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Down Syndrome
A condition resulting from an abnormality with the twenty-first pair of chromosomes; the most common abnormality is a triplet rather than a pair (the condition sometimes referred to as trisomy 21); characterized by intellectual disability and such physical signs as slanted appearing eyes, hypotonia, a single palmar crease, shortness, and a tendency toward obesity.
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Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP)
A condition resulting from administration of an excessive concentration of oxygen at birth; causes scar tissue to form behind the lens of the eye.
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Phenylketonuria (PKU)
A metabolic genetic disorder cause by the inability of the body to convert phenylalanine to tyrosine; an accumulation of phenylalanine results in abnormal brain development.
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Cystic fibrosis
An inherited diseases affectingprimarily the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and respiratory organs; characterized by thick, sticky mucous that often interferes with breathing or digestion.
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Muscular dystrophy
A hereditary disease characterized by progressive weakness caused by degeneration of muscle fibers.
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Autism or Autistic spectrum disorder
a pervasive developmental disability characterized by extreme withdrawal, cognitive deficits, language disorders, self-stimulation, and onset before the age of thirty months.
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Traumatic brain Injury (TBI)
injury to the brain resulting in total or partial disability or psychosocial maladjustment that affects educational performance; may affect cognition, language, memory, attention, reasoning, abstract thinking, judment, problem solving, seonsory or perceptual and motor disabilities, psychosocial behavior, physical function, information processing, or speech.
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Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)
a legal term referring to the fact that exceptional children must be educated in as normal an envrionment as possible
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Education for All Handicapped Children Act
Also know as public law 94-142, which became law in 1975 and is now known as the Individual with Disabilites Education Act (IDEA).
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Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
The individuals with Disabilities Education Act was enacted in 1990 and reauthorized in 1997 and 2004; it replaced PL 94-142, enacted in 1975. This federal law requires that to recieve funds under the act, every school system in the nation must provide a free, appropriate public education for every child between the ages of three and twenty-one, regardless of how seriously he or she may be disabled.
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Americans with Disabilities Act
Civil rights legislation for persons with disabilities ensuring non-discrimination in a broad range of activities
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Individualized education program (IEP)
IDEA requires an IEP to be drawn up by the educational team for each exceptional child; the IEP must include a satement of present educational performance, instructional goals, educational services to be provided, and criteria and procedures for determining that the instructional objectives are being met.
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IFSP
A plan mandated by P.L. 99-457 to provide services for young children with disabilities (under age 3) and their families;drawn up by professionals and parents; similar to an IEP for older children.
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Normalization
A philosophical belief in special education that every individual, even the most disabled, should have an educational and living environment as close to normal as possible
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Spina Bifida
A congentinal midline defect resulting from failure of the bony spinal column to close completely during fetal development
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Deinstitutionalization
A social movement of the 1960s and 1970s whereby large numbers of persons with intellectual disabilities and/or mental illness were moved from large mental institutions into smaller community homes or into the homes of their families; recognized as a major catalyst for integrating persons with disabilities into society.
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Job Coach
A person who assists adult workers with disabilities (especially those with intellectual disabilites), providing vocational assessment, instruction, overall planning, and interaction assistance with employers, family, and related government and service agencies.
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Self-Determination
The ability to make personal choices, regulate one's own life, and be a self-advocate; a prevailing philosophy in education programming for people with intellectual disabilites; having control over one's life, not having to rely on others for making choices about one's quality of life; develops over one's life span.
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Person-centered planning
Planning for a person's self determination; planning activities and services based on a person's dreams, aspirations, interests, preferences, strengths, and capacities.
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Universal Design
the design of new buildings and tools to make them usable by the widest possible population of potential users.
also...
making instruction engaging and appropirate for all
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Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Designing lessons that are appropriate for all learners
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Cochlear implantation
A surgical procedure that allows people who are deaf to hear some environmental sounds; an external coil fitted on the skin by the ear picks up sound from a microphone worn by the person and transmits it to an internal coil implanted in the bone behind the ear, which carries it to an electrode implanted in the cochlea of the innter ear.
