LESSON PLAN

Educational Psychology for Exceptional students

By Nicole Benoit, Joyce Huynh, Yosev Santos, Dominique Point Du Jour

STAGE I: DESIRED RESULTS

Learning Objective(s):

• Student teachers develop an understanding of physical disabilities and chronic health

conditions
• Student teachers obtain strategies they can use in practicum to support youths with
physical disabilities and chronic health

STAGE II: Assessment Evidence

• Participation
• Posters
• Kahoot
• SurveyMonkey

Anticipatory questions

• How would you accommodate a student with a physical disability?

• How would you accommodate students who are frequently missing school due to
physical disabilities (appointments, recovery)

STAGE III: LEARNING EXPERIENCES

Tech to do: Resources to bring:

KAHOOT • Posters
• Felt pens

Time (35 Activity

mins total)
3 minutes Introduction: physical disabilities
Intro Includes: nervous system impairment, musculoskeletal condition, chronic
health impairment
• an estimated 20% of students experience a serious illness or health
condition before the age of 18
• as a teacher it is important to familiarize ourselves with the
characteristics, emergency responses, and teaching strategies
required to best support the student (includes cultural perspectives)
• encourage students to participate as fully as they can (growth
mindset)
• assistive technologies such as Skype can help students with chronic
illnesses and students who are not always able to make it to class
• keywords on what participation means to those with physical
disabilities: autonomy, belongingness, challenge, engagement,
mastery, meaning

• Explain to class that we intend to do this presentation in station style

because there is so much content to cover. This may be an easier way
to chunk up the information
• Procedure: there are 4 stations - 2 in the room, 2 outside. Divide up
the room (how? - distribute numbers randomly, split up the class?) 7.5
minutes in each station.

7.5 minutes Nicole - Nervous System Impairment 1: Spina bifida, epilepsy and Cerebral
each station - Palsy (outside room 1)
4 times (30
minutes Lesson:
total) 1. Emphasize the need for communication as these three disorders have
a wide range of symptoms and need to be individualized for your
student
2. Introduce Spina Bifida (3 types)
3. Discuss common issues that can accompany Spina Bifida and how to
accommodate for them
4. Introduce Cerebral Palsy
5. Discuss common issues that can accompany CP and how to
accommodate for them (Emphasis on the fact that physical disability is
not correlated with academic ability)
6. Discuss autonomy and independence in the classroom
7. Quick activity: have students put on oven mitts and attempt to pull out
a piece of gum. While students are completing activity, discuss that
students with fine and gross motor control issues can struggle with
everyday tasks, but if I were to get them to put on oven mitts and pick
up a book, they would find it much easier. Emphasize that students
with CP are able to perform many daily tasks on their own and they
are able to ask for help if they need it!
8. Introduce epilepsy and the different types of seizures
9. Discuss safety plans and individualized strategies
10. Signs that a seizure may be coming
11. Implications of seizure medications (If time permits, tell personal
experience story about a lady that I work with that had multiple
 seizures a day, and then proceeded to maintain a Ketogenic diet and
has not had a seizure in 5 years)
12. Quick activity: have students stand up and spin around as fast as they
can 10 times. Then have students immediately attempt to write their
name on a piece of paper. Most students will struggle and may feel
disoriented. This is an example of how some students feel right before
they have a seizure.
13. End discussion by ensuring there is a major emphasis on
communication. All three of these conditions are very individualized
and require the teacher to be educated on their students’ personal
needs. Discuss communication books, safety plans, communication
with the family, other teachers, and administrators.

Anticipatory questions:
• How would you accommodate a student with a physical disability?
• How would you accommodate students who are frequently missing
school due to physical disabilities (appointment, recovery)?
• How can you as an educator set up your classroom in order to ensure
that it is accommodating for students with physical disabilities?
• What do I do if my student is having a seizure?
• How do I know what my students with physical disabilities are able to
do? How do I know what they are unable to do?
• Will students with physical disabilities always have access to an EA in
the classroom? If not, how can I ensure they are receiving proper
support while still tending to the other students in the class?
• Does the school have access to assistive technology such as Nova
Chats or do the families purchase them separately?
• What do I do if a students’ assistive technology begins to malfunction
and they can no longer communicate?
• Am I responsible for setting up the students’ safety plan?
• How can I differentiate between an epileptic student having an
absence seizure and daydreaming?
Materials needed:
• Laptop with PowerPoint presentation
• Oven mitts
• Packs of gum
• Pens/Pencils and paper for name writing activity

Joyce - Nervous System Impairment 2: Tourette's Syndrome, Brain injury,

FASD (in back of the class)

Lesson:
1. “What is Tourette’s syndrome?” Poster (30 seconds)
2. Collaborate on poster paper. “From what we know of Tourette’s
syndrome, how would you accommodate a student with Tourette’s
syndrome?” (1 minute)
3. Show mine and discuss (30 seconds)
4. “What is FASD?” Poster (1 minute)
5. Collaborate on poster paper. From what we know of FASD, how would
you accommodate a student with FASD? (2 minute)
 6. Show mine and discuss (1 minute)
7. Discuss what are some similarities and differences you notice between
strategies for accommodating for Tourette’s syndrome and FASD.

