Functional Math Skills That Support Independence

Functional math skills are those skills that students need to live independently in the community, care for themselves, and make choices about their lives. Functional skills make it possible for students with disabilities to make choices about where they will live, how they will make money, what they will do with money, and what they will do with their spare time. To do these things, they need to be able to count money, tell time, read a bus schedule, follow directions at work, and know-how to check and balance a bank account. Functional Math Skills Before students can understand numbers and numeration, they have to understand one-to-one correspondence. As they count, they need to be able to match each item or items to a corresponding number and understand that the number represents a matching or a corresponding number of items. One-to-one correspondence will also be helpful in such household tasks as setting the table and matching socks. Other functional skills include: Number recognition: This includes recognizing and being able to write the 10 digits, and then recognizing place value: ones, tens, and hundreds.Skip counting: Skip counting by 5s and 10s to 100 is important for understanding time (such as five-minute increments on an analog clock) and money. Teachers can use a hundreds chart or on a number line to demonstrate skip counting.Operations: Its vital for students to have a grasp of addition and subtraction. At a later point, if your students have an understanding of these two operations, it may be possible to introduce multiplication and division. Students with special needs may not be able to develop the ability to do the math operations themselves independently, but they can learn how the operations are used in order to use a calculator to do calculations, like balancing a bank statement or paying bills. Time Time as a functional skill involves both understanding the importance of time—such as not staying up all night or not missing appointments because they dont leave enough time to get ready—and telling time on analog and digital clocks to get to school, work, or even the bus on time. Understanding time requires comprehending that seconds are fast, minutes almost as fast, and hours much longer. Students with disabilities, especially significant cognitive or developmental disabilities, may have behavioral outbursts because they are stuck on preferred activities, and dont realize they will miss lunch. For them, building an understanding of time may involve a visual clock, like a Time Timer, or a picture schedule. These tools help give students a sense of control over their schedule and an understanding of what happens and when during their school or even home day. Parents may also benefit from having visual schedules at home. For children with autism spectrum disorders, it can help avoid long periods of self-stimulatory (stimming) behavior, which may actually undermine progress they are making at school. Teachers can also pair telling time with understanding the concept of time, for example, that 6 a.m. is when you get up and 6 p.m. is when you eat dinner. Once students can tell the time to the hour and half-hour, they can progress to skip counting by fives and telling time to the nearest five-minute interval. A geared clock, such as a Judy clock—where the hour hand moves when the minute hand goes around—helps students understand that both hands move together. Money Money, as a functional math skill, has several levels of skill: Recognizing money: pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.Counting money: first in single denominations and later mixed coinsUnderstand the value of money: budgets, wages, and paying bills Measurement Learning measurement for students with special needs should involve length and volume. A student should be able to use a ruler and even perhaps a tape measure for length and recognize inches, half and quarter inches, as well as feet or yards. If a student has an aptitude for carpentry or graphic arts, the ability to measure length or size will be helpful. Students should also learn volume measurements, such as cups, quarts, and gallons. This skill is useful for filling tubs, cooking, and following directions. When cooking is part of a functional curriculum, a knowledge of measures of volume will be helpful. Students should be able to choose what they will cook, and find and read recipes. Familiarity with measuring volume will help students who want to pursue work in culinary arts, such as a kitchen assistant.

The Deployment Of Economic Sanctions On The International...

The deployment of economic sanctions on the international stage by states to influence the behavior of other states has become the norm in International Relations. Despite the increase in popularity of this practice over the course of the past century, the question of its efficiency is one that is still debated and remains unanswered. The idea that putting economic pressures on a country to illicit a certain behavior or change in behavior from that country works in theory, but in practice, it is more complicated and does not necessarily work the way that theory suggests it should. Some economists and policy analysts have taken the approach of deconstructing the subject in order to consider what variable may or may not affect the efficiency†¦show more content†¦Positive sanctions are meant to foster relations between countries. Negative sanctions are intended to cause another country economic harm. The debate around economic sanctions typically focuses on the negative kind. S anctions can be unilateral - from one sender country to one target country - or multilateral from multiple countries. Multilateral sanctions can be orchestrated by one main country supported by other countries, or they can be sent under the auspices of an international organization. Raul Caruso distinguishes three different kinds of negative sanctions – boycotts, embargoes, and Kassim 3 financial sanctions. A boycott is the restriction of imports from the target country; embargoes are restrictions on exports to the target country; financial sanctions are restrictions on investment in the target country (Caruso â€Å"Should We Set† 23). Kaempfer and Lowenberg posit that economic sanctions can be proposed for the following three reasons: in response to a nation that threatens the wealth or security of the sender nation; to achieve moral or ideological goals; as a part of trade policy and commercial relations – i.e. in response to tariffs or quotas (Kaempfer 2). The question of whether or not sanctions are efficient is a difficult one to answer. A major contributing factor to this difficulty is the lack of a universal standard for gauging success. Analysts create the criteria by which to judge success, and these criteria are not accepted by

