abilities and disabilities

SALERNO NEWS

Salerno, 28/o4/22

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Liceo da Procida

Daily News

Abilities and Disabilities

in the Italian school system

index

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The Individualized Educational Plan

The Italian school and disabled students

The teacher for the support activities

The Educational Offer Plan and disabled students

Do students with disabilities get a valid qualification?

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Special Educational Needs

The Italian school and disabled students

The scholastic integration of students with disabilities is a strong point of the Italian school, which wants to be a welcoming community in which all students, regardless of their diversity, can achieve an individual and social growth.

The full inclusion of students with disabilities is an objective that the school pursues through an intense and articulated planning. The Ministry for Education has taken several measures to promote integration: support teachers, projects and activities for the integration of disabled students, training courses for support and curricular teachers as well as for administrative, technical and auxiliary staff.

The teacher for the support activities

The teacher for the support activities is a specialized teacher assigned to the class of the student with disabilities, to facilitate the integration process. The methods of this important figure are shared among all those involved (school, health services, family) and defined in the Individualized Education Plan. Each class teacher has a responsibility towards all the students in his class, including those with disabilities, so he will work together with the support teacher to plan the didactic and educational objectives of disabled students. The precise formulation of the objectives set by each teacher for his class is necessary to define the activities also for the students with disabilities.

The Individualized Educational Plan

The IEP, the Individualized Educational Plan, annually describes the educational and didactic interventions for disabled students, defining objectives, methods and evaluation criteria. It is an integral part of the classroom educational-didactic planning and contains: educational, socialization and learning objectives to be reached in the different subjects; specific activities; the methods, materials, aids and technologies with which to organize the proposal; the evaluation criteria and methods; the forms of integration between school and family.

Since the evaluation of students with disabilities refers to the IEP, this document must clearly contain all the elements necessary to evaluate the results of the didactic action. The IEP is drawn up at the beginning of each school year and is then subject to verification. It is drawn up jointly by the school and the Services (Psycho-Social-Health Team) with the collaboration of the Family.y to hold stunning creativity, experiences and stories.

The Educational Offer Plan and disabled students

An inclusive school must necessarily take into consideration its students with disabilities in the formulation of its Educational Offer Plan (PTOF in Italy), that is the document containing the school cultural values and choices. The PTOF must describe what the school offers to all its students, including those with particular difficulties, as well as indicate how the school intervenes to overcome any obstacles for disabled students, to better respond to their special educational needs. In particular, the PTOF must clearly define the ways of organizing some delicate moments for disabled students, such as supplementary activities, trips, meeting spaces, to avoid for them the risk of exclusion.

Do students with disabilities get a valid qualification?

We have to distinguish between the first and second cycle of education. In the first cycle, that is in the Primary School and in the Middle School, students with disabilities always pass to the next class, even when the programme they followed is completely differentiated. The student with disabilities can also take the final State Exam (middle school exam), even doing totally different tests, based on what is established in his Individualized Education Plan (IEP). By passing these tests, the student will obtain a diploma valid in all respects, with no mention of the particular path he followed.

In the high school, instead, students with disabilities are not necessarily guaranteed the achievement of the diploma. Two distinct paths are therefore possible for them, taking into account the seriousness of the disability: a curricular one, based on minimum objectives, which leads to the achievement of a regular diploma; a ‘differentiated one’, which only implies school attendance and in the end leads to getting a certificate, not a diploma, since the objectives of the Individualized Education Plan are different from those of the rest of the class. The family must be informed of the necessity of a ‘differentiated programming’ and has the right to reject this choice; in this case the student will equally follow his IEP, but the final evaluation will be carried out on the basis of the criteria defined for the whole class.

Special Educational Needs

The Special Educational Need represents any difficulty in the educational field that needs a special education aiming at inclusion. These difficulties requiring special educational needs must not be considered disabilities. Some students have the so called ‘learning disorders’, so they may not be able to read, write or make calculations. On the base of the ability affected, these disorders take on a specific name: dyslexia (reading), dysgraphia and dysorthography (writing), dyscalculia (calculation).

To allow students with SLDs (specific learning disorders) to achieve the learning objectives, teaching strategies must be modified with individualized didactic interventions. Some research has also highlighted that students with SLDs have some specific cognitive characteristics, that is they are good at doing something, which is important to recognize. This assigns a fundamental role to the observation of teachers, who should be able to identify those cognitive characteristics on which to focus, in order to achieve successful results with SLDs students.

Some students may have temporarily some difficulties in normal learning and require individualized interventions. Also in this case we cannot speak of disability. Recent studies have proved some students to have the onset of stress, of a psychological discomfort or anxiety due to Covid and to the restrictions linked to it. Such a feeling can requeire a special educational need, if it creates a barrier to a student to engage in normal day-to-day activities.

TO sum up...

with reference to disabled students, the Italian Ministy of Education aims at

INTEGRATION

INCLUSION

FAMOUS DISABLED PEOPLE

The Italian school and gifted students

The Ministry of Education promotes initiatives for recognizing the levels of excellence achieved by upper secondary school students with the annual program for the enhancement of excellent students. For secondary schools the Ministry of Education rewards: • students with a score of 100 with honors in the state exam; • the winning students of the national and international competitions listed in the annual program for the enhancement of excellence. The program consists of a list of competitions published every year. The headteachers of secondary schools must inform teachers, students and their parents about these initiatives to allow excellent students to participate.

Multidisciplinary area Adopt science and art in your classroom Scientific - Technological field Cyberchallenge.it FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) Anacleto Games – EUSO International Chemistry Games and Olympics Humanoids Festival - NAO Challenge Young people and the sciences Mad for Science Olicyber.IT - Italian Cybersecurity Olympics Neuroscience Olympics Natural Sciences Olympics Astronomy Olympics Physics Olympics Robotics Olympics Italian Statistics Olympics Historical - Philosophical area Philosophy Olympics Romanae Disputationes Technical - Professional area C.A.D. Olympics National Pastry Championship of the Hotel Institutes of Italy Students Lab competition "Basilicata at the table" Food and wine competition National competition Vocational and technical institutes Siemens automation Olympics Biz Factory Award (Enterprise in action)

LIST OF COMPETITIONS FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR 2021/2022

Artistic field Logo competition of math without borders New design competition Biennial Artistic Lyceum Competition Exhibition Heritage Olympics Economic – Social field Olympics of economics and finance Linguistic – Literary field Art of Words - Literary Prize City of Prato G. Conti National Championship of Languages Certamen Ciceronianum Arpinas Certamen of Latin poetry Vittorio Tantucci Certamen Horatianum Classical section literary competition The Florentine Colloquia Olympics of classical languages and civilizations Italian Olympics

Logical – Mathematical field International Mathematical Games ChampionshipsMathematical Games of the MediterraneanKangourou of mathematicsMathematics without bordersOlympiad of mathematical linguistic logical gamesMathematics Olympics - team competitionMathematics Olympics - individual competitionComputer Olympics TeamIT OlympicsProblem Solving OlympicsMusic - ChoreuticYoung people in crescendo music competition

As regards our school, in the last two years the Covid has affected the partecipation of our students to national competitions, in the sense that fewer students have joined competitions in comparison to previous years. At the moment we can just say that some students have taken part in Physics, Math, Biology and Neuroscience Olympic. They have managed to pass the first or the second phase of the competitions and are waiting for the future steps.

THANKS FOR THE ATTENTIONCREATED BY

MARIA BEATRICE PETROCELLIANTONIO NAPOLI GIACOMO D'AGOSTINO CHIARA D'ELIA ANNA ZAGARIA ANTONIO LIPPI ESTER SABATINO