Anticipatory questions:
• How would you accommodate a student with a physical disability?
• How would you accommodate students who are frequently missing
school due to physical disabilities (appointment, recovery)?
• What are some similarities in strategies between dealing with
Tourette’s syndrome and FASD?
• What are some differences in strategies between dealing with
Tourette’s syndrome and FASD?
Materials needed:
• Poster paper
• Felt pens
• Premade posters

Yosev - Musculoskeletal Impairment (projector)

Lesson:
1. Set up KAHOOT - Questions throughout presentation
2. What are the 2 musculoskeletal impairments we’re exploring today?
3. What is MD?
4. What is DMD? What does it affect?
5. How can we help our students with MD or DMD?
6. What is Juvenile Arthritis?
7. What irritates it? Why is it difficult to manage?
8. What can we do for our students?
9. Sponge Activities

Anticipatory questions:
• How would you accommodate a student with a physical disability?
• How would you accommodate students who are frequently missing
school due to physical disabilities (appointment, recovery)?
Materials needed:
• Smartboard

Dominique - Chronic Health Conditions (outside room 2)

Lesson:
1. Introduce Chronic Health Conditions
2. What is Diabetes? Type 1 and Type 2, low blood sugar, high blood
sugar, ketoacidosis
3. What are Allergies? Common allergies, anaphylactic shock, EpiPen
4. What is Asthma? Connection to allergies, inhalers
5. How do chronic health conditions affect students?
6. What can we do as teachers to accommodate for students with chronic
health conditions?
 7. Keep tally of number of students who have someone with diabetes,
allergies or asthma in their immediate family (How many of us are
directly affected by chronic health conditions

Anticipatory questions:
• How would you accommodate a student with a physical disability?
• How would you accommodate students who are frequently missing
school due to physical disabilities (appointment, recovery)?
Materials needed:
• Poster Papers
• Markers

2 minutes
Wrap up Survey monkey questions

• What did you think of the structure of the presentation?

• What did you think of the content presentation?
• What changes would you make to the presentation?
• What was one interesting fact that you learned?

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QMVT7HR

LESSON REFLECTION

By giving our peers the opportunity to fill in a survey about our lesson, it allowed us to
collect and reflect on the given feedback. Our peers were asked what they thought of the
structure and content of our lesson, what changes they would make, and one interesting fact
they learned. This was a great way to see how our peers viewed our lesson and what they
were able to take away to bring into their future classrooms. We received feedback on splitting
the class up into smaller groups for stations, as we were able to have more in depth
discussions and it helped to keep the students engaged and allow for them to move
throughout the classroom to get small transition movement breaks. If we had more time for
the entirety of the presentation, it would have been beneficial to allow for more time for
transitions in order to eliminate any confusion. By asking our peers for an interesting fact that
they took from the presentation, we were able to formatively assess what knowledge was
successfully delivered and see what information they may not have known prior. It was a good
way to ensure that our key points and interesting takeaways were digested.

A general consensus from our peers is that it could have been a little more beneficial if
we limited the information we gave out or separated the information into three stations instead
of four in order to allow for more time per station. We viewed this as a strength as well as a
weakness as we thought it was important to present as much knowledge to our peers as we
possibly could in the allotted time. Knowing that 20% of students are diagnosed with a
physical disability, we thought that it would benefit our peers to present them with symptoms
and strategies that could benefit them in their future classroom. The downside to this
however, is that we were not able to go as in depth on each disorder as we would have liked
and many of our peers commented saying that they felt some stations were a little rushed and
that they wish that they had more time to digest the information. Another possible way to
eliminate this concern could have been to allow our peers to “sign up” for three of the four
stations in order to give them more choice in which disorders they would like more information
on, while elongating the time permitted for each station. The downside to this is that they
would miss out on the information from the station they did not select.

A strength of our presentation was making sure that we emphasized the need for
autonomy and self-advocacy in the classroom, especially in the case of students with physical
disabilities and chronic health conditions. Our stations were all centered on communication
and it’s vitality for supporting students with disabilities. Presenting our peers with support and
resources such as safety plans, and communication books can help educate teachers on daily
tasks that can benefit the wellbeing of the student. Our group also prepared an additional
teacher resource and made it clear to our peers that due to time we were not able to open up
the discussion as much as we would have liked, but that we were all available for future
questions and conversations regarding our topics.