1. Determine the big idea. What is the point of the lesson? What do you want the students to take away from this lesson? A lot of times this is spelled out very clearly. It's also possible that we may want to narrow down the objective for our special education students, or break one objective into several lessons worth of objectives. Here's a few examples from Go Math.
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I usually group these 2 objectives together and combine the lessons during our beginning of the year review. |
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Most of my students have a really hard time grasping decomposition of numