Although nonverbal and recommended for institutionalization at two and a half years old, Dr. Shore’s
parents advocated on his behalf and provided (what we today would call) an intensive home-based
early intervention until speech began to return at age four. Stephen Shore did eventually end up in an
institution of sort – but in higher education as a professor of special education at Adelphi University.
SWAT:
Special Ways and Techniques
for Educating Students with
Autism for Maximum Academic
and Social Inclusion
By Dr. Stephen Shore
Focusing his efforts on promoting fulfilling and productive lives for individuals on the autism spectrum, Dr.
Shore is an internationally known consultant, author, and presenter on issues related to the autism spectrum.
This article (Part One of the SWAT series) focuses on educational strategies for promoting success both in academics and social interaction from a viewpoint within the autism spectrum.
I
’ve got six students with special needs on my roster of 27 students. How do I teach to all of them while
making sure everyone’s academic and social needs are met? They didn’t teach this to us when I was getting certified. With the beginning of a new school year, conversations like this are being heard across the
nation. Often it may seem like a SWAT team is needed to sort things out to make sure all students are given an
equal chance of success for their education. Rather than Special Weapons and Tactics, we will examine a set of
Special Ways and Techniques for maximizing educator efforts in promoting both academic and social inclusion
for students of all abilities.
Educators lost in an ocean of potentially thousands of curriculum modifications may find parsing these adaptations into nine categories to be helpful. It’s important to understand all students as individuals with unique
strengths and challenges; therefore, modifications of academic material and delivery may be needed as well as
customization to student needs. Although commonalities exist within individuals with autism and between
other categories of special needs, there is also great diversity. When you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve
met one person with autism.
9 DOMAINS OF CURRICULUM MODIFICATIONS AND DELIVERY
Size or
Quanity
By: Dr. Stephen M. Shore
Time
Level of
Support
Input
Difficulty
Chunking of information
and time management
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ZOOM Autism through Many Lenses
Participation
Alternate
Activity
Substitute
Curriculum
From Cole, Horvath, Deschenes, Ebeling, and Sprague, 2000
Size or Quantity of Information:
Adapt the amount of material the
student is expected to learn or
complete.
Part 1 :
Output
For example, reduce the number of questions
on a quiz given each Friday from 10 to 5. Often
this will work; however, a possible extension to
this modification could be to see if the student
can achieve success completing 5 questions on
Tuesday and another 5 on Friday as perhaps the
individual really needed a reduction in chunking of information to process at a given time.
Additionally, this strategy elevates the modifi-
cation to an accommodation where the student
is now doing the same work as everyone else
instead of half the amount.
Taking the idea of modification one step further,
and in the interest of more complete inclusion,
perhaps the entire class could take two quizzes
of 5 questions every week. In this way there is
only a single curriculum delivered in a single
way that has expanded accessibility to more
students. This technique addresses the goal of
melding the adaptation to regular instructional
routine and benefits everyone else as well.
ZOOM Autism through Many Lenses
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