This professional development series demonstrates best practices in special education. Each of the topics provides detailed descriptions of each subject matter, along with PDFs, PowerPoints, photos, and videos for additional support. An easy-to-use QR code takes you directly to these resources for immediate viewing. Supporting references are provided, along with assessments at the end of each training piece to test your knowledge.
A certificate of completion will be generated once mastery has been achieved (100%). This certificate can easily be shared with administrators and other supervisory staff.
Upon completion of each series, one CEU is awarded through the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
In order to provide quality content, we’ve hand selected experts in the field to empower both veteran and new educators to meet unique students’ needs. Whether it’s Teaching Students with ID and Autism or Communication Disorders or Mastering the IEP or Transition Process, we’ve got the training toolkit you need. Read more details about each series on the following page.
Each training toolkit comes with a laminated reference guide with an access code to the Best Practices website with additional content. Each series can be used as a standalone or in conjunction with the others to serve as a PD model or a training workshop. Ideal for your professional development throughout the school year.
-
A Framework for Assistive Technology
- Consideration of Need for AT This guide helps IEP team members understand the key elements of effective AT consideration.
- Evaluation of Need for AT guide outlines critical steps, including trial periods, that provide the data and information the team needs to make quality AT decisions.
- Plan Development when Including AT AT can be included in so many ways in a student’s educational program. This guide outlines meaningful ways to document AT in an Individualized Education Program (IEP).
- Implementation and Periodic Review of Students' Use of AT This guide helps teams identify the actions the team will take to help a student use AT in everyday routines and activities and how they will know it is working.
- Transitions for Students Who Use AT As students move on to new settings and programs, it is important that planning ensures their AT will still be used. This guide identifies specific transition activities for students and teams.
By Penny R. Reed, PhD and Gayl Bowser, M.Ed
-
Mastering the IEP Process
- What Is an IEP? defines what an IEP is, its purpose, its development, and the elements that need to be included in the IEP.
- Understanding IEP Meetings emphasizes the importance of IEP meetings and who is required by law to attend.
- Supporting Parents as Partners discusses the integral role of parents in the IEP meeting and how staff can take steps before, during, and after the meeting to reassure the parent.
- Writing Measurable IEP Goals and Objectives defines measurability in relation to the IEP, along with conditions/givens, observable learner performance, criterion or level of performance, selecting goals, and ultimately writing goals and objectives.
- Writing Measurable Functional and Transitional Goals describes what makes a goal functional as well as how task analysis helps in the context of functional goals.
Collaborate and Improve Educational Results Through the IEP
By Cynthia Herr, PhD and Mary Ann Winter-Messiers, PhD
-
Mastering the Transition Process
- Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) examines the key regulations of WIOA, including its impact on youth as well as students and adults with disabilities.
- Pre-Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS) outlines the five required Pre-ETS activities as defined by WIOA: Job Exploration, Work-Based Learning, Post-Secondary Training, Workplace Readiness, and in Self-Advocacy.
- Discovery Process highlights this person-centered approach to match a person’s interests and talents with the most appropriate work environment(s).
- Job Developer Professional Development focuses on the primary role of the job developer—business engagement.
- Job Coach Professional Development emphasizes the instrumental role of the job coach in supporting workers with disabilities to be successful in seeking and maintaining competitive integrated employment.
Creating Access to Employment Opportunities for Youth with Disabilities
By Janet Estervig, MS, RN
-
Teaching Students with Intellectual Disability and Autism
- Time Delay is a systematic and errorless instructional procedure in which a prompt is provided after a certain interval of time and naturally fades.
- System of Least Prompts is a strategy in which a teacher progresses through a prompting hierarchy (starting with the least intrusive to the most intrusive) in order to elicit a correct student response.
- Model-Lead-Test provides students with multiple opportunities to practice a new skill with direct teacher involvement.
- Embedded Instruction is explicit, systematic instruction designed to give students instructional trials within the ongoing routines and activities of the students’ day.
- Task Analytic Instruction is the process of breaking down a skill or behavior into steps in order to teach one step at a time.
Enhance Instructional Procedures and Student Outcomes
By Ginevra Courtade, PhD
-
Teaching Students with Communication Disorders
- Making Learning Meaningful and Rewarding (social and tangible rewards, communication temptations, mass and distributed practice)
- Meeting the Learner’s Needs (cloze technique, pause time, minimal pair contrasts, checking for understanding, and self-correction)
- Scaffolds and Supports (chunk and chain, modeling and imitation, scripts, carrier phrases, expansions and extensions)
- Clear Expectations/Consistent Feedback (clear objective, specific verbal praise, general verbal praise, specific corrective feedback, general corrective feedback)
- Maximizing Time/Focused Learning (foreshadowing, attending cue, evoked production, redirection, reactive conflict resolution)
Evidence-Based Strategies to Meet Learners’ Needs
By Courtney Seidel, MS, CCC-SLP and Trici Schraeder, MS, CCC-SLP
-
Teaching English Learners with Extensive Support Needs
By Christopher J. Rivera, PhD
| Age Group | Age Neutral |
|---|---|
| Subject | Professional Development, Professional Resources |
