Supporting Students with Special Needs Instruction, Adaptions, and Support Module Notes:

Universal Desing for Learning

- Engagement: The “Why” of Learning – Creating a welcoming classroom that provides
motivation, interest, purpose and membership (Ex: Making math problems into license plate
problems, teach students how to interact with peers, have a positive relationship with your
student, have a way for the student to participate in the class)
o Ex: Offer choices, include special interests provide immediate informative feedback,
alternate new content with less difficult tasks, link content to prior knowledge, provide
options for self-regulation, offer sensory support and minimize distractions, allow self-
assessment and reflection, encourage inclusion and community, encourage collaboration
with other students.
- Representation: The “What” of Learning – presenting information and materials in a variety of
ways to support different learning styles. (Ex: Get students an accessible textbook or eBook,
using different materials for the individual needs of the students, give them other resources to
further explain things or enhance their learning)
o Ex: Provide materials that allow visualization and manipulation, illustrate through
multiple media, offer background knowledge, clarify vocabulary, highlight big ideas,
customize the display of information, offer alternatives for auditory or visual information,
promote understanding across languages, be aware of culture differences
- Expression and Action: The “How” of Learning – providing different ways for students to
participate and express what they know (how is the student going to share what they know). Ex:
Paring the assessment to what was actually taught and the way they learned, give a student a dry
erase board for students who are anxious to share in front of their peers, using alternative
communication, computers or tablets so they don’t have to write out long things if they need to.
o Provide multiple ways for students to show what they know, engage learners in activities
that encourage expression (written, verbal, artistic, media, performance), Ensure access to
communication devices and assistive technology, help students to set goals, follow
checklists, and monitor progress
Supporting teacher-planned instruction (communication between special ed teacher and general ed
teacher - lesson plans / putting IEP into practice)
- Get direction, ask questions, share ideas, and offer feedback.
Learning Matrix: helps to incorporate student IEP goals throughout the day.
Strategies to meet specific student needs:
- Initiation
o Provide verbal and visual directions
o Break the work into smaller chunks
o Fold paper in half and start there
- Planning
o Organizers
o Outlines or checklist of steps
o Daily schedules and familiar routines
o Study buddies
 - Attention and motivation
o Preferential seating
o Activities around interests and strengths
o Alternating the mode of response
o Interspersing less difficult tasks
o Increasing immediate feedback
o Using group activities after content has been present in lecture form
- Sensorimotor:
o Provide opportunities for movement
o Allow regulating behaviors that don’t strongly interfere with learning
o Use tactile materials and manipulatives
o Provide a range of sensory supports
o Offer deep pressure
- Memory and Structured thought
o Link content to prior knowledge
o List and define new vocabulary
o Prime (pre-teach ) upcoming content
o Highlight big ideas and key features
o Model thought by thinking out loud
o Simple games to practice concept
- Behavior and Transitions
o Say what you want the student to do
o Gently restate the rules
o Develop transition cues and routines

Adaptations: covers a wide range of supports that help to tailor instruction, compensate for disability, and
adjust the learning environment. The goal is to give all students an equal opportunity for education.
Adaptions are sometimes divided into accommodations and modifications
- Accommodations: supports that are provided to help students fully access the general education
curriculum, without changing instructional content or learning expectations.
o Focus on how a student learns
o Reduce or offset the effect of a student’s disability
o Accommodations do not change learning goals and objectives
 Ex: typing or dictating responses rather than writing them, Providing a checklist
to clarify instructions for an assignment, listening to a book on tape rather than
reading it, providing a pencil grip when writing.
- Modifications: are changes made to instruction and/or assessment that narrow, lower, or reduce
learning or assessment expectations.
o Modifications do change learning goals and objectives.
o The resulting product is not always equal to the student product without modification
 Ex: creating an outline or drawing pictures in place of writing an essay,
completing half of a work sheet instead of the whole worksheet, limiting content
and assignments to focus on key points and concepts, learning half of the
vocabulary words rather than the full list, grading on a different scale than peers
Make lesson connect to the real world for students with disabilities. Connect their learning to things that
they are interested in, for that specific day. Plan lessons around what students are interested in and
passionate about.

Planning Adaptations:
- Strengths and goals: Identify the student’s strengths and interests.
- Content: General and special education teachers determine what to teach in specific area,s
themes, study units and activities.
- Design: Design any needed accommodations and modifications to achieve learning outcomes.
o Ex: learning activities, teaching strategies, alternative ways to respond, physical supports,
small/large groups, modified materials, support strategies, similar activities when
necessary.
- Evaluate: Are the current adaptations helping to achieve learning outcomes?
Different forms of adaptations:
- Input: changes in the way instruction is delivered
- Output: changes in hwo the student can respond or demonstrate knowledge
- Time: changes in the time allowed for learning, completion, or testing
- Difficulty
- Level of Support
- Size: changes in the number of items the student is expected to complete
- Degree of participation
- Alternate goals: Changes in goals or expected outcomes while using the same material
Changing the presentations
- Whate does the material look like?
o Objects on manipulate, highlights or boxes around key information, print size, text size
bright or muted colors, graphic organizers, fewer questions or items per page
- How is the content made available to the student?
o Reading to the student, videos of picture-books, definitions of key vocabulary, teaching
in a way that links content to student interests, text-to-speech devices, audio recordings,
extra visuals to accompany textbook material, outlines and extra structure.
Sensory processing differences
- Over-responsive passive reaction: student may have high sensitivity to sensory inputs that others
tolerate, yet stay helplessly in the situation, becoming increasingly upset, anxious, or irritable
- Over-responsive active reaction: Student may actively avoid overwhelming sensory input. May
cover ears, avoid foods, pull away from others, or elope from loud, crowded places.
- Under-responsive passive reaction: Student may not notice their name being called, miss safety
cues, and may not respond to inputs in the environment that others notice
- Under-responsive active reaction: students may seek out sensory input: touching things, making
sounds, spinning, flapping hands, jumping, crashing into objects, and other strategies to obtain
what they don’t get form their body.
Sensory Supports
 - Auditory supports
- Visual supports
- Proprioceptive supports: extra input to the body that helps the brain improve control of the body’s
position, orientations, and movement. (ex: pressure, moving, resistance, pushing, etc.)
- Vestibular supports: provide input related to the sense of balance (ex: swinging, rocking, and
spinning)
- Tactile supports
- Homeostatic Supports: Homeostasis is the body’s regulation of its internal environment and
physical comfort, even when faced with external changes like temperature and weather (ex:
controlling temperature, fans, heathers, extra clothing on hand, regular sleep hygiene, advance
notice of expected changes in weather / barometric pressure)
Assistive Technology (AT)
- Any item, device, or related service used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional
capabilities necessary for the student to benefit from special education or enable their education
the the least restrictive environment.
o Includes communication devices, mobility devices, test-to-speech devise, and picture
exchange systems and software
o Also includes items that increase the student’s abilities to access information, respond, or
complete tasks even as low-tech as pencil grips and dry-erase boards.
o White boards can be used in many different ways and are especially useful for working
with students with special needs because of its wide varity of uses.
Let students choose how they want to communicate, even if it is their voice. Students need to always have
access to their communication device, don’t take away their device because it is their voice. Let educators
and staff use the device themselves to learn hout the device works so they know how to help the students
they work with.