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Full Inclusion
All students with disabilities are placed in their neighborhood schools in general education classrooms for the entire day; general education teachers have the primary responsibility for students with disabilities
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Continuum of alternative placements (CAP)
The full range of alternative placements, from the assumed to be least restrictive to those considered most restrictive; the continuum ranges from general eucation classrooms in neighborhood schools to resource rooms, self-contained classes, special day schools, residential schools, hospital schools and home instruction.
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Pull-out programs
Special edication programs in which students with disabilities leave the general education classroom for part or all of the school day (e.g., to go to a special class or resource room)
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Disability Rights Movement
Patterened after the civil irghts movement of the 1960's, this is a loosely organized effort to advocate for the rights of people with disabilities through lobbying legislators and other activities. Members view people with disabilities as an oppressed minority.
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Handicapism
A term used by activists who fault the unequal treatment of individuals with disabilities. This term is parallel to the term racism, coined by those who fault unequal treatment based on race.
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Differentiated Instruction
Instruction varied to meet the needs of all students
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Prereferral teams (PRTs)
Teams composed of a variety of professionals, especially general and special educators, who work with general education classroom teachers to come up with strategies for teaching difficult-to-teach children, Designed to influence general educators to take ownership of difficult-to-teach students and minimze inappropriate referrals to special education.
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Response to Intervention (RTI)
(Also called response-to-treatment approach.) A way of determining whether a student has a learning disability; increasingly intensive elvels of instrcutional intervention are delivered , and if the student does not achieve, at some point he or she is determined to have a learning disability or is referred for special education evaluation.
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Collaborative consultation
an approach in which a special educator and a general educator collaorate to identify teaching strategies for a student with disabilities. The relationship between the two professionals is based on the premises of shared responsibility and equal authority.
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Peer-mediated instruction
The deliberate use of a student's classroom peer(s) to assist in teaching an academic or social skill
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Peer confederates
ppers who assit the teacher
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Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT)
An instructional procedure in which all students in the class are involved in turoing and being tutored by classmates on specific skills as directed by their teacher
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Partial Participation
An approach in which students with disabilities, while in the general education classroom, engage in the same activities as nondisabled students but on a reduced asis; the teahcer adapts the activity to allow each student to participate as much as possible.
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Modifications & Accommodations
Changes made in instruction or assessment to make it possible for a student with a disability to respond more normally (modifications)
Changes in the delivery of instruction, type of student performance, or method of assessemtn which do not significantly change the content or conveptual difficulty of the curriculum (accommodations)
Changes in curricular content or conceptual difficulty or changes in instructional objectives and methods (adaptations)
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Tiered assignments
Assignments varying in difficulty but on a single topic.
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Progress Monitoring
Brief, frequent measures of performance used to determine whether a student is learning as expected; if student isnt learning as expected, the teacher can make changes to the instruction.
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Developmental Delay
A term often used to encompass a variety of disabilities of infants or young children indicating that they are significantly behind the norm for develpment in one or more areas such as motor development, cognitive development or language.
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Supported employment
A method of integrating people with disabilities who cannot work independently into competitive employment; includes use of an employment specialist, or job coach, who helps the person with a disability funtion of the job.
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Manifestation Determination
Determination whether a student's misbehavior is a manifestation of a disability
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Positive behavioral intervention plan
Positive behavioral support Plan (PBS)
Positive behavior intervention and support (PBIS)
A plan for changing behavior with an emphasis on positive reinforcement (rewarding) procedures.
(PBS) Positive reinforcement (rewarding) procedures ineded to support a student's appropriate or desirable behavior
(PBIS) Systematic use of the sicence of behavior to find ways of supporting desirable behavior rather than punishing the undesirable behavior; positive reinforcement (rewarding) procedures that are intended to support a student's appropriate or desirable behavior
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Interim alternative educational setting (IAES)
A temporary placement outside general education for students whose behavior is extremely problematic, but in which their education is continued.
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Functional behavior assessment (FBA)
Evaluation that consists of finding out the consequences (what purposes the behavior serves), antecedents (what triggers the behavior), and setting events (contextual factors) that maintain inappropriate behaviors
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