(This postal service is part of our Fair is Not Always Equal…Now What? blog series.)

As many of our posts have emphasized this year, designing your lessons using the UDL framework goes a long fashion toward meeting each of your students' specific learning needs. Merely in a diverse, inclusive classroom, some students will also need accommodations and modifications to access the curriculum and limited what they know. Today'southward mail service gives you 17 practical tips from some of our expert authors. These won't work for every child—uncovering a learner's individual strengths and needs is always your showtime step—but they're helpful ideas to add to your toolbox and use with the learners who tin can benefit from them.

[Not sure well-nigh the difference between accommodations and modifications? Get-go by reading Tuesday'south Q&A with inclusion proficient Nicole Eredics, who shares the clearest definitions we've heard.]

  1. Interruption tasks into smaller steps. For independent work fourth dimension, mail a to-do list on the educatee's desk (in words or pictures) of the big tasks that need to be completed. The student can consummate them and cross out each chore.
  2. Extend time on tasks. Slowly increase the time allotted for certain tasks, or allow the educatee to have a examination in parts—ane function on the get-go day, the 2d function on the side by side.
  3. Reduce the amount of information on a folio. Adequate white space and a make clean, distraction-free layout can brand an assignment seem less confusing. Re-create segments of an assignment onto different pages to increase white space. Students can likewise hold index cards or word windows on the page to limit information every bit they read.
  4. Preteach. Introduce a concept, term, or thought to a student before it's "officially" taught to the rest of the course. This can help the student start the course feeling prepared and more confident.
  5. 30 Literacy Supports and Adaptations
    Click the image for more literacy supports!

    Permit students choose their writing instruments and newspaper size. Instead of traditional pencils and full-size sheets of paper, offer choices. For example, one pupil chose a black felt-tip marker and a half-sheet of paper. He explained that he ofttimes got nervous if he saw "a whole bare piece of paper" in forepart of him, and that he hated "the feel of the pencil on the paper." Changing up his writing materials proved to exist a successful strategy—after making the switch, the student was able to write for longer periods of time.

  6. Use a timer. Some students need help organizing their time or perform better when they know exactly how long tasks volition have. Using visual timers is a great accommodation strategy to support these students. Timers that allow the educatee to see how many minutes are left tin be particularly useful for managing time.
  7. Use guided notes. Develop handouts to help students take notes. Create an outline of the lesson and replace cardinal terms and facts with blanks that students can fill in as they listen to your presentation.
  8. Provide test-time helpers. Try modification strategies similar calculation film cues to test items, highlighting important words in the directions or questions, providing an example for each type of test item, reducing the number of alternatives for multiple-choice items, and letting the student circle the respond rather than write the letter.
  9. Brand an on-the-spot adaptations toolkit. Get a sturdy, reusable container such as a clipboard storage case and gather your own toolkit for making creative adaptations. Some items you might include: pare-off accost labels, sticky notes, lined paper, laminating sheets, index cards, colored cardstock, felt-tip markers, pencils, erasers, highlighters, pencil sharpener, three-hole punch, assorted newspaper clips and rubber bands, small stapler, glue stick, tape, scissors, dice, and batteries.
  1. Allow students use signals to answer questions . Give students cards, signs, or other items they can use to respond to your questions during course discussions. You can brand response cards that are preprinted with respond choices, or equip students with modest dry-erase boards and markers they can use to write their own responses and agree them up when information technology'south time to reply questions. (Hint: orphaned socks make great whiteboard erasers!)
  1. Rock the vote. Pose verbal aye-no or multiple choice questions to encourage all students to answer more than during grouping teaching. Students can vote with thumbs-up/thumbs-down signals or concord up colored index cards to indicate their respond (e.g., yellow for a, white for b, and green for c). This is a peachy style to facilitate more participation for nonverbal learners and students who are broken-hearted or shy.
  2. Let students to access text differently. Make modifications to the text itself—shorten the corporeality of text, reduce the number of vocabulary words, or simplify judgement structures. Or keep the text intact and provide accommodations such equally text-to-spoken communication books or audiobooks, highlighted text, or hyperlinks to vocabulary definitions.
  3. Use technology to evaluate text and make it more attainable. A few easy tools in Microsoft Discussion can help yous make text more readable and accessible. AutoSummarize can summarize key points in your reading material, and Readability Statistics can count the number of words and paragraphs, average the number of characters in a word or number of sentences in a paragraph, and summate the readability of the text you're giving your students. You tin can also utilise text-to-speech functions (available in many discussion processing programs) to enable text to be read aloud.
  4. Click the image for a peer buddy program success story
    Click the image for a peer buddy program success story

    Assign and set peer tutors. Information technology can exist hard for a general education teacher to work individually with children with disabilities while also meeting the needs of the whole class. To provide additional support, peers without disabilities can be taught how to provide extra help for their classmates. Peer tutoring non only provides increased practice and reinforcement for students with disabilities, simply also promotes stronger social skills for all students and encourages friendships.

  1. Help students stay on task with Countdown Strips. Many students, specially those with autism and ADHD, will find it easier to stay on chore if an activity has a articulate and observable endpoint. Use a Countdown Strip for them—a visual back up that allows students to count down how many times they must complete an activity or how many parts the action has. Countdown Strips are piece of cake to brand; they can be equally elementary equally a clothespin and a strip of paper printed with the numbers 0 to 10. Each fourth dimension an activity or a section of the activity is completed, the pupil moves the clothespin to the next number until the he or she reaches 0.
  1. Eliminate distractions to improve focus. Reducing the presence of inapplicable noises, people, or objects can assist students with disabilities focus on of import instructional cues. To assistance students maintain focus, position them then they're facing away from distractions and agree off on introducing items or equipment you won't be using until later. For instance, in a physical education class, balloons and cones gear up for a later activeness might be extremely distracting for some students. Avoid setting up equipment for activities beforehand, or go along the materials covered with a tarp until they're needed.
  1. fair is not always equal
    Click the image for a FREE Fair is Not Always Equal poster!

    Tell a "fair is non always equal" story. When you implement suggestions like the ones outlined in this postal service, some of your students might inquire questions like "if Jimmy gets actress time on the math test, why can't we?" Tell them a story to illustrate the why behind modifications and accommodations. For example, one teacher told a bright, engaging story about a female parent who had seven children, all of whom had different strengths and needs. Because the mom didn't want to be unfair to any of her children, all seven of them had to accept tap dancing lessons, join the swim team, use an inhaler for asthma, wear glasses, watch basketball, and read simply fiction books—no nonfiction immune! By the end of the story, the students were laughing about the absurdity of it all. To bulldoze the signal home, the teacher explained that supports and services are provided to run into the specific learning needs of students, whether that means assisting a student with a cleaved arm or accommodating a documented inability. Through the story and the teacher'south caption, the students began to understand the real meaning of "fairness"—and trust that their instructor would do a swell job meeting the needs of everyone in the class.

What are some favorite accommodations and modifications you've used? Tell us in the comments below!

Credits: Suggestions #i-6 from The Educator's Handbook for Constructive Inclusive Practices by Julie Causton; #7-xi from Modifying Schoolwork by Janney & Snell; #12-13 from Maximizing Effectiveness of Reading Comprehension Instruction in Various Classrooms past Berkeley & Barber, #fourteen-xvi from A Teacher'due south Guide to Including Students with Disabilities in General Physical Education, Fourth Edition, past Martin E. Block; #17 from The IEP Checklist by Winterman & Rosas, all from Brookes Publishing Co.

KEEP READING

10 Worst Modifications for Students with Disabilities (and 100+ Skillful Ones!)

Accommodations and Modifications: A How-To Q&A with Nicole Eredics of the Inclusive Course