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I've been looking for a structured, standards-based math curriculum to add to my curriculum "collection." AbleNet recently released Equals. Anyone out there have any experience? It looks promising what with a comprehensive program that covers everything from pre-numeracy skills through grade level support including all the manipulatives. Is it worth the $1700 price tag? Would sure love to get my hands on some materials samples or a demonstration kit. AbleNet has an awesome reputation (they are my "go to" source for assistive tech; excellent product quality and excellent service). BUT will the curriculum truly meet the needs of my students with severe and multiple disabilities or is it geared more to the moderate-high severe range like so much of the other curricula out there "geared" to this population? Will it meet the needs of my sensory impaired students (blind, deaf, and/or deaf-blind in addition to severe physical disabilities) or is it primarily visual and/or auditory in nature, making it fairly useless for most of my students? Unfortunately my ability to acquire the curriculum will have to wait until grant season this spring. Hopefully one of my available grants will come through with the funding.
For those curious, the other pieces to my curriculum, all new to us this year, include:
ALL--reading/literacy from Mayer Johnson
Unique Learning System--science and social studies from the folks at News-2-You
News-2-You--current events (not new to us but we haven't actually had time to use this yet this year)
The Life Skills strand to my curriculum is individualized to the student and I don't have a formal curriculum for it. I have considered looking at the Next Transition Skills System also from AbleNet, however.
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I thought this program looked great, but it is just WAY too expensive for my class (that is almost double my budget in a year). I ended up purchasing Teaching to Standards:MATH from Attainment Company, and its going really well with my students so far. I currently use Unique and News-2-You as well, and I like that this program has a reading aspect to it that uses pic symbols like those programs do. Let me know if you end up buying EQUALS, I'd love to hear how it is.
ReplyDeleteI would love to hear any reviews on EQUALS as well. I had looked at it a while back and then forgot about it until I saw your post. If you get it I would love to hear your review on it :).
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