New paradigms for health care delivery Free Essays

Changes occurring in Health care delivery and Medicine are the result of social, economical, technological, scientific forces that have evolved in the 21st century. Among the most significant changes are shift in disease patterns, advanced technology, increased consumer expectations and high costs of health care. These factors have redefined medical practices to fit into the changing health delivery system. We will write a custom essay sample on New paradigms for health care delivery or any similar topic only for you Order Now Many health care professionals have come to the conclusion and belief that they will be compelled to explore new paradigms for health care delivery in the future like electronic medical record keeping, telemedicine, computer-based diagnostics and health monitoring to keep pace with the changing scenario. This is due to the accountability of the medical profession today and changing disease patterns. Doctors are under increasing pressure to keep up to date and to base their decisions more firmly on evidences as opposed to anecdotal information of the past. Patients are much more informed than they were 10 years ago. No doctor can tell a patient what to do without being questioned today. Further, with the advent of concepts like informed consent and advance directives, such scientific changes gain relevance. ELEMENTS OF THE NEW PARADIGM The use of electronic documentation is becoming increasingly prevalent in terms of convenience. The National Academy of Sciences report states that the US health care industry spent between $10 and $15 billion on information technology in 1996. Much of this expenditure is attributed to creating electronic records systems and converting conventionally stored data to electronic formats.   There are many software programs specially developed for electronic record keeping. This includes ‘Doctors partner’, an advanced Electronic Medical Records (EMR) System with Integrated Appointment Scheduling Billing, Prescription Writer, Transcription Module, Document Management and Workflow Management built to meet HIPAA standards. ‘Practice Partner Patient Records’ is an award winning electronic medical records (EMR) system, allowing practices to store and retrieve patient charts electronically. There are innumerable such branded medical record softwares available today. The standards in practice for EMR include ASTM International Continuity of Care Record , ANSI X12 (EDI) CEN , EN13606, HISA, DICOM , HL7 ,ISO   and openEHR . (Ringold et.al.,2000). The American Medical Association and 13 other medical groups representing 500,000 physicians have signaled their intention to go electronic with the AMA formed   Physicians’ â€Å"Electronic Health Record Coalition† to recommend affordable, standards-based technology to their constituents. President Bush has also promoted a nationwide computerized medical records system in a recent visit to a children’s hospital at Vanderbilt University. Scientific innovations have found a niche in complicated medical procedures as well. A recent study successfully has evaluated a bar code patient identification system, which involves a hand-held computer for sample collection and for compatibility testing administration of blood. (Turner et.al, 2003). A recent research article (Sandler et.al, 2000) reports of a solid phase and micro titer plate hemagglutination method for pretransfusion compatibility tests. This I-TRAC is an automated process of blood matching with improved serological sensitivity and standardized compatibility testing supporting electronic record keeping and linking to a bar code identification system. San Raffale Hospital in Milan, Italy, has recently collaborated with Intel and CISCO systems to use wireless-enabled infrastructures and Radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies. The system uses RFID-radio frequency identification technology to address the sources of   human and systems error in blood transfusion supply chain. This pilot programme has been   implemented at the 1,100 bed San Raffale hospital where more than 15000 blood transfusions are done every year. The CAT (Computer Aided Tomography) is yet another revolution in medicine which combines the X-ray technology with computer signal processing to generate images of tissues of the body obscured by other organs. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a common technique used to scan pathological or physiological status of living tissues. Much is known about the computer aided continuous ECG monitoring with a play back facility for assessing the cardiac status of the patient. Today we are in a wonderful situation where we will be able to develop a drug based on computer analysis skipping a few phases of clinical testing. PERSPECTIVES ON THE PARADIGM SHIFT Thus, scientific innovations are part of the evolutionary process of the medical science. The basic instrument of a physician, the Stethoscope, the Sphygmomanometer used for monitoring the patient blood pressure, the Catheter, Radiotherapy, Chemotherapy, the EEG, ECG, EMG, Echocardiogram, Ultrasonic scan, to name a few were nothing but such scientific innovations integrated into the field of medicine in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Thus, Computer based telemedicine, medical record system, and diagnostic procedures are scientific innovations of the twenty-first century. Hence, it is nothing but a natural and moral obligation of the health care sector to integrate them into the field of medicine. Changes in financial incentives and health care delivery structures are producing new threats to health care quality (A.Brennan, 1991). The retributive measures are cumbersome and expensive. Hence, there is a need for more accountable health delivery system, which will enable application of modern scientific approaches to quality health care system. In this context, quality of the medical care depends on promotion of quality medical care by managed care organizations. REFERENCE Brennan, T, et.al, â€Å"Incidence of adverse events and negligence in hospitalized patients: the results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study†, New England Journal of Medicine 324: 370-76, 1991. Là ¦rum Hallvard, MD, Tom H. Karlsen, MD, and Arild Faxvaag, MD, PhD . â€Å"Effects of Scanning and Eliminating Paper-based Medical Records on Hospital Physicians’ Clinical Work Practice†. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 10: 588-595.2003. Ringold DJ , JP Santell, and PJ Schneider , â€Å"ASHP national survey of pharmacy practice in acute care settings: dispensing and administration–1999†. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy 57 (19): 1759-75. 2000. Sauer et.al, â€Å"Errors in transfusion medicine† Lab Med. 32(4): 205-207, 2001. Turner et.al, â€Å"Bar code technology: its role in increasing the safety of blood transfusion†, Transfusion, 43(9): 1200:2003. How to cite New paradigms for health care delivery, Essay examples