cup with two handles• Offer medium-sized finger foods – easy to grasp• Guide her with support under her elbow if she

needs help to get the food to her mouth or cup to her lips.

• ALWAYS, ALWAYS praise her for successes.


• Individualizes for all children by matching learning opportunities with children’s strengths, developmental competencies, and needs.

• Requires collaboration to identify optimal teaching-learning strategies and to account for key areas of learning and development

Implement a Child-Centered Viewpoint


Collaboration & Individualization

• Intervene with children by working on skill deficits

• Are guided by the IFSP or IEP

• Include multiple disciplines with different types of expertise

• Work with children individually (or in small groups)

• Teach children by facilitation & creating learning opportunities

• Are guided by standards & curricula

• Include educational staff of varying level of training and education

• Work with children in groups

Early Intervention Providers Early Learning/Child Care Staff


Making a DifferenceHow can we create meaningful learning

opportunities for ALL children?


Institute:

Planning

Training

Collaboration


Tools for planning, training and collaboration

Child Portfolios

Team Meetings

What’s Going Well?

Professional Development

Collaboration Continuum

Handout


PIN Training Programs All About Me Child Portfolio

Provides opportunities for child care providers to develop a strength-based perspective about children with special needs (Campbell, Milbourne, & Silverman, 2000)

Promotes interactions between providers and families



Child Team MeetingsPlan during convenient times – e.g., nap time, parent availability, when EI providers have a regular visit

Rules for the Road

Vary times to accommodate all members

Keep meetings short – 30 minutes AND keep them focused

Keep minutes so that everyone can be informed

Focus on participation-based outcomes – play nice!

Handout



Frame Goals and Outcomes As Participation-Based

Matrisha will use fine motor skills in order to draw with a crayon with 75% accuracy

Martisha will participate in art & media activities by using fine motor skills to manipulate materials


Relevance & Functionality • Re-write any goals or objectives that are

not functional, relevant, & meaningful• Ask “If the child cannot do the skill, will an

adult have to?” (If the answer is no, the skill is not relevant and functional)

• Ask – what immediate purpose (relevance) does this skill have for the child’s participation in child care?

• Ask – from the child’s perspective, is this something that the child is interested in learning? Wants to be able to do? Will make a difference for the child?


Have a Conversation with the child care provider

Identify Activities that Go Well &

Don’t Go Well


Identify Routines & Activities in the child care program


Overall, how would you rate children’s arrival time

How satisfied are you with this time of the day?

___ this is a very challenging time; no time to talk to parents

___ this is a little bit challenging

___ this is an easy time of the day

___ this goes very smoothly and we have time to talk to the parents

___ not satisfied

___ somewhat satisfied

___ very satisfied

Handout


Overall, how would you rate transition times between activities?

How satisfied are you with these times of the day?

___ this is a very challenging time

___ this is a little bit challenging

___ this is an easy time of the day

___ this goes very smoothly

___ not satisfied

___ somewhat satisfied

___ very satisfied


Professional Development Opportunities

• We know that participation in group training sessions alone has marginal or no impact on program quality (Cassidy et al., 1995)

• Group training plus structured on-site consultation can impact program quality (Campbell & Milbourne, 2005; Kontos et al, 1996)

• Targeted short-term mentoring or on-site consultation can improve program quality (Feine, 2002; Palsha & Wesley, 1998)


Effective Professional Development Approaches

• Targeted on-site consultation and mentoring – Impact program

quality – Provide specific

strategies for an individual child

• Group Training plus on-site consultation– Impact program

quality – General training

about children with disabilities


Opportunities for Professional Development about children

with special needs

EXAMPLE:

PIN training approach


Group Training Plus On-Site Consultation

PIN Training Programs • In field-tests, improved program

quality in infant-toddler and center-based child care settings (Campbell & Milbourne, 2005; Campbell et al., in press)

• Easily adapted for use in a variety of professional development situations


Targeted On-Site Consultation & Mentoring

• Impacts program quality when consultation is directed to particular areas of program quality (e.g., adult-child interactions; learning activities)

• Success depends on use of an identified model of consultation (e.g., Buysee & Wesley, 2005; Milbourne & Campbell, 2005) or of mentoring (e.g., Fiene, 2002)


Collaboration Through On-Site Consultation & Mentoring

• Promotes successful participation of children with any number of labels (e.g., with special needs; developmental delays; emotional, behavioral, or mental health concerns; known disabilities)

• Success depends on use of specific strategies individualized for the environment & child


Collaboration

I ndividual pull-out

One-on-one in class

Group Activity

I ndividualized within routines

Pure Consultation

Small group pull-out

Continuum of I tinerant Consultation Models

Collaboration

I ndividual pull-out

One-on-one in class

Group Activity

I ndividualized within routines

Pure Consultation

Small group pull-out

Continuum of I tinerant Consultation Models

Wolery & Odom, 2000


Try a variety of:

Specialized Strategies


Strategies to ensure meeting children’s individualized needs

Activities & Routines Matrix

Generic Instructional Plan

Curriculum & Skill Webs


Activities and Routines MatrixChild: __________________ Date: _____________

Goals Routines and Activities

Arrival/Departure Snack/Lunch Group Time (circle, music, story)

Outdoor Time

Adapted from: Cavallaro and Haney, 1999, Preschool Inclusion, Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.

