Using Schemas to Support Life Skills Mathematics for Students with Developmental Disabilities

Mathematics is an important but also under-explored area of education for students with disabilities, including middle school students with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. In this study, researchers taught middle school students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) to solve word problems grounded in life skills via a schematic diagram, fading support of explicit instruction, and the system of least prompts (SLP). Across the four students, all acquired the skill of finding the total bill with tip and were also able to generalize to finding the total cost with tax. When using the schema, students were independent in completing the steps, and maintained their accuracy in solving both problem types after the intervention ended.