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Whole Class Instruction or small group instruction.
Teacher uses picture cards with sounds and words. Students are able to see, hear and repeat back sounds and words. The pictures help students connect the word to the image and sound.

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Letter and sounds correspondences (Phonics: Stage 2)

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1) Through paying attention to student groups discussions and calling on groups to present their answers.
2) Through asking impromptu questions
3) Through Class Discussion
4) Through Students Oral Responses
5) Exit Tickets
6) Grading is ultimately fluid. Mastery Learning Applies. Students who do not reach Mastery the first time shall be given other opportunities to improve.

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Teacher Directed Closed Shorts: A Fun Match Activity

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Teacher Directed Closed Shorts: A Fun Match Activity

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One-on_one or Small Group Instruction.
Sound and letters are paired to images. Words and sounds can be adapted to 1st grade.
Here a teacher defines the categories in advance of the sort and makes it clear on how to conduct the sort (Bear et al., 2016). The teacher isolates the beginning sound to be taught and makes a connection to the letter that represents it using key words. For example, “Shhhhhhoe, and Shhhhhell, do they start the same way?”

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Kindergarten phonics activities for reading: memory game

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Students listen read and recite words while being cued to the meaning of the word. They understand the meaning by doing the action that correlates to the word. A mixture of Direct Instruction, Guided Practice then Calling Out Individuals to answer and to assess.

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ELA.RF.K.2c

Common core State Standards

ELA: English Language Arts

RF: Reading Standards: Foundational Skills (K-5)

K: Kindergarten

2c:
Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds
(phonemes).

a. Recognize and produce rhyming words.

b. Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.

c. Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words.

d. Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes)
in three-phoneme (consonent-vowel-consonent, or CVC) words.* (This does
not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)

e. Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable
words to make new words.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

Thought starters

1. Notice the progression from whole group, to guided practice and then individual assessment. How does acting out words help with both vocabulary development and engagement?

2. How does this lesson balance between sounding out words and blending?

School Details

Fairmont Private Schools - Anaheim Hills Campus
5300 E La Palma Ave.
Anaheim Hills CA 92807

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Kindergarten teacher Heather Lopez works with her students on consonant-vowel-consonant (C-V-C) single-syllable words as they learn to read. Some students need to sound out some of the words while others are already able to blend the onset with the rime.

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Have students come up with words that begin with the consonants or blends provided. Then, practice the words by chanting and writing them. (Can also be modified for an on-the-back rhyming activity) (Cunningham, 2017, pg.95)

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"Making Words is a multilevel phonics and spelling activity in which students are given a certain number of letters and guided to manipulate these letters to make some words. Children discover letter–sound relationships and learn how to look for patterns in words. I need letter person c to come stand next to a-t." (Cunningham, 2017, pg.54)

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Working with Words: Making Words in First Grade

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Read Alouds are good for all students. It gives students the opportunity to hear how words are pronounced. Teachers can find books that target certain CVC or CVCC words/ blends.

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Group Learning

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Vocabulary Games - ESL - "Pass the Marker"

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How to teach English videos http://eslinsider.com/how-to-teach-english-videos/vocab-games Vocabulary Games - ESL - "Pass the Marker" _____________________________________________________ ESLinsider serves up fresh resources for ESL teachers: how-to videos, online TEFL courses, interviews with ESL teachers in Asia, ebooks and a blog. You can learn how to teach English with videos, find solutions to classroom problems, and get ideas for your lessons.

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Especially in First Grade, and depending on students exceptionalties, its important to give students basic life skills instruction. This can include the importance of supporting and encouraging classmates, or creating an environment in the classroom that supports ALL types of students.

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Theresa Tse explains how teaching life skills benefits her students both inside and outside the classroom. Theresa shares how she teachers her students to be citizens of the world in addition to teaching content knowledge and academic skills.

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Working with ELLs and students with Special Needs

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Working with ELLs and students with Special Needs

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Problem-Based Enhanced Language Learning (PBELL) through: Collaboration, Graphic organization of learning, and Sensory strategies.

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Many students in special education struggle with language. Those diagnosed with special needs who are also English language learners (ELLs) have specific, unique needs. These dually classified learners are identified with a disability and are eligible for both special education and English as a second language or bilingual services. As teachers, we are often underprepared to work with this population in our classrooms.

