Addition of Functional Content during Core Content Instruction with Students with Moderate Disabilities

The purpose of this investigation was to add functional content during core content instruction of language arts, science, and math. The investigation involved three middle school students with moderate disabilities who participated in the state's alternate assessment. During instruction using a constant time delay procedure to teach required grade level core content, the special education instructor added functional content as follows: (a) language arts information found in the news added to grade level sight word vocabulary, (b) science cooking skills or appropriate dress for weather conditions added to the properties of elements in the periodic table, and (c) math computation of sales tax for items appearing in advertisements added to order of operations. The results showed that students could learn, maintain, and generalize both types of content presented within the same lesson.