Guided Worksheets and Special Education Dalton 1

Examining the Usage of Guided Worksheets In a Special Education Class

Tyler Dalton

Manhattan College EDUC 403

Guided Worksheets and Special Education Dalton 2

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine the use of guided worksheets when

writing a summative essay in a special education class. The study was completed at Bronx

Collaborative High School, which is a public high school in the Bronx, and the students involved

were in a ninth grade inclusive world history class. The students were assigned the task of

writing an argumentative essay, and guided worksheets were used to help ease this intimidating

task for many special education students. These worksheets allowed the students to work on one

paragraph at a time, which was then broken up into multiple different subsections. Subsections

like this allowed the students to work on one section at a time, and this resulted in them staying

motivated throughout the whole entire writing process. Guided notes can be implemented in a

number of different ways, and this study examines how guided notes could be adapted into

guided worksheets that are used while writing an essay.

Introduction

Motivation is one issue that many students face. While observing at Bronx Collaborative

High School, I noticed that many of the students did seem to share this common struggle. It was

even more of an issue in the second classroom that I observed in, which was an integrated 9th

grade world history class. I began to wonder if it was actually an issue with motivation, or if the

students were struggling with the content resulting in them losing motivation. I decided to

examine the usage of guided notes, and how they can be used to help special education students.

Throughout my time at Bronx Collaborative High School, I worked with my cooperating teacher,

Mr. Restrepo, to examine the different ways that guided notes can be efficiently used in a special

education class.
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I was placed at Bronx Collaborative High School, which is a public high school in the

Bronx, New York. The school has roughly 465 students, which are in grades 9-12. It is a fairly

diverse school, with roughly 60.2% of the students being Hispanic, 31.8% of the students being

African American, 3.4% of the students being white, and 2.2% of the students being Asian.

Bronx Collaborative is a school that does not do the Regents Test, so there is not any information

regarding testing scores for this school. There is an alternative assignment that the students

complete as upperclassmen. Bronx collaborative as a whole is a very diverse school, and for my

study I chose to focus on working with the special education population.

Area of Focus

The class that I worked with was a 9th grade integrated social studies class. When a class

is classified as “integrated” it means that there are students who are considered to be special

education, and students who are considered to be general education. The class consisted of

around twenty students, but it was rare to see more than 10-15 students in the class at the end of

the day. The teacher stated that many of the students miss class, and that this was worsened by

the fact that the class was at the end of the day. I noticed that many of the students did not seem

to stay motivated for the whole class, and I decided to look further into this issue. One possible

reason for this is that the class was at the end of the day, but that is something that needs to be

worked around because that is not something that was going to change. I then decided to look

into different strategies that could be used to help students, including special education students,

stay focused during class. Throughout my research I found that multiple studies have been done

on guided notes, and how they can be used to help students stay focused during class, and how

they can result in the students preforming better on exams. My question then became focused on
Guided Worksheets and Special Education Dalton 4

finding different ways that guided notes could be efficiently used in my placement class, and if

this form of notetaking helped the students maintain focus throughout the lesson.

Review of Literature

One of the first tasks that I needed to accomplish was actually researching how guided

notes have been effectively used in a special education class. The one study that I examined

focused around using guided notes for students that were classified as “at-risk” during a summer

remedial social studies class. This study only revolved around three students, and these three

students had the lowest baseline scores out of all of the students in the class. The study used both

short form and long form guided notes. Short form guided notes are guided notes that only

require the students to fill out a word or two out of each point. Long form guided notes require

the students to fill out 4-8 words out of each sentence. The study found that the students

performed significantly better after using either form of guided notes. The students’ highest

scores were seen after using the short form guided notes, and the students also stated that they

enjoyed this note taking strategy the most (Sweeney, etc. all, 1999, pg. 313-315). Another study

that I researched focused primarily on African American special education students, and this

study also found that the students preformed much better after using guided notes. Patterson

found that this was most likely due to the students being able to focus on the important

information rather than writing every word that the teacher said (Patterson, 2005, pg. 316). She

found that the students’ original notes seemed very rushed, and that they often missed the main

focus of the lecture because they were too concerned about keeping up with the teacher. The

third study that I read about also found that students performed better after using guided notes,

but it also analyzed the effectiveness of using an in class review following the use of guided

notes. Lazarus found that the students with disabilities saw a significant improvement on their
Guided Worksheets and Special Education Dalton 5

test scores following the use of guided notes, but she also found that all of the students’ test

scores improved even more after adding a review period to the guided notes (Lazarus, 1993, pg.

274). This shows that guided notes can be effective, but that the teacher also needs to find a way

to support the notes in order to fully understand that the students are comprehending the content.

All of the studies that I found showed that guided notes were effective in special education

classrooms.

Devise a Plan

For my placement class, I examined the different ways that guided notes could be used in

a special education classroom. Most people consider guided notes to just be useful during actual

note taking, but I looked at the different ways that it could be used for other tasks, like writing an

essay. The class was given the task of writing an argumentative paper that focused on if

European exploration did more harm, or more good, to the societies that they encountered in the

Early Modern Period. The students were given the option to write about either the Russian,

Spanish, French, Dutch, British, or Portuguese influence on their colonies. It is important for

teachers to give the students different options during a summative assessment, but drafting out

different ideas can be an intimidating task for a special education student. My cooperating

teacher and I discussed this issue, and he described how he used a guided worksheet to help the

students create their argument and gather the content needed to support the argument. The

different types of guided worksheets that were used are included below.
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Intro Paragraph Worksheet

Body Paragraph Worksheet

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Closing Paragraph Worksheet

Thesis worksheet
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The different pages each represent a different part of the essay that the students are

working on. The first page that the students completed was the Thesis Worksheet, and this was

done in the lesson before they started drafting their essays. Mr. Restrepo spent a decent amount

of time doing this worksheet in order to ensure that the students understood the different parts of

a thesis statement. This method of using guided notes, or worksheets, and then following it with

a class discussion supports the argument made by Lazarus. The next day the students started

working on their essays and used the worksheets for each paragraph. The intro paragraph page

was used to help the students gather their information and create a thesis. The body paragraph

worksheets were the main focus of the paper, and this revolved around the students finding the

content needed to back up their thesis. These worksheets had the students develop an argument

and then back it up with content from their primary sources. The concluding page just had the

students restate their main arguments, but it was still a beneficial tool to help have the students

organize their thoughts. After completing all of the worksheets, the students had their work

checked by the teacher, and were then given access to the computers to type their essays. The

worksheets for the essay were my main form of guided notes/work used, and I analyzed the

students’ and teacher’s response to see if this was an effective method of integrating guided

notes into a special education class.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

An example of a student’s work is included below.

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The student whose work is shown above focused on the impact of the Spanish people,

and argued that they did more harm than good. This students work was very effective in showing

how these worksheets can be used to help gather the ideas that will be used in the essay. These

worksheets just show what will be put in the first and second body paragraph, but the body

paragraphs do require the students to organize information from primary sources. The first

paragraph is about how people were enslaved as a result of Spanish colonialization, and the

student backed this up by providing information from two primary sources. The same idea was

seen in the second paragraph. It is not necessary to go over what the student was trying to argue,

but it is important to analyze the way that this worksheet allowed them to separate their

information in a way that makes it easy to edit paragraphs before typing the paper. Having a

section for each of the pieces of evidence allows for the student to change a minor part of their

paragraph without having to go a restructure, or rewrite, their paragraph. The guided worksheet

allowed for the special education students to create their paper in multiple different steps that
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made it easier to organize and edit.

Both Mr. Restrepo and the students found this to be a very effective method of drafting

an essay. I spoke with him about the different methods that he has used while working with

special education students, and he said that he prefers this type of structure the most. He

explained how this method makes it much easier to provide feedback to students during the

drafting process. If the students were just writing a rough draft of the essay, he would not see the

draft until it was finished. This method allowed for him to provide the students with feedback

after each paragraph. He also explained how some students would reuse the same evidence, and

this method of writing an essay allows him to see if this mistake was made. He emphasized how

this method was beneficial for the special education students because it helped them focus on

one task at a time while creating their essay. The students also agreed that this method made the

writing process much more streamlined. While the students were writing their essays I went

around and asked a few of them about if they liked this method of writing. The students agreed

that this method made it much easier for them to see if they had enough evidence for each

paragraph. They also stated that this method made it easy for them to change any mistakes that

they made. Mr. Restrepo and the students agreed that the guided worksheets were very helpful

when writing an essay.

Action Plan Interpretation and Limitations

My field experience at Bronx Collaborate was very beneficial because I learned the

different way that guided notes/worksheets can be used in a social studies class. The guided

worksheets were very beneficial for the special education students because it helped them

organize their thoughts, but the general education students also found these worksheets very

helpful too. The main limitation to my plan was that I did not get to create the guided notes
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myself. I wanted to create guided notes for a lecture and see if the students performed better on

assessments afterwards, but I did not have the opportunity to do that. I was able to learn new

ways of using guided notes in a special education class, and that was definitely more beneficial

than just recreating the same studies that I read about during my research. The students

completed this essay before their Spring Break so I did not get a chance to see how they

performed on the essay, but Mr. Restrepo said that the students tended to previously perform

better when using this writing method. This writing method was successful in terms of my

research question, which was focused on how guided notes can be effectively used in a

classroom, and if these guided notes helped students stay motivated during class. The guided

worksheet was effective because it guaranteed that the students would have the correct amount of

evidence in each paragraph. It also allowed for the teacher to quickly check each student’s

progress, and tell them any improvements that could be made. The students did stay motivated

during the writing process, and this was most likely due to them only having to worry about one

task at a time. Students tend to hit a writer’s block when they are presented with too big of a task

at one point, so this enabled them to just worry about small tasks that would eventually build into

the final product. My experience at Bronx Collaborative was successful overall because it

introduced me to a new way that guided work could be used in certain tasks, like writing a

summative essay.

Summary

Throughout my time at Bronx Collaborative High School, I examined the different ways

that guided notes/work could be used in an inclusive social studies classroom. When I first

arrived at Bronx Collaborative, I found that a decent amount of students seemed to struggle to

stay motivated during class. I researched this issue, and find that guided notes could be one
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effective answer to this issue. Multiple different studies showed that guided notes do improve

special education students’ performance on exams. My cooperating teacher and I discussed how

this could be used when writing and essay, and he explained how he uses guided worksheets to

help the students perform better on the essays. He stated that students usually perform better

when using this method of writing, and the students also stayed motivated throughout the writing

process because they were only required to worry about one small step at a time. My research

question regarding if guided notes are effective in a special education class was proven correct,

and was extended upon to include the usage of guided worksheets.

References
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Lazarus, B. D. (1993). Guided notes: Effects with secondary and post secondary students with

mild disabilities. Education and Treatment of Children, 272-289.

Patterson, K. B. (2005). Increasing positive outcomes for African American males in special

education with the use of guided notes. The Journal of Negro Education, 311-320.

Sweeney, W. J., Ehrhardt, A. M., Gardner III, R., Jones, L., Greenfield, R., & Fribley, S. (1999).

Using guided notes with academically at‐risk high school students during a remedial

summer social studies class. Psychology in the Schools, 36(4), 305-318.