The U.S. Department of Education estimated in 2015 that 184,000 of the nation's 2.9 million students enrolled in programs for ELLs had disabilities. Only 63 percent of ELLs graduate from high school, compared to the national rate of 82 percent. The discrepancy is most likely even larger for students who are dually classified, though getting exact numbers is difficult. Providing these students with the support they may need in our classrooms is a real challenge for teachers.

Problem-Based Enhanced Language Learning

To help support these learners, a new instructional model called Problem-Based Enhanced Language Learning (PBELL) was developed by the iTeachELLs team at Arizona State University. I'm the project director of iTeachELLs, and we had heard from graduating teachers that they needed help-we were not fully preparing them to work with this population.

The PBELL model we developed combines elements of problem-based learning with the key principles of English language learning methods. PBELL is designed to raise student achievement through integration of instructional approaches in lessons that support acquisition of both content and language skills.

In PBELL experiences, a student utilizes language collaboratively in order to access prior knowledge, research new topics, brainstorm and discuss potential solutions, and present new findings to an audience. In a classroom using PBELL, all language is considered an asset in supporting rigorous learning opportunities.

A PBELL lesson has four basic components:

Meaningful problem development: Students work collaboratively to solve a meaningful problem.

Language and content in tandem: To help students master both instructional content and language, we must be intentional.

Assessment of content and language: We need to assess both the instructional content and the acquisition and use of language.

Specific support and strategies: Our lessons must include scaffolds and strategies that provide access to both the language and the content.

These lessons should be fun and student driven-involving students is key. There are plenty of free example lessons from experts in the field as well as teacher-created lessons available for use and adaptation on the iTeachELLs website. For a deeper look at these elements, take a look at the suite of short modules, complete with classroom footage.

Strategies for Working With Dually Classified Learners

Within PBELL lessons, teachers implement specific strategies to allow further access to content and provide strategic support on an individual basis.

Collaboration: Students are placed together in the inquiry process to support one another's learning. This can include small groups, pairs, or partners intentionally grouped together based on their primary language. Students may read and gather information together or pair up after the inquiry process to share the new learning they have discovered.

Graphic organization of learning: Charts, tables, or graphic organizers are used to help students understand new ideas and organize their new learning.

During the inquiry phase, for example, students may use a KWL (Know, Want to Know, Learn) graphic organizer to help process their new learning. They can brainstorm what they already know about a topic related to the meaningful problem, and then as a class they may form questions to represent what they want to know. These questions then drive the inquiry experience, and students complete the graphic organizer by noting the new learning they discover related to those questions.

Sensory strategies: Manipulatives, visuals, video, and real-world objects are used throughout the inquiry process to ensure that all students have access to new learning. Teachers can bring in real-world items to support student learning and understanding.

We know that teachers have heavy workloads and that adding new approaches is often time-consuming and challenging. If you don't have time to undertake a large PBELL project right now, it is possible to start small. We've found two basic components of lesson planning that can have immediate impact on student success: Ground learning in real-life, relevant experiences of the students, and recognize that language is a tool that needs to be specifically taught and modeled in all learning.

Starting with these small steps, we can help our dually classified learners make progress.

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Many students in special education struggle with language. Those diagnosed with special needs who are also English language learners (ELLs) have specific, unique needs. These dually classified learners are identified with a disability and are eligible for both special education and English as a second language or bilingual services.

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The Importance of Accommodating the Students with Special Needs

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The Importance of Accommodating the Students with Special Needs

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"....creating visual representations of concepts; using voice output devices, picture cards, adaptive equipment, braille materials, and 3D objects for our students with visual impairments; different types of equipment and technology for our students with physical limitations; and lots and lots of lesson preparation."

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A special education teacher shares insights on adapting the Common Core Essential Elements for students with multiple impairments.

I'm a special educator, serving some of the most severely cognitively and physically impaired students on the special education continuum. Most students in our severe multiple impairment (SXI) classrooms do not have the use of their hands or arms, and 95 percent are completely nonverbal. Many have impaired vision or hearing, are tube-fed, have tracheotomy tubes, or have seizures or complicated behaviors that interfere with learning. These disabilities affect less than 1 percent of the population.

