No abstract

No abstract

Mark is a 6-year-old who loves baseball and playing with small building blocks. He is an affectionate child who loves hugs, high fives, and fist bumps. He also enjoys dancing, rough and tumble play, and being outdoors on the playground. Recently he and his parents moved to a new city where he has just started kindergarten. Mark has a mild intellectual disability and is beginning to print the letters in his name. Mark struggles with early numeracy concepts, and his teacher, Ms. Hannon, quickly realizes that she needs to adjust her instruction to support him across many areas of development. Mark likes to play with his classmates, but he often forgets the rules of frequently played card and board games. Because of this, his typically developing peers are becoming increasingly frustrated with Mark and are not including him in some of their games. Based on her observations Ms. Hannon thinks that the other students do not know what to expect from Mark in terms of social interaction and behavior. She also realizes that Mark needs more support to learn some critical social skills. She decides to investigate a class-wide intervention to help support all of her students' social competence, including their development of friendship skills. As a result of this intervention, she hopes that her students will develop more positive attitudes of acceptance around individual differences. OverviewMark's story is based on a real-life experience and one that you might have encountered as a teacher, or one that might present itself to you in the future. In this chapter, we aim to give you insights into how you can support students like