Skip to main content
Logo for Printed Page The National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities

NICHCY: National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilitites

NICHCY > NICHCY Blog > Categories
NICHCY's Top 20 Special Education & Disability Tweets of 2009
Twitter bird2009 saw NICHCY establish a strong presence on both Facebook and Twitter. By year's end over 1,200 individuals and organizations were regular followers on Twitter. We present here the 20 most popular "Tweets" of 2009:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NICHCY's Top 20 Shared Articles of 2009
Sharethis imageYou may have noticed at the top of most every page across our site ('cept our blog posts strangely enough -- something we'll rememdy soon!) is a "ShareThis" link that allows you to share the content of the page with others via email, popular social networking sites such as Facebook Twitter, as well as social bookmarking sites such as Delicious & Diigo. Hey, you can even text the info to a mobile device -- pretty cool!
 
We thought you might be interested to know the most frequently shared pages across the NICHCY site -- and thanks for sharing!!
 
 
 
 
 
 
15. Laws
 
 
 
 
11. Autism
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NICHCY's 10 Favorite Back-to-School Resources
As sad as it is to see summer come to an end, NICHCY is extremely excited to share their Top Ten Resources for a Successful 2009-2010 school year for students, parents, teachers and school administrators!
 

Reading Rockets Logo1. Starting with the first "R"

Reading Rockets has posted some wonderful tips for both teachers and parents preparing for the start of the school year.
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/25997

 

Bookshare Logo2. Parents & educators, check out Bookshare!

This organization provides accessible books and periodicals for readers with print disabilities free for all U.S. students with qualifying disabilities. Student memberships are currently funded by an award from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). Don’t miss out on this great resource!

 

IDEA Partnership Logo3. So what is all of this talk about Response to Intervention???

IDEA Partnership has put together an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand set of “dialogue guides” to help parents, teachers, and school districts understand this new way to assess students. Use this tool to help facilitate discussion.

 

NHSC Logo4. ARRA: You’ve got the money, now what?

How can we possibly ignore all this money? The National High School Center has created a helpful tool for school administrators.

 

RTI Center Logo5. Testing, testing, testing…

So with all of this talk about teacher accountability and progress monitoring of students, what does it actually all mean? Check out the National Center on Response to Intervention! They’ve put together a great toolkit for teachers and administrators.

 

Personnel Center Logo6. What do you want to be when you grow up?

High school students, now is the time to start thinking about applying to college for early acceptance. Considering a career in teaching? Check out the Personnel Center’s database. You can find a program that fit your interest as well as FUNDING! That’s right, get paid to become a special education teacher.

 

Reading Rockets Logo7. Just what are they talking about?!

Parents it can be intimidating and frustrating when you go into a meeting to discuss your child’s reading progress and you don’t understand all of the terminology. Reading Rockets has put together a great resource outlining key terms for you to know as the school year starts back up. (O.K., so we like Reading Rockets, but what's not to like?)

 

Center on Instruction Logo8. Evidence-based practices and the innovation money.

As administrators are trying to think of ways to get a piece of the grant money from Race to the Top and the Innovation grant, check out the Center on Instruction’s research resources as you think of program development. Adolescent Literacy Walk Through Guide for Principals

 

nsttac logo9. You are graduating high school this year, now what?

Use this activity to help you set a goal for post-graduation. Teachers and students will find this helpful. (This is a really cool resource!)

 

PBIS logo10. Bullying: deal with it early in the school year!

Administrators, District Contacts, Parents, PBS Coaches, PBS Teams, Specialists, and Teachers can be proactive after using this presentation for faculty.

For Elementary settings:
 
And specifically for Secondary settings:
 

NICHCY logo11. Did we see our top 10 favorite?

Mind if we add one more? Actually our site has a wealth of information and resources to help the back to school transition a positive one. Start on our "Educate Children" page to get started...

 
And you? Do you have favorite back to school resources you'd like to share? We'd love to hear about 'em -- feel free to add a comment below!
Children with Special Needs Learn Essential Life Skills at Weinberg Life Village

clip_image001[5] Imagine a place where your kid can go and learn life skills in a completely safe and friendly environment. No, it’s not Xanadu, but it might feel like that once you get there. The Weinberg Life Village in West Bloomfield, MI is a unique, interactive facility where children with special needs can have fun while they practice important life skills through role play. Role Plays include events like waiting in a doctor's office, shopping in a drug store, and doing the laundry.

clip_image001

Students are typically driven in from neighboring schools (within about two hours drive) and given experiences they otherwise might not get. There are over 15 different classes, split between Life Skills and Job skills. For example, classes include “A Lesson in Healthy Living,”Job Search,” and “Making Plans and Changing Plans.” There are also small-scale shops like a Beauty Shop, a Dentist Office, and Sav-On-Drugs, where students can use scaled-down shopping carts, aisles stocked with personal care products, and check-out lanes fitted with scanners and cash registers. To take the realism further, some items on sale in the drug store can be used elsewhere in LifeTown.

“Friendship Circle is about creating friendships first,” says Batsheva Hadar, the Adult Volunteer Coordinator for the Detroit suburb organization. “The focus is on the friendship experience. We pair children with special needs with a volunteer, maybe a teenager, maybe a senior, and that is the beauty of what we do. We create a sense of belonging, build community, see things like speech therapy improve, and all with volunteers who are learning too the beauty of individuals with disabilities.” Indeed, the idea has caught on and Friendship Circle can now boast over 70 offshoots worldwide. Though mostly in the United States, there are also new groups in places like Canada, France, Israel, China and South Africa.

clip_image001[7] When the idea came up to do something on a grand scale, the founders of Friendship Circle went around to parents and professionals who worked with individuals with disabilities and asked them what they would ask for if they could have whatever they wanted. The Life Village facility is the result of that, and compliments the friendship-building and other programming efforts of Friendship Circle overall. Funding for the facility came from private donors as well as a grant from the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). As the Friendship Circle web site states: “At LifeTown, children with special needs and their parents and siblings find a place that has been specifically designed to meet their needs.” How cool is that?

The organization is volunteer-driven, with over 800 volunteers worldwide. Children are paired with their own volunteer, and an effort is made to keep volunteers consistent. Activities range between both free play and structured play.

Begun and based in the Jewish Lubavich Outreach service network, Hadar emphasized that Friendship Circle serves all members of the community and that they “welcome any visitors who would like to see the facility and the program.” If you’d like to learn more, you can visit the web site (http://www.friendshipcircle.org). Or you can contact her directly at their West Bloomfield offices, or through her email at batsheva@friendshipcircle.org.

A Unified System? Special Ed + General Ed = 98%

According to Education Week, only 1/3 of students with disabilities graduate from high school with a regular diploma, compared with more than 2/3 of all students, and the dropout rate of students with disabilities is more than twice that of other students.

What can educators do to end this disparity? According to Pia Durkin, superintendent of schools of Attleboro, Massachusetts and former Associate Director at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, the continuing problem is the inevitable result of the separation between general and special education programs. She calls for “a comprehensive and unified system” that provides the full range of supports and opportunities for students served through both general education and special education. After all, she says, “there are more similarities than differences between the academic and social/emotional needs of general education students and most special education students.”

Such a system, she says, would successfully serve 98 percent of all students. Read the full article, “System Reform to Reach 98 Percent.”

Readers are encouraged to copy and share this information, but please credit the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY). NICHCY relies on feedback from users to enhance our collection, development, and dissemination of information. We encourage you to share your ideas and feedback with us! Please contact us at our email address (nichcy@aed.org) or visit the NICHCY Feedback Page at: www.nichcy.org/Pages/Feedback.aspx.

NICHCY thanks our Project Officer, Dr. Judy L. Shanley, at the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education.

Publication of this Web resource page is made possible through Cooperative Agreement #H326N030003 between the Academy for Educational Development and the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S. Department of Education. The contents of this document do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Education, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

NICHCY · 1825 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 700 · Washington, DC 20009
(800) 695-0285 v/tty · (202) 884-8441 fax
nichcy@aed.org · www.nichcy.org

 
Go Search