Student 1

This student is in my Men’s Varsity Chorus. This student has autism but is relatively high

functioning. The thing about this student is that his only integrated class is choir. His other

classes are fully contained special education classes. For him we really don’t do a whole lot of

adapting lessons for him as he really doesn’t need it. The one thing that I have noticed does

help him however is to do things aurally in addition to having the students sight read. He

occasionally has trouble turning the notes on the page into music in his head. So for this, I just

echo some passages for the students. Once he has heard the music, he is then able to sing the

piece just fine. He even got to the point one time where he finally felt comfortable enough to

sing a solo

With this student, he can tend to be a bit shy at first. Something that I did to help with this was

to just check in with him every day for just a minute. It took less than two weeks, and he started

to open up very quickly. He quickly became one of my favorite students and we talk every

morning.
Student 2

This student is also on the autism spectrum. Because I cannot see the full IEP, I do not

know all of the details of her abilities, however she is relatively high functioning just like

student 1. One thing different about this student is that she is less mobile than some of the

other students. She cannot stand for long periods of time, so most of the time she is seated

during class and while we are singing on stage. This can start to be a bit of a problem with

staying with the class when we start to add choreography. What we did to help adapt this to

her was that most of the dance moves focus on the upper body. This way, she is able to still do

the dance moves while sitting down. Like student 1, this student also loves choir, so she is

always wanting to participate in the things we do. Adapting these dance moves for her helps

her participate in ways that she otherwise wouldn’t be able to.