|
Designing from the Ground Floor: Alternate Assessment on Alternate Achievement Standards
Part IV: Stepwise Process to Access Grade Level Content Standards and Curriculum: Trainer's Packet
As many educators struggle with how to effectively teach and
help students with significant cognitive disabilities progress in the general
curriculum, it may be beneficial to follow a stepwise process that keeps the
focus on learning. Four steps
included in a process described by Kearns,
Burdge, and Kleinert (Innovations, in press) is an effective process for
accessing the general curriculum. This
stepwise process provides broad concepts which offer educators a practical
approach to accessing the general curriculum and has been developed to be used
at a classroom level in planning for instructional units. As educators increasingly provide
students more meaningful access to the general curriculum to achieve grade
level content standards, more detail may be added to the steps to further refine
the process. This process may be
helpful to adapt for use at a systems level as well; however, it should be noted
that as written, it is primarily meant to guide instruction at an individual
student level.
This section deals primarily with the observation vertex of
the assessment triangle as the learning activities have been designed not only
to teach the construct(s) of the standard(s) but also to provide opportunities
for students to demonstrate their understanding and skill regarding the
standard through performances. These performances can result in assessment
evidence. A secondary connection to the cognition vertex may be made as the
student performances are directly connected to what they should know and be
able to do – the standard(s).
Four Steps to Access
- Identify or link to the appropriate standard(s)
- Define the outcome(s) of instruction
- Identify the instructional activities
- Target specific objectives from the IEP
[Adapted – Kearns, Burdge and Kleinert (in press)]
|
Step 1
- Identify or link to the appropriate content standard(s).
- State/District Standard
- Grade Level Standard(s)
- Determine what the standard is about
|
Advantages of Collaboration
- High expectations
- Access to the general curriculum
- Same content standards as same age students
- Multiple standards within instructional units
- Breadth of content standards
- Variety of settings
- Embed IEP and functional skills
- Learning of a shared culture
|
Activities
Introduction
Characteristics of adult learning reinforce the
necessity of providing ample opportunities for processing before
information can be successfully transferred into long term memory and
subsequently into the working memory. Because of this, we have provided several activities which will
facilitate this transfer for participants.
Throughout the packet, activities which allow training
participants to process information in small chunks are set aside in text
boxes. The activities are
developed to allow trainers to tailor the training to the training time
requirements and needs of the participants. In general, all a. activities are very short; b. activities take more time; c. activities take the most time but allow participants greater
opportunities to work through issues which, in the long run, will
facilitate the knowledge and skill transfer most effectively.
The activities can be implemented with a mix-and-match
approach. For instance, a
trainer might, considering training time and participant need, elect to
choose Activity 1.b, Activity 2.c, Activity 3.b, and Activity 4.a. rather than all b.
activities.
|
Information About PDF
