2012 Leadership and Innovation in Special Education Award

Bob Harrell, Linda Brandenburg, Dr. Robin Church, Kennedy Krieger School Programs

Connie Laird, Mindy Malik, Dr. Bryan Davey of ACCEL

The Model Classroom Program®

ACCEL, Phoenix, AZ

Kennedy Krieger School Programs, Baltimore, MD

The Model Classroom Program was born from original research conducted by ACCEL’s Dr. Don Stenhoff and Dr. Bryan Davey, then known as the Teacher Performance Measure.  That measure has since been expanded to include additional items for assessment and intervention for students with Autism and other developmental disabilities. In 2008, the Model Classroom Program was developed at ACCEL and presented at the 2009 NAPSEC Conference.  At that presentation, Kennedy Krieger Schools expressed an interest in becoming involved in a collaboration project to investigate the usefulness of the instrument across settings.  The collaborators were Bryan Davey, Ph.D., BCBA-D, and Mindy Malik, Ph.D. of ACCEL, and Linda Brandenburg, M.S.Ed., and Robert Harrell, Ph.D., of Kennedy Krieger Institute. Within this collaboration, operational definitions were refined for a number of scoring items and reliability established for coders across two settings.  Positive outcomes were obtained from pre-post assessments and interventions with teachers at both sites across a 3-year period, as detailed later in this document.

The Model Classroom Program® assesses and intervenes on the skills of teachers in both general and special education settings.  The Model Classroom Program® identifies and addresses the training needs for the classroom, public, charter, and private schools, as well as organizations responsible for monitoring teacher performance.

The Model Classroom Program® is a direct classroom and interview based assessment and intervention that acknowledges the complexities of various instructional settings and teaching methodologies present in classrooms.  This tool integrates evidence-based components, including the principals of including the principles of applied behavior analysis, structured teaching methods, effective instruction, classroom management, and a functional curriculum. The Model Classroom Program® assessment uses a 3-step method to assess a teacher's skill and effectiveness. This includes direct observation of teacher behavior and classroom practice, documentation and data review, and a structured interview. This leads to direct coaching and modeling, and performance outcome monitoring. 

The Model Classroom Program® is summary of skills, knowledge and behaviors for a teacher in seven interrelated domains containing and contains 40 individual assessment criteria. These domains are based on effective teaching practices and methodologies including, Environmental Structure & Room Set-up, Student Schedule Development & Use, Curriculum & Developmentally Appropriate Activities, Teaming & Making Materials, Effective Teaching Behaviors, Classroom Management and Data Collection.

The Model Classroom Program has system wide implications for improved teacher performance.  Quantitative teacher scores translate into evidenced based qualitative improvements in classrooms.  Teacher scores are utilized in performance evaluations and can be used by administrators in decision-making with regard to teacher retentions and promotions.  Promotion to Model Classroom Teacher becomes a goal for all teachers.

Systemic needs are discovered and targeted trainings are developed, such as lesson planning, data collection procedures, schedule development, classroom structure, prompting procedures, error correction, and classroom-wide behavior management plans. Program wide use of evidenced based practices increases significantly. Overall results of Model Classroom implementation indicate school culture change, as staff become more motivated to excellence in a competitive atmosphere of accomplishing the mission of the organization.

Jessica Robins Miller, The Wolf School

Sherry L. Kolbe, NAPSEC

The Immersion Model

The Wolf School

As The Wolf School began its mission to serve students of average cognitive potential who have multiple learning issues, we designed a unique method of instruction we call the Immersion Model. In contrast to a pullout model where students receive speech or occupational therapy services separately, the Immersion Model imbeds individual speech and language, social, emotional, and occupational goals into the academic curriculum. This approach provides students with therapeutic support throughout the day in each classroom.

Our model addresses three major learning challenges: language processing/production, sensory regulation, and socially effective communication. We approach each student’s needs from an individual and developmental level and address their challenges within the classroom. Teaching methods include collaborative multi-disciplinary teaching whereby there are at least two faculty members in each class for each content area, depending upon the number of educational groupings per class. In this way, an occupational therapist or speech pathologist could be teaching any subject. We address social skills, classroom management, and organizational abilities as part of our daily curriculum.

Since our foundation for learning requires the students to be “ready to learn” and “ready to listen,” we start each day for grades K-5 with a sensory regulation activity, which we call Move-to-Learn. This class is taught by an occupational therapist and physical education teacher or teaching assistant. We alternate movement with sedentary learning every ninety minutes throughout the day to maintain sensory modulation. Conversely, our middle school students end the day with a physical education class to help the children transition from school to home.

The social effective communication goals are identifiable by the pragmatic skills needed in verbal, nonverbal and paralinguistic aspects of social effective communication. These individual objectives are identified each day/week and monitored throughout the day by all the staff. Both individual and collective classroom goals are considered. As the students progress to middle school, these social skills areas are also addressed through service learning opportunities and electives.