After the first post, you may be thinking that the Exeter Math Institute Workshop was terrible and that the instructors were awful. That’s not the case, at all. I got some really cool ideas to share with my gen ed Algebra co-teachers when school starts that I think will benefit students.

Naturally, my key focus is looking at ways to help students with disabilities access the general education curriculum. My focus is on asking myself, “How can I change this just a little to make it more straightforward/focused/easier to navigate?” Becky Cheatham, one of my colleagues from Shawnee Mission Northwest High School last year, is a SPED co-teacher in math classes, and her students do very well. She’s got a good grasp of the curriculum and how to modify and accommodate materials to support independent work. Becky and I had some productive idea sessions during lunch each day.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Kids often act out because they feel like they can’t be successful. Yes, this is sometimes an excuse. But sometimes it’s not. Our job is to ferret out the excuse-makers by providing every support we can to help address articulated need. Combine an academic deficit and a behavior disorder in the same brain, and failure to address the academic need will lead to nothing but more behavior problems. You can’t control the behavior, but you can control the environment. The academic work is a key component of the environment that gets overlooked alarmingly often.

If you are a gen ed teacher, the #1, most important thing you can do to help your co-teacher and your students who require modified/accommodated work is to get copies–preferably digital ones that can be altered–in advance of class. When I worked in KCK, we were supposed to turn in lesson plans a week in advance. I think that’s not always the most realistic, but I, personally, need to get materials for normal, daily lessons about 24 hours in advance if I have any hope of creating individual, targeted, appropriately-leveled versions of the work for kids. I promise, I’m not just telling you this to be a pain in the ass. You’ll be amazed by how much better class routines function and how much further your time and energy can go when everyone is given work that’s appropriately leveled and prepared for them. Your co-teacher will also be able to provide more hands-on help to ALL students, not just those with IEPs and 504s.

If you’re the SPED teacher doing the modifying, here are some ideas Becky and I tossed around this week for specific modifications and accommodations to use in math classes:

1. Use the co-teacher as a “foil” who can ask questions and make intentional mistakes while working problems so that the gen ed teacher can correct her. The co-teacher can raise her hand to ask “dumb” questions (you know, the ones a lot of kids have but refuse to ask in front of everyone). The gen ed teacher can then talk the co-teacher through working the problem, with the co-teacher intentionally making the most common errors while the gen ed teacher stop her to correct her.
2. Rather than working problems at the board, use the worksheet or screen for the actual assignment and project it up on the media screen with a document camera or projector. There are lots of kids who don’t connect the relationship between “I’m going to work #5 up here on the board” and “I should write down #5 on my own paper.” Using the exact medium can help with that.
3. If you’re using a physical manipulative such as a geoboard, use the clear ones. In the EMI workshop, we were given geoboards, rubber bands, and a work packet from which we were to translate patterns. For a kid who has difficulty looking back and forth from the pattern to the geoboard, a lot of instructional time could be lost just trying to figure out where to put the bands on the board. If the boards are clear, you can create real-size patterns that show where the bands go, print them out on cardstock, then have the kids place the cardstock under their boards so they’ll see exactly where the rubber bands are supposed to go.
4. If you’re wanting kids to graph, have copies that are ready to go with the right quadrant on them and the numbers pre-labeled for kids who have trouble setting up the paper so they don’t waste the entire class period labeling the x and y axis. You can also have them complete graphs at desmos.com.
5. Provide different tools and allow students to choose the ones that work best for them. For example, I’d never seen a bullseye compass before this week, but it was infinitely easier to set and use for me than a traditional one. I’ve seen calculators used in my school district at the high school level similar to this one that help students do complex calculations more simply. Could be a game-changer for a kid.
6. Watch your partnering. Becky looked at me like “DUH!” when I had this particular epiphany. Don’t put your “lowest” kid with your “highest” kid; the lower kid won’t have the chance to puzzle anything out. Put your “lowest” kid with a “middle-of-the-road” kid so there’s help…but not TOO much help.
7. Rather than reducing the NUMBER of problems, reduce the number of steps or the complexity. I see this a lot. A kid has problems in math, so the teacher has him do fewer problems. Sounds great, right? But it isn’t. Fewer problems that are still too complex means that the student just has fewer problems that he can’t do independently and that he gets less practice doing them. Instead, offer the same number of problems, but make them more accessible to the student. This means having many levels of accommodation/modification. For some kids, just getting a version of the work that has the formulas printed across the top may be just enough to let them work the problems on their own. For other kids, working the first step of the problem on the handout, then having them finish may be enough. For another student, it may be necessary to show almost ALL of the work and to leave boxes where they can do the simple calculations and write the answers–you may even have to highlight the box. This leads into my next suggestion…
8. Try to keep everybody in the room. Now, don’t get all pissed off. I’m not saying you should never take a small group of kids out for targeted instruction. Relax. But what I AM saying is that if this is the only go-to move you’ve got for getting kids through the work, you may want to look more at idea #7. If the work is at the appropriate level of difficulty (just challenging enough), both teachers can remain in the room with all of the students, which maximizes resources and keeps kids in the LRE.
9. Accommodate word problems with a read-aloud MP3. If a student has reading difficulties, she may struggle in math even without a specific learning disability related to math. I got into the habit of reading tests for English out loud onto MP3s last year for kids with read-aloud accommodations. Changed my life, saved my voice, and let kids work at their own pace on test day. I plan to bring this same tactic to word problems in Algebra this year, creating read-aloud MP3s for assignments that have a lot of word problems. MP3s at high school have some distinct advantages. Listening with earbuds looks more normative than having the teacher come over to read it out loud to you. You can back up the track and hear the problem as many times as you need it. You can access the accommodation even at home when you’re doing homework and I am gone from school for the day. I think it’ll help some of the kids.
10. Help kids find strategies for breaking apart work into logical order. Last year, I was helping out a kid in a Geometry class. When the teacher gave out the handout for calculating the area of different triangles, I taught the kid to go through, find all the right triangles first, and solve those. Then, to find the isosceles triangles and solve all of THEM. Then the equilateral triangles. You get the idea. Fewer mental transitions. If you’ve got a kid who can’t separate them out herself, you can use colored pencils to circle the numbers of each type that are the same in one color, then tell them to “solve all the orange problems first, using this formula.” See? Nuanced levels of support.

And this is just a place to start. If you are a math teacher or a math co-teacher, PLEASE post ideas that work in the comments. Jennifer Myers, this was your gig for a decade, so I’m depending on you! I need them!

#enraged2engaged #EBD #ASD #ODD #controltheenvironment #mathmodifications #exetermathinstitute