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Support, Modifications, and Accommodations

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Center for Parent Information and Resources

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Supports, Modifications, and Accommodations for Students - Center for Parent Information and Resources

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Your Central Hub for Parent Centers Serving Families of Children With Disabilities

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Group Involvement/ Participation

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Call it "active learning," or "classroom participation" -- every teacher wants to know how to motivate students to particpate, and how to nurture more involved students and fewer apathetic ones. With a little extra planning, that is possible.

Below are four common reasons students don't participate and techniques to solve those problems and spice up your lessons.

Maybe it needs to be repetitive because the students don't really "get it," or maybe you're reviewing for a test. In any case, they're tuning out.

Solution #1: Assess their prior knowledge.

This could be as simple as asking students, "What do you know about (topic)?" and writing their responses on the board. You could also try a pre-test or a graphic organizer like a K-W-L chart . The goal is to find out what they already know (or think they know). You create buy-in for the students because they feel smart, and you can tailor your lesson to the information they don't know or don't remember correctly.

Solution #2: Try skills grouping.

Divide the class into groups based on what skills they need to practice - not forever, but for a class period or two, so they can focus on what they really need help with. So have a group that works on multiplying fractions, one on dividing fractions, and one on converting fractions to decimals. Make a group of "already got 100% on the test" kids and give them an extra credit activity or let them preview the next lesson. Then take time to move between the other groups and help them review. You'll have more students engaged in the lesson and they'll get specific, focused practice time.

Solution #3: Let them teach each other.

Especially good when reviewing before a test: divide the class into groups and give each group a topic. Set some guidelines and then let them teach each other. Encourage them to do interesting activities - write tests for each other, design review games, etc. - and evaluate each group on the accuracy of their content, the creativity of their approach, and how well they work together as a team. This is also a great way to discover how to motivate students.

This is really half the problem. The other half - especially with older students - is their fear of "looking stupid" by asking questions.

Solution #1: Allow anonymous questions.

Put out a "question box" where students can submit questions any time. Give each student an index card and ask them to write something about the reading assignment they did for homework. If they don't have a question, instruct them to write a comment on the reading. Collect the cards and use them to lead a class discussion. You'll easily recognize what parts of the reading confused a lot of students and they won't feel embarrassed.

Solution #2: Allow them to work together.

We can't do this all the time; individual students need to be assessed. Ask yourself: is the goal of this activity for them to learn the content, or for them to be assessed? If you want them to learn the content, why not let them work together? When they bring in their homework, do a quick survey for completeness, then put them in pairs and let them review the homework together. Encourage them to make changes if their partner's answer looks right. When they've finished, review as a class. Students may be less embarrassed to share a group's answer than their own and you may be able to complete the review more quickly.

Solution #3: Try a jigsaw approach.

No, we're not talking about puzzles or scary movies. If you're introducing new, difficult content, divide the class into groups and ask each group to master only one portion of it at a time. If, for example, you're teaching the American Revolution, have one group focus on the Continental Congress, one on Washington's Army, one on French support for the war, and so on.

Ask them to do a reading on their topic - to become the class "experts" on that subject. Then split up the class into new groups that include one "expert" on each topic. Ask these new groups to work together to write an essay or complete a worksheet that requires information about all the topics. They will teach each other in the process. Learn more about the Jigsaw Approach.

Problem: There's too much information to present in too short a time.

Sometimes there's no way around it: you simply have to get a lot of information out there in a short amount of time. So you opt for a lecture and just want your students to absorb the content. Instead, they fall asleep or stare out the window. What can you do?

Solution #1: Keep it "bite-sized."

Remember: research shows the average student's attention span is as long as her age. So even high school kids can only handle about 15 minutes. If you have a lot of information to convey, re-arrange your lesson plans so you never lecture for more than 10-15 minutes.

Break up large concepts into smaller sections - give a brief lecture, then do an activity to help it "sink in." Repeat this process over several days. You'll increase participation - and improve comprehension, too.

Solution #2: Keep them busy.

Don't allow students to stare into space while you talk. Give them something to stay connected. Try "fill in the blank" lecture notes. Delete key words and phrases in your lecture notes to create a "fill in the blank" worksheet. Then ask students to fill in the worksheet while you lecture. Another fun variation - lecture bingo .

Solution #3: Look into the future.

Before a lecture, give students a prediction activity. For example, tell them you will be lecturing on Shakespeare and ask them to predict what you will say, or give them a set of true/false statements and ask them to take their best guess.

As you lecture, instruct students to compare their guesses with what you actually say.

When the lecture is over, have a class discussion and evaluate how accurate student predictions were.

Problem: The lesson emphasizes the teacher, not the students.

Solution #1: Keep them busier than you are.

The traditional classroom of yesteryear had the teacher at the front of the room, droning on while students doze. Re-imagine your classroom as a place where students are busier than you are.

Keep the "sit still and let me talk to you" moments as brief as possible; get those kids working! Give them worksheets, activities, discussions, and projects. That doesn't mean you get to sit around -- you will still be busy, moving from student to student or group to group, correcting, evaluating, or providing feedback. But now everyone is busy and involved.

Homogeneous grouping? Heterogeneous grouping? Tracking? Forget the buzz words: having students work in groups is one of the best ways to increase student participation. Don't keep them in the same groups all the time -give them a chance to be the "smart kid" who can help someone one day and the kid who needs help the next.

Take a traditional worksheet or activity and give it to students in groups. Offer a reward to the group who finishes first with the most answers correct and watch them go! Note: it helps to have additional prizes available to keep groups motivated after the first group "wins." Even high school students enjoy these competitions.

Solution #3: Give them a voice and a choice.

Do students ever get a "say" in your classroom? Of course you need to make most decisions, but there must be some things you could leave up to them - whether it's what color chalk you use today or how long they practice a specific activity.

Kids tune out because they feel like their ideas don't matter. Show them their opinions are important and they'll pay better attention and speak up more in class.

There will always be some unreachable student who won't respond, even with these efforts. But if you give these a try, you may be presently surprised at the previously unreachable students who just might join in!

How do you encourage participation in your class? In what ways did you discover how to motivate students? Share in the comments section!

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top 12 ways to increase student participation

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Top 12 Ways to Increase Student Participation

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Call it "active learning," or "classroom participation" -- every teacher wants to know how to motivate students to particpate, and how to nurture more involved students and fewer apathetic ones. With a little extra planning, that is possible. Below are four common reasons students don't participate and techniques to solve those problems and spice up your lessons.

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Accountability

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Sharing through Morning Meetings

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Morning Meetings: Building Community in the Classroom

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Working Together with Colleagues

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Working Together/ Group Work

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by Jennifer Rita Nichols

Educators have learned much about the benefits of using projects for learning, and collaboration is easily recognized as an important skill for students to build. There are very few arguments against having students work together in class and on assignments.

However, the challenge facing many educators is not in wanting their students to work together, but in figuring out how to group students together in the most effective ways. We do not want to create groups that hinder the progress of any of our students!

This simple guide can help you the next time you are creating groups for an assignment or task in your classroom!

1) Do consider distance and access to online collaboration tools.
If you are assigning a larger project that requires teamwork outside of the classroom, it is important to group students in a manner that allows them to meet easily if needed. If all your students have access to one another online, then great! Usually, though, some may need to meet in person.

2) Do group students according to ability.
Depending on the assignment, you may really want to consider ability grouping. Studies have shown that in many cases, multi-level grouping of stronger and weaker students does not have the effects we would hope for. If the assignment doesn't offer different ability levels the chance to equally participate, then allowing stronger students to work together can push them further.

Also, the 'weaker' group can benefit from the teacher's support, and also can't rely on the stronger students for answers and to lead the project.

3) Do vary between teacher and student chosen groups.
It's an important learning experience for students to create their own working groups. You may want to start with smaller assignments and use them as teachable moments for what went right or wrong in each group. Will they choose to work with their friends? Yes. Should they be able to? Yes! We need to teach students to work effectively with friends, as friends can often offer the greatest distractions from productive work, but also the greatest fun in learning.

4) Do consider common interests.
As a teacher, we can often recognize common interests or skills in different students within our class. Often, those students don't even realize how much they have in common as they are each busy with their own circle of peers. Teacher groupings can provide the chance to keep building your class community by helping students build new relationships. Pair students with similar interests on a project and the results may surprise you - and them!

5) Do group students according to a skill that needs development.
If you have several students that need to work on a certain skill, you may want to group them for an assignment and create a focus on using that skill. Various skills can be used in similar assignments, so it is possible to form groups that are each struggling with a different skill while working on the assigned task. Some may need to work on effective communication, problem solving, organization, or time management; others may need to focus on comprehension or following instructions.

In mixed groupings, a student who is strong in an area will tend to take the lead. If the group is more equal in regard to a skill, they will need to work it out together.

6) Do create completely random groups.
It leaves a lot up to chance, but explaining to the class that their group or team will be chosen by drawing names is a great way to take it out of both the teacher's and students' hands. Make sure to explain ahead of the draw what behaviour is expected of them, and especially that bullying comments will not be tolerated. There is no reason that you can't acknowledge that we sometimes need to work with people we would not have chosen in life, and that it is a very important thing for them to learn how to do.

This method works best for smaller, more general assignments. It's effectiveness varies depending on your class dynamic, but is worth incorporating with other grouping strategies. In fact, once they are used to this, you will find that they complain less with this method than when groups are chosen on purpose.

7) Don't use the same grouping method every time.
Students need to learn to adapt to changes, and also have many different skills that they need to work on. If you always create student groups the same way, you are not considering your goals for the assignment or lesson. There are many ways to group students, and each way is effective for different reasons. Varying your methods will allow you and your students to get the most out of each group work assignment you present. Consider your goals first, then choose an appropriate grouping method to get the best results.

8) Don't avoid using group work.
Your students will never learn to effectively work in groups if they rarely do it. Collaboration is very important, and although students working in groups can be more chaotic than when they are alone at their desks, it is definitely worth doing. Even difficult classes can learn to work together - just don't give up! The more often they are exposed to collaboration, the easier it will become to manage. Your students will learn more from each other than they would ever learn by working on their own!

9) Don't use group work to solve personal conflicts.
Class assignments are not the time to force students to get along. If you have students that clash often or are having trouble in their relationship, do not pair them for an assignment. Personal conflicts should not get in the way of their academic success, don't set them up for failure! You also don't want to compromise the safety of any of your students, and sometimes that means avoiding certain pairings in groups.

You must use your judgement as a teacher and know what is ultimately best for your students. Never put any of your students in a bullying situation for the sake of group work. It's never worth it.

10) Don't be rigid or overcommitted.
Sometimes a group just isn't going to work. It happens. They may start off fine, but then break down and become ineffective. Occasionally, they even become too conflict-ridden to 'fix' in time to save the assignment. You need to be willing to accept this, and open to changing things. You may have spent a fair amount of time creating that perfect group for the project, but it's best to understand that these situations don't reflect on you as a teacher, but are a normal part of learning to work together.

Be open to modifying groups as needed. Split them up, merge them with others, or allow for individual work if the situation calls for it. If you do it right, you are even modelling something very important for your students-the ability to recognize when something needs to be changed and actively changing it.
Image attribution flickr user woodelywonderworks; 10 Dos & Don'ts For Group Work & Student Grouping New Teacher

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10 Dos and Don'ts For Group Work & Student Grouping

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by Jennifer Rita Nichols Educators have learned much about the benefits of using projects for learning, and collaboration is easily recognized as an important skill for students to build. There are very few arguments against having students work together in class and on assignments.

