Tool of the Week – Council for Exceptional Children CEC's special education resource destination

For this week’s FREE tool, we’re reaching out to charter school teachers and administrators with a quick review of FAPE written especially for the charter school community. What is a free appropriate public education and how does it apply to charters? If you work in a traditional public school this review will be useful to you too so take a ...

Looking for ways to help your students spice up their writing? The five senses can help. This week’s FREE tool is an exercise that asks students to incorporate what they see, hear, feel, taste, and smell into their compositions. What a great way to help students discover the details needed to make their writing interesting! The tool comes from “Recipe ...

It’s only March now, but blink and the school year will wind down and high school seniors with disabilities will venture out into the world. If it’s your job to be sure they’re ready for the journey, this week’s FREE tool can help. It’s a table listing the many transition team members (and their roles) you can call upon to ...

Progress monitoring is essential for teachers who want to ensure their lessons respond to student needs and achievement. To make sure you cover your data collection and progress-monitoring bases without taking valuable time away from teaching, this week’s FREE tool is a set of steps to help co-teachers divide and conquer the data collection monster. What are you monitoring? How ...

Writing is a multifaceted process that requires multifaceted supports. To help you support student writing, this week’s FREE tool is a table full of tips for teaching the writing process. What are your students’ barriers to writing? How can you help to circumvent those barriers? Can technology help? The table addresses these questions and more. It comes from “What Really ...

Some children need extra support learning and practicing positive behavior, but that doesn’t mean all students can’t benefit from behavior-centered lessons. This week’s FREE tool is a sample classroom matrix intended to help you build behavior-centered lesson plans for your entire class. Use the sample as a guide to fill in your own routines and rules, then build a lesson ...

Weather this time of year can be unpredictable―will it be hot, cold, sunny, snowing?  What a great time to introduce a science and literacy lesson centered around the weather! This week’s FREE tool is a lesson plan about weather forecasting for students K–3 that will get your students thinking for themselves about the day’s precipitation. The lesson comes from CEC’s ...

Making an emergency phone call and communicating the necessary information to the respondent can literally save lives, so the ability to perform these tasks should not be taken for granted. That’s why this week’s FREE tool is a task analysis for assessing a student’s ability to perform the steps necessary to make an emergency call while out in the community. ...

Student behavior can have complex sources. The better a teacher understands those sources the better the student can be supported. This week’s FREE tool is a brief chart identifying areas where skill-based deficits may underlie certain unproductive or disruptive behaviors. The tool comes from CEC’s “When Behavior Makes Learning Hard: Positive Steps for Changing Student Behavior,” a brief and accessible ...

Friendship and companionship are essential to human development and happiness. To grow into adults who can engage in meaningful relationships, students with developmental disability must be provided with early and ongoing supports that enhance their ability to live fulfilling lives as adults. This week’s FREE tool is a table outlining elements of sex education according to age level to guide ...