We service our students in a center-based special education building. Six years ago, our work focused on tending to their complex medical needs, addressing behaviors, prioritizing life skills, and working toward independence. This was a lot to do, and we did it well. Our students had academic work, but it wasn't our primary focus.

As a center-based teacher, I was asked to participate in a committee at the county examining a new set of state standards, the Common Core Essential Elements. These were based on the Common Core and were designed for students with special needs in Michigan.

As these new academic standards were revealed to the committee, my colleagues in the room became upset. They pleaded with the presenter to give our kids credit for the things they can do. People said it would be impossible for our kids to meet the standards.

But what if we didn't assume that meeting the standards was impossible? What if our students with the most severe impairments were presented material similar to their grade-level peers?

Implementing the Common Core Essential Elements

We decided to use the Common Core Essential Elements as our road map, detailing the destination for our students; however, we knew the route to get there would be much different from that of their special education peers with mild or moderate impairments.

We began our journey by examining our philosophy, and made a decision to expose our students to the new standards and see what would happen. It was an important place to start.

Introducing academic content meant lots of adaptations-creating visual representations of concepts; using voice output devices, picture cards, adaptive equipment, braille materials, and 3D objects for our students with visual impairments; different types of equipment and technology for our students with physical limitations; and lots and lots of lesson preparation.

This transformation over the past six years was championed by our school principal, who created a school culture that made it safe for us to fail as long as we tried again.

We did not abandon the focus on self-care and independence, but worked on those skills as opportunities arose naturally throughout the day. We bought lots of books and built a school library, and our teachers dove in to adapting age-appropriate books. This included literary classics like To Kill A Mockingbird and Holes because every kid deserves to meet Scout Finch and Stanley Yelnats.

We invested time in our professional learning communities to work with one another. We studied the Four Blocks literacy program-which focuses on guided reading, self-selected reading, writing, and working with words. "I Can" statements were written in four levels of difficulty for each standard, which helped describe how our most severely impaired students interacted with the Common Core Essential Elements. We created lots of materials and increased direct instruction time.

Indications of Progress

Slowly we started to see changes. There were moments in classrooms that let us know we were headed in the right direction. This didn't necessarily mean mastery of material-it was more a matter of decreased levels of prompting needed to get students to engage on some level with instruction.

Later, the county brought in training on a writing curriculum for our students. Once again we heard that it would never work. But our teachers brought the curriculum back to the center and dove in. They began with the writing mini-lessons and picture topic boards, and adapted alphabet boards students would use to choose letters to form words.

A moment of success: Brandon, a student with severe multiple impairments, wrote a sentence using one of our adapted letter boards. He selected a picture of himself and wrote, "I am hansom." For every win like this we have another obstacle or a failed lesson, but we always try again.

The example of Brandon teaches us a lot of things, but my top two takeaways are that teaching in this population is a marathon-with milestones few and far between-and that if we act as if students can do something, they just might be able to.

As Martin Pistorius writes in Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body, "If someone does not expect or is not expected to achieve, then they never will." Our work shows that if we do expect someone to achieve, they may.

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High Expectations for Students With Multiple Impairments

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A special education teacher shares insights on adapting the Common Core Essential Elements for students with multiple impairments. I'm a special educator, serving some of the most severely cognitively and physically impaired students on the special education continuum.

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FOSTERING SELF-ADVOCACY AND SELF-DETERMINATION along with UDL

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FOSTERING SELF-ADVOCACY AND SELF-DETERMINATION along with UDL

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Should the individualized education program (IEP) be primarily a vehicle for legal compliance, or can it be a learning experience for the student, her educator, and her parents? Most students, parents, and educators would rather it be the latter, but it too often devolves into the former because of legal considerations or established norms or discomfort with talking about students with them present.

It's no surprise, then, that students with disabilities often struggle in postsecondary education, the workforce, and civic life when they must face important decision-making opportunities for the first time. Too many enter these opportunities with little to no experience of being engaged in actively planning and making decisions around issues affecting their learning and lives.

Research shows that students who practice self-advocacy skills (those skills associated with understanding one's rights and needs and communicating and acting on that understanding) and self-determination (the capacity to be the primary agent in one's learning and life) have improved educational and life outcomes when compared to those who don't. Thus, it is imperative that our education system help young people develop these skills and provide opportunities for them to effectively participate in their own education and civic life.

In our recent report on self-advocacy skills and self-determination in personalized learning, the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) points to actions that can flip the equation, putting the student at the center rather than the periphery of decision-making meetings (see our webinar on this topic). Students can become more involved participants-and eventually, leaders-in their IEP and transition meetings.

Families and communities can support student involvement and help students with disabilities engage in real-world learning opportunities where they can practice these skills, and educators can provide more explicit instruction for students to develop the skills associated with self-advocacy and self-determination. NCLD calls on policy makers to take a proactive role in incentivizing and supporting this type of learning.

Fostering Self-Advocacy and Self-Determination

NCLD's report highlights several key steps that open the door for these changes.

1. Make self-advocacy and self-determination critical priorities in education systems. We communicate and demonstrate which skills are valuable in our education system by prioritizing them throughout, such as by incorporating them into teacher preparation and assessments of learning and through associated measures of school performance such as chronic absenteeism.

There are a number of ways to go about this. Some states- like Maryland -may choose to take up more rigorous or longer duration capstone requirements, which have students apply skills and learning to the work of solving real-life problems. In other cases, educators and families may decide to make skills like goal setting, problem solving, and self-advocacy explicit goals in student IEPs.

Regardless of what level this happens in, if we deem these to be important skills, we need to abide by a long-standing and important principle: Measure what you treasure.

2. Ensure that personalized learning opportunities are designed to maximize the engagement of all students, regardless of disability status. Learning choices should be flexible and accessible for all, with a recognition that individuals' strengths and needs differ widely. This can help ensure that students are engaged and invested in learning and have a meaningful reason to show up.

One key means to achieve this is to pair a personalized learning effort with work based on Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL enables educators to design learning opportunities for students in ways that provide multiple means of engagement, representations of content, and ways to express knowledge.

Together, these options are aligned with what we have learned about the human brain and how individuals learn, and they optimize the following networks of the brain to maximize student learning: affective (which processes the why of learning), recognition (the what), and strategic (the how).

3. Provide students with tangible opportunities and experiences to practice self-advocacy skills and self-determination in their education. Students should be taught and encouraged to empower themselves by understanding their needs and rights, communicating them, solving problems, setting goals, and engaging in active reflection.

This can happen through multiple means, including hands-on learning opportunities-such as service learning and work-based learning-and also by more fully engaging students in meetings where decisions about their learning and lives are made.

This isn't an exhaustive list of the actions that can be taken. These steps can help create a new dynamic between adults and students, but NCLD knows these changes aren't easy. They require an investment of time, resources, and training; intentional actions; difficult conversations; and most of all, a mindset that all students can make active choices about their learning and lives. Yet taking these steps is essential to aligning the education we provide for our students and the demands of the world they will enter after school.

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Prioritizing Agency for Students With Disabilities

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Should the individualized education program (IEP) be primarily a vehicle for legal compliance, or can it be a learning experience for the student, her educator, and her parents? Most students, parents, and educators would rather it be the latter, but it too often devolves into the former because of legal considerations or established norms or discomfort with talking about students with them present.

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When teaching students with special needs (which can include students who need to be challenged and excel above others) its not so much about the activities you chose to implement, but what you do to accommodate a diverse population of students. Are you using multiple technologies, are students able to work together, do you boost students moral? UDL

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Math.A.REI.3

Common core State Standards

Math: Math

A: Algebra

REI: Reasoning with Equations and Inequalities

3:
Solve linear equations and inequalities in one variable, including
equations with coefficients represented by letters.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

Thought starters

1. How and why does Ms. Barchi identify which type of exit card a student completes?

2. Notice how Ms. Barchi quickly sorts the exit cards so she knows which students need reteaching. How does this strategy offer immediate feedback to students and differentiated support?

School Details

Elmont Memorial High School
555 Ridge Road
Elmont NY 11003

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Marie Barchi models an effective process of formative assessment with her Algebra I students. During the lesson, Ms. Barchi assesses student readiness as they work problems so she can identify the type of exit card appropriate for each student based on where they are at in learning how to solve inequalities.

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Students assess their conceptual understanding and receive different kinds of instructional support in guided groups. “A” students need to hear the lesson again because they are lost. “B” students get it but need some clarifying questions answered. “C” students got it, and can go work independently.