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Reciprocating through Conversation

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Autism Life Skills Videos -Studios of Awesomeness

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Support Strategies

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Supporting all Students

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When it comes to supporting all students in an inclusive classroom, you can never have too many practical tips in your toolbox. Today's post, adapted from by Carolyn Hughes & Erik Carter, gives you 14 helpful suggestions for meeting the needs of all learners-during the school day and at home. Recommended by real teachers, these strategies will help you strengthen inclusive practices and help families provide the best supports for their children.

Teachers surveyed by authors Hughes & Carter recommended the following instructional strategies for supporting students in inclusive classrooms:

Apply proven strategies. Investigate what works by reading about the latest research-based strategies for inclusive classrooms. (We've got a whole bookstore category for that. ) If you haven't already, try strategies like constant and progressive time delay, most-to-least or least-to-most prompting, and other direct instruction strategies backed by strong evidence of effectiveness. Always match the strategies you choose with the individual needs and strengths of your students.

Rethink grading. For students who have extensive support needs, traditional grading systems probably won't be the best way to show what they can do. Consider alternative grading approaches that more meaningfully capture the progress students with disabilities are making toward their academic goals. (For guidance on grading, see this excellent post from Nicole Eredics of the Inclusive Class blog: "10 Tips for Grading Students with Disabilities in the Inclusive Classroom.")

Outside the classroom, kids should have plenty of chances to practice new skills across a variety of settings, tasks, and people. Parents, extended family members, and other adults can keep these teacher-recommended strategies in mind when supporting students at home and in the community.

Use your child's interests as teaching tools. Does your child have a special fascination? Weaving these preferences and interests into skill instruction can help promote learning and engagement. (For specific ideas on using a child's fascinations as powerful learning aids, see by Paula Kluth & Patrick Schwarz.)

As an educator or parent, which of these strategies resonates with you most? Do you have another key principle of inclusion that guides you every day? Share it with us in the comments below!

For more than 500 research-based, teacher-tested strategies that help students with disabilities make a smooth transition to adulthood, check outRead an excerpt, see the reviews, and view the full table of contents.

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14 Ways to Support All Learners at School and Home

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When it comes to supporting all students in an inclusive classroom, you can never have too many practical tips in your toolbox. Today's post, adapted from by Carolyn Hughes & Erik Carter, gives you 14 helpful suggestions for meeting the needs of all learners-during the school day and at home.

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How to: Accountability

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Resources & Guidance from The Learning Accelerator

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We use technology from the Learning Commons to track anonymous visitor behavior on our website to ensure you have a great experience. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Opt In/Out.

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How do I develop student ownership and accountability in a station...

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Implementing a station rotation model requires intentional accountability systems to develop student ownership and ensure student success. This guide will go through strategies for developing student ownership through choice, habits, and student data.

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Group Involvement/ Group Work

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Implementing Group Work in the Classroom | Centre for Teaching Excellence

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Group work can be an effective method to motivate students, encourage active learning, and develop key critical-thinking, communication, and decision-making sk

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Accountability

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Graduation may be the culmination of many years of academic work, but in the grand scheme of students' lifetimes, it's just the beginning. Students will need to master much more than core academic subjects to thrive in college and career.

Schools are exploring ways to cultivate highly sought after "soft skills" students can put to good use in whichever career path they choose (think time management, problem-solving, self-control, grit, productive struggle, to name a few). Encourage students to polish their self-management skills with these four opportunities for autonomy.

When districts shift to a positive attendance system, students actively punch in to their class instead of being counted by a teacher-whether they use a barcode, a PIN, or a biometric equivalent is up to the district. Teachers spend less time on attendance administration, and students must take responsibility for themselves or risk being marked absent or tardy.

Schools are extending this method to the main office using automated kiosks to cut down on time spent manually writing out tardy slips. Instead, students use a kiosk to punch in if they arrive late and get a printed slip to use as a hall pass.

Positive attendance helps students learn effective time management. And there's an added layer of safety-positive attendance helps keep track of where each student is in the event of an evacuation or drill.

Breaking out of the rigid structure of traditional scheduling adds opportunities to practice accountability. Methods like flex mod scheduling, which breaks the day into short 15-30 minute modules, offer flexibility and free up time for enrichment. Students may have very unique schedules which shift daily, challenging their time-management skills. At the same time, they may also be able to take an additional exciting elective or fit in some tutoring or self-study.

These rewards demand students improve working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control-all components of executive functioning. The opportunities flexible scheduling offers can be motivational since students have more time to pursue interesting subjects and take ownership of their learning paths.

It's a common-enough scenario in the business world today: Two similarly-qualified candidates apply for a competitive job. Their resumes are similar, and both appear to have the necessary skills to excel in the position. One leans heavily on credentials and experience, while the other leads with an online portfolio packed with evidence of professional achievements and talents. Who is more likely to move on in the process?

In a world where everyone has credentials, the professional portfolio has emerged as a differentiator. It makes sense: Rather than sift through buzzwords or work to pull out relevant examples in interviews, hiring managers prefer an up-front look at what their candidates can do and have done, not vague generalizations about what they might be able to do if given the position. Students who are eyeing entry-level positions can lean on schoolwork to make up for professional experience if they keep a curated portfolio on hand. Platforms such as Badgr, LRNG, or credly can facilitate this.

Beginning with early childhood education, digital badging helps lay the groundwork for meaningful representation of work completed. At the junction of gamification and incentivization, digital badges give kids proof they "leveled-up." It's a way for students to show their mastery instead of listing achievements with a few hasty details.

As students grow, they can add artifacts of work, research, writing, and more. Some may find value in showing the different steps they took to create the projects they showcase as well, providing evidence of productive struggle. The key will be pruning and curating portfolios along the way to produce a truly stellar record of achievements future employers can appreciate at a glance.

If district leaders want to bridge the gap between schools and parents, why not start with the person connecting them-the student? Instead of leaving kids out of conferences, keep students involved in these important discussions.

Student-led conferences connect kids' core beings-who they are at home-with the important work of learning they do at school. Rather than being talked about as a third party by authority figures, then finding out what was discussed later, students may shine if they're given the chance to invite parents and navigate the discussion.

Those aforementioned portfolios can offer a great guide for conversations at conferences, particularly if students have captured details of their learning journey or have a budding career in mind. Giving kids an audience and a platform to discuss their work gives them a new source of motivation and a deeper layer of meaning to learning.

When districts create academically challenging environments, students can rise to the occasion and develop invaluable skills. Responsibility, time-management, motivation, and other self-management skills won't just get kids a higher GPA-they'll help students grow into successful, productive adults after graduation.

Erin Werra is a writer at and . She spent sixteen+ years learning, then went on to scrutinize the inner workings of practice, learning data, and edtech in K12 schools. Follow her on Twitter at Advancing K12 .
Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update . This post includes mentions of a Getting Smart partner. For a full list of partners, affiliate organizations and all other disclosures, please see our Partner page

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4 Ways to Promote Student Accountability | Getting Smart

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Graduation may be the culmination of many years of academic work, but in the grand scheme of students' lifetimes, it's just the beginning. Students will need to master much more than core academic subjects to thrive in college and career.

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Working Together/ Management

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Understanding Three Key Classroom Management Theories

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Spread the loveBy Tricia Hussung How teachers manage their classrooms is an important part of achieving an effective learning environment. Educators know that all students learn differently, and choosing the right instructional style can mitigate behavioral issues and make good instruction possible.

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Group Involvement/ Collaboration

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Use these five best practices to help your students build a valuable 21st-century skill.

iStock.com/Christopher Futcher

Most of us who teach believe in the power of collaboration and frequently engage our students in collaborative activities. But how many times have we put students in groups only to watch them interact with their laptops instead of each other? Or pursue their own individual goals instead of consult with one another? Or complain about a lazy teammate?