Handout


Ways to Position Tunisha

When the other children --- Tunisha can ---

sit on the floor sit in her floor sitter chair

sit with you between your legs

be propped up in the bean bag chair

lie on her stomach

sit at the table sit in the chair pushed up to the table and with a strap at her hips

sit in her stroller pushed up to the table

are standing sit in her stroller

stand in front of you with you holding her at her hips (takes two hands)

stand in front of a table with you behind her so that your leg is between her legs (to keep them apart)

Generic Instructional Plan

Handout


Helping Tunisha Communicate --

When you need to understand Tunisha Tunisha can --

Ask her yes/no questions Shake her head for yes (drops her head down) and no (looks and turns her head to the left)

Give her choices Look at and reach towards what she wants when you hold up two objects or pictures

Give her the picture communication board Look at a picture and reach towards it (her reach is very uncoordinated so that eye movement is more reliable)

When Tunisha needs to communicate Tunisha can --

How she is feeling Vocalize -- smile with pleasant sounds or get fussy and cry

What she wants Look at objects or pictures or use her picture communication board


Opportunities for Practice &

Learning About Eating Motor Skills

Use spoon; help with scooping

Finger feeding

Mealtimes& Snacks

Introduce fork for stabable foods

Object Play

Sand play outside – put spoons & utensils to use for scooping, pouring

Provide dolls – model feeding Water Play

Toys to encourage pouring, “scooping”

Creative Play

Try “art” activities suchas finger painting, painting with sponges for fine motor skill development

Put spoons, cups,& utensils in toy box for manipulation

Handout


Child Care Routine or

Activity

Communication

Socialization-Interaction

Getting Around - Mobility

Use of Functional Skills Within Activity & Routine Contexts

Arm & Hand Use


Make use of:

Assistive Technology

Adaptations

Accommodations


Assistive Technology

Promote children’s participation in activities and routines at home, in the community (or neighborhood), and in child care or other group-based programs

Enhance opportunities for children to learn in natural environments/settings



Existence (eating, etc.)CommunicationPositioningTravel and MobilityEnvironmental InteractionsEducation and TransitionRecreation

Assistive Technology Devices

…Are tools that result in personal change in human functions carried out within the context of environmental settings & demands–Blackhurst & Lahm, 2000.


The INVERSE principle The greater the challenges associated with the child, the more skill the TEAM working with the child

has to have


Use Adaptation As A Primary Intervention

Strategy


Adaptations as Interventions

Environments, activities & routines, have social and physical expectations for participation

Adaptations, including assistive technology allow participation in typical routines and activities

Adaptations function as a mediator to make a bridge between the child’s abilities and the “demands” or expectations of the environment

By promoting participation, opportunities for learning are increased



Environmental Accommodations Adapt Set-Up of Environment Adapt/Select “Equipment” Equipment/Adaptations for PositioningAdapt ScheduleSelect or Adapt ActivityAdapt Materials & Toys Adapt Requirements or InstructionsHave Another Child Help -- Peer/Sibling AssistanceHave an Individual Child Do Something Different (within the same activity)Have an Adult Help a Child Do the ActivityHave an Individual Child Do Something Outside of the Context (with an Adult)

Facilitating Children’s Participation and Learning

Handout


Inverse Principle… again


What Skills Do Teams Need to Have?

Ability and motivation to address the issue of HOW the child may be successfully included (not IF the child can be included)

Problem-solving and the belief that the TEAM may solve any problem

Creativity to come up with unconventional but successful solutions

High reliance on adaptations as intervention


So, how did we just spend the last 1.5 hours?

• We discussed some principles of inclusion

• We reviewed four components of quality programming

Recommended practicesParticipation-based

outcomesStrength-based approachChild-centered viewpoint

• And, in order for us to contribute to quality programming…


We now have New Tools…Tools for planning, training

and collaboration• Child Portfolios• Team Meetings• What’s Going Well?• Professional Development• Collaboration Continuum

Strategies to meet children’s individual needs

• Activities and Routines Matrix

• Instructional Plans

• Curriculum & Skill Webs

Make use of Assistive Technology and Adaptations and Modifications


Visit our website for more ideas and to download forms

http://jeffline.jefferson.edu/cfsrp

Take-Home Plan

Handout

Documents

Top to Bottom to Top -- Suzanne Milbourne, Chapel Hill, NC, August 2005 Jefferson University, CFSRP Inclusive Classrooms: