Standards In Action

Classroom Practice for Students with Disabilities

Teachers around the nation struggle to provide their students, especially those with significant cognitive disabilities, meaningful access to grade level standards based curriculum. Over a 10 year period, a group of consultant teachers working around the country with states to design effective instruction for students with cognitive disabilities and design alternate assessments for these students have tested and fine tuned a 4 Step Process that teachers can effectively use to break down general education curriculum and standards in a way to individualize student instruction (Clayton, Burdge, Denham, Kleinert, &.Kearns, 2006). The process addresses:

Examining grade level standards taught in a content area;
Identifying student outcomes;
Identifying instructional activities and breaking general education curricular activities into teachable segments with supports; and
Targeting specific IEP objectives for instruction

What is Standards in Action?

Standards in Action is the key to individualizing instruction by differentiating the supports and assistive technology for individual students. SIA provides teaching ideas and resources and the true customization to ensure that your teaching is geared to meet the needs of your individual student. It is designed as an easy-to-understand and easy-to-use set of resources to teach grade level curriculum, referenced to the National Standards to students with a range of cognitive disabilities, including those with significant cognitive disabilities. We know that teaching grade level curriculum may be new to many teachers. Standards in Action is designed to show teaching and learning possibilities. We hope that Standards in Action will build your knowledge, skills and confidence so that you will soon be teaching your students with significant and mild disabilities grade level curriculum that is adapted to their individual learning needs. To assist you, we combine high quality, customized curriculum, and research based instruction products. One other unique feature of Standards in Action is that many of the activities produce student work that may be used as evidence of specific standards instruction and student progress in assessments.

Standards in Action is a set of resources including teaching units with lesson plans, suggestions for adaptations and supports to teach students with cognitive disabilities, teaching materials that are relevant to the units, a teacher’s guide with helpful hints, and suggestions on how to expand the units to teach grade level curriculum.

Each Standards in Action unit with lessons includes:

the standard to be taught, referenced to the National Standards
the student outcomes expected to be accomplished,
specific step-by-step directions to teach the lesson, and
suggested ways to collect end-of-unit products and formative assessments
Learning tools such as graphic organizers, worksheets, and assistive technology ideas.
Consumable worksheets for each activity and each step of the lesson with suggested symbols matched with academic concepts. These worksheets are individualized for different types of learners.
Adaptations, modifications and assistive technology ideas are included for each activity so that the units can be individualized to the student’s mode and ease of communication.

They are not meant to take the place of your district’s general education curriculum. Instead they are intended to augment your curriculum and show examples of how to access curriculum for students with disabilities who often challenge teacher’s ability to modify. We encourage you to use the process followed in Standards in Action to adapt materials when teaching materials that may already be used in your schools’ general education classes.

We have developed three unique versions of Standards in Action for the three types of students you are most likely to teach. When ordering we will provide you with guidance as to which version to order for your individual student.

The Green version is designed for students who use words and some picture symbols to communicate.
The Orange version is designed for students who use conventional gestures and concrete visual symbols – symbols that closely resemble the item they represent. These students are sometimes considered emerging symbolic.
The Blue version is for those students who have limited to no speech, and who may use unconventional gestures or cries to express themselves. A student’s communicative intent may often be unclear, even for a familiar listener. These students are sometimes considered pre- or nonsymbolic.

Standards in Action provides supports that reflect the concept of Universal Design for Learning as described by CAST with a) increased access to grade level content; b) ways to demonstrate what the student knows; and c) engaging materials to maintain interest in learning. Materials are developed to support the communication level of the student with the intent that the teacher can further personalize for specific individual needs. Questions right in the unit plans will guide your selection of further supports unique to your student and space to record those personalized needs.

References

Clayton, J., Burdge, M., Denham, A., Kleinert, H., & Kearns, J. (2006). A four-step process for accessing the general curriculum for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children, 38(5), 20-27.