Promoting real collaboration is hard to do well-and it doesn't just happen on its own. If we want real collaboration, we need to intentionally design it as part of our learning activity. These are five strategies to encourage effective collaboration.

Create Learning Activities That Are Complex

Students need a reason to collaborate. If the assignment is too simple, they can more easily do it alone. At most, they may check in with each other or interact in superficial ways. The real reason to collaborate is because the task is complex-it is too difficult and has too many pieces to complete alone.

Complex activities are challenging, engaging, stimulating, and multilayered. Complex activities require "positive interdependence" (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 2008), a situation in which attaining the goal, completing the task, being successful, and getting a good grade require that the team work together and share knowledge.

One way to do this is through rigorous projects that require students to identify a problem (for example, balancing population growth in their city with protection of existing green spaces) and agree-through research, discussion, debate, and time to develop their ideas-on a solution which they must then propose together.

Prepare Students to Be Part of a Team

Help students understand the benefits of collaboration and what successful collaboration looks like.

Guide students through the stages of team building (forming, storming, norming, and performing).

Give students time and opportunities within the activity to develop leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management skills.

Establish expectations and norms for working together.

Design, or have students design, protocols for handling conflict disagreement so they can resolve issues within their teams.

Teach students active listening skills.

Collaborative groups can't be assigned-they have to be built and nurtured. Students often need to learn how to work effectively with others and as part of a team. We have to help students understand the what, why, and how of collaboration. We can do this in several ways:

Minimize Opportunities for Free Riding

Create small groups of no more than four or five people. When there is less room to hide, nonparticipation is more difficult.

Ensure a high degree of individual accountability (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 2008) by assessing students both individually and as a group. For example, at the end of the day give students an individual quiz based on the intended outcome of their collaborative activity.

Design meaningful team roles that relate to the content and to the task. Roles like time keeper are episodic and don't intellectually engage students in the content, and this can encourage free riding. In contrast, more meaningful roles such as manager, monitor, and leaders for each subtask of the activity give students ownership in the process and allow the teacher to assess students based on successful completion of these roles.

Have students evaluate their own participation and effort and that of each team member and triangulate those assessments with your own

When students complain about collaborative groups, it often has to do with the free riding of one member who lets others do all the work and then benefits from the group grade. We can eliminate free riding in a number of ways:

Build in Many Opportunities for Discussion and Consensus

Many group projects are based on efficiency, dividing labor to create a product in the most effective way possible. This focus on the product means that we often ignore the process of collaboration. Rich discussions that connect students with the experiences of others, that engage them deeply in a shared intellectual experience, and that promote coming to consensus are essential to collaboration.

For instance, students can come to consensus around a solution or decision where they must defend or propose a common vision or develop a set of beliefs or principles. This focus on discussion and consensus builds both academic and social skills-students learn to defend their ideas through evidence and analytical reasoning, to negotiate meaning, and to argue constructively.

Focus on Strengthening and Stretching Expertise

The challenge of designing good collaborative activities is ensuring that all students, even those who struggle, play an important role. Collaboration should not just strengthen students' existing skills but ensure that their interactions stretch existing knowledge and expand one another's expertise. If, for example, a student is much stronger in one skill than her peers in her group, she can teach others and her grade can be contingent upon how much her peers learn.

In collaborative activities, we want to ensure that students don't just occupy the same physical space but that they share an intellectual space-that they learn more, do more, and experience more together than they would alone. As teachers, we can promote real collaboration by shifting our role from instructor to coach-promoting team autonomy, checking in on students and providing instant feedback, and helping them increasingly learn to work together productively to attain a common goal.

Reference:

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R., & Holubec, E. (2008). Cooperation in the Classroom.

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5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration

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Use these five best practices to help your students build a valuable 21st-century skill.

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Responsibility in Class