Basic Skill Areas Research Articles

Use of Media in Teaching the Hearing-Impaired Student Who Has Additional Learning Problems

This paper will describe activities in body image, beginning alphabet activities, and beginning number activities. These activities were utilized in a class of five developmentally disabled hearing-impaired students. The age range of the students was from 10 to 13. Deficits in all subject areas range from 3 to 6 years. Because of the significant lag in subject areas and the advancing age of the students, it is critical that they have understanding and working knowledge in these very basic skill areas. Examples will be given in each skill area as well as additional reinforcing games and activities. All the materials are low cost and easily constructed from tagboard.

Parental Assistance in Orientation and Mobility Instruction

Parents of blind children can give important support to the professional orientation and mobility specialist, especially if they familiarize themselves with the various aspects of an orientation and mobility course of instruction. The use of occlusion is especially helpful in giving parents first hand experience with the skills the children will be taught. Suggestions are provided for parental assistance in the areas of basic skills, concept development, motor development, and long cane training.

Prediction of Classroom Achievement Using Intelligence and Behavioral Variables for Inner-City Children

The relative importance of academic aptitude and behavioral variables for the prediction of achievement criteria in basic skill areas was investigated for a sample comprised of 71 inner-city third and fourth grade Ss. Analysis of the regression of five subtests of the Stanford Achievement Test on WISC IQs and scores on the Devereux indicated that both intelligence and behavioral variables constitute important components of third and fourth grade reading and arithmetic achievement and account for a significant proportion of the criterion variance in this sample.

Teacher Behavior in an Informal British Infant School

This paper represents an attempt to systematically describe the behavior of the teacher in an informal, or open classroom. It derives from a concern with the ways in which the teacher in such a setting performs the critical functions of maintaining purposeful activity on the part of the children, directing them to tasks and activities she deems appropriate and engaging in direct instruction of various kinds. The data to be reported were collected in an infant school (serving 5-7-year-olds) in a poor working-class district in southeast London. The school was an extremely informal one: even in the basic skill areas of mathematics and reading there were no regularly assigned lessons or scheduled activities. As a result, the total burden of instruction had to be carried by the informal and unprogrammed encounters between teacher and child (and, of course, between children, and between child and learning material). Thus, the school provided an excellent laboratory in which to study the characteristics of teacher behavior in an individualized educational system where no formal statement of objectives, no formal evaluation and few programmed materials were used.

The Age Placement of Academic Skills in Curriculum for the EMR

The purpose of this study was to investigate the importance and age placement of certain operationally defined skill objectives relative to instructional programs for the educable mentally retarded and to compare the behavior of pupils in special classes with that of a representative sample. The basic skill areas included vocabulary, reading, language usage, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, arithmetic problem solving, arithmetic concepts, and work-study skills. Each skill was illustrated and operationally defined by a test item designed to specify the behavior required of the pupil and the difficulty of the skill. In all, 204 samples of behavior were studied. The importance of emphasizing academic skills in instructional programs for the EMR was assessed through the use of a specially designed inventory of skills. The inventory was submitted to 2 groups of judges for evaluation. The illustrative items were also organized into experimental tests and administered to 1,405 EMR children between the ages of 9 and 18 and to a representative sample of 2,187 pupils in grades 3 through 8.