Accommodations and Modifications

I teach a lot of co-caught classes, which means that I work very closely with a teacher from special education in my classroom in classes that have a high percentage of students with IEPs (Individualized Educational Plans).  Last year was my first year of experience with co-taught classes.  Of course, we are all aware that our students with IEPs have lots of accommodations listed for us.  But I was thrown for a loop the first time I had a student who was on modified curriculum for my class.  It was just one or two before I started co-teaching, but now I can have 4-5 within one class!  It is really overwhelming to figure out what modification means and how it applies to each student.

First of all, what is the difference between accommodations and modifications in the classroom?  Accommodations are supports that we give students to help them access the standard, guaranteed curriculum.  Modifications actually change that curriculum to make it more accessible to the student.  Another teacher came up with a great simple way to remember the difference; accommodations change the means, but modifications change the end.  If you are thinking about this in terms of UbD (Understanding by Design), you can imagine it in terms of stages, accommodations would not really affect stage 1 (knowledge and skills) and 2 (assessment) much, but a lot of stage 1 (teaching practices).  The test may look different, the content covered is the same.  Modifications would really be affecting stage 1 and 2.

Usually in my building, when I have a student on modified credit, I get handed a contract that often essentially says 'modifications at the teacher's discretion.'  It is really hard to tell what that should look like.  Historically, working with special education teachers and aides, that has meant changing tests to remove a couple of answer choices and weighting homework and test grades differently, and really just a lot of fiddling with grades.  All of this turns out to truly be more accommodating than modifying.

We were given resources for ideas for accommodations.  Accommodations can be for assignments, grading, text, test/exams, lectures, reinforcement, pacing, or environment.  But, let's be honest, accommodating isn't something that is super difficult for us as teachers.  It is the modification piece that is much more mystifying.  It was suggested that you start either with your standards or your assessment, whatever is easier.  And you want to go through and see where changes can be made.  You want to focus on what the students will need the most for their future goals, either academic or in life.  You also want to think about what they would be capable of when choosing material to make sure to cover with them.  There are some tools provided for planning on the SSD website under "cool tools."

When I went to a standards based grading workshop last summer, my thinking about teaching changed a bit.  While I am not totally ready to move all the way into a standards based grading model, the ideas behind it stuck with me.  Basically, my thinking is that a lot of standards can be lumped into a tiered model.  Learning targets should be tiered, with learning goals beginning at the entry level and going up from there.  If you have four tiers within a standard, you would probably teach through the top tier, but you would expect that students successfully accomplish maybe through the third tier, with the fourth as an extension.  If students need remediation, you would remediate to the tier you expect all students to master, and not waste precious time re-teaching at the top tier. When I started thinking that way and creating tiers within learning targets, it actually made the idea of modifying curriculum and tests much easier for me this past year.  The goals that you would expect a student on modified credit to get to would be maybe the second tier with the third tier being extension for them.

When thinking through the tiers, it is pretty easy with a skill.  In fact, the only standards that I fleshed out in this model last year were math skills that we cover in science.  To determine the tiers, I think through the process I teach the material.  I think, if I was helping a struggling student, where would I start?  That would be the first tier.  The next step would be the second tier and so on.  This made such a difference in how I felt about modification in my room and it made so much more sense than just grade adjustment.  I would structure an assessment so that the problems were chunked based on tier, which made it much easier to create a modified assessment.  All I would have to do is remove the tiers that I was not assessing a certain student on (or a learning target altogether, if necessary).

Something that was especially useful in this workshop actually was not related to modification really at all.  We were looking at some math assessments from Algebra, in terms of how they could be modified.  Algebra is the math class my freshman are taking while they are learning basic chemistry and physics from me.  Looking at this assessment and talking to a teacher that teaches the class was very enlightening.  She also showed me how to find the other assessments.  Just seeing the language that they use and the way that they assess some of the concepts that we also cover in physics was so helpful and will change the way I teach some of this material.  (Note to self:  I drive--teachers--math--alg 1--assess for 2015-2016--linear graphs)

Another reason this workshop was so awesome is that we saw the new modified curriculum contract (now called an learning plan, I think) that will be used.  Going to workshops really helps me stay up to date on what is going on around the district or in the world of education.  The new document includes areas to specify what the students post-secondary goals are, which accommodations have been tried but didn't necessarily work, and more details about the way the curriculum is to be modified.

There are a few reading/vocabulary protocols that were presented that I want to record here as well:

• Three A's:  on one card/post-it write one thing with which you agree, on another one thing with which you argue, and one thing to which you aspire--then they had us share and one person summarize the consensus of the group for the first one, then repeat for the second (different person summarize), and the third.  Then, each person writes an Aha; something that they realized or learned from someone else.
• Headbanz game variation:  have students line up and one student will be at the front of the room.  The student at the front faces the rest of the students and either you can project a word behind them or hold a word over their head.  The rest of the students give them a clue one word at a time (each student can only say one word).  At least three clues should be given before the guessing student makes a guess.  Once a student gets a word, the next student comes up and the process starts again.
• Check, !, ?:  When reading, put a check next to something you know or understand.  Put an exclamation point next to something that you feel is really important info.  Put a question next to something you need clarification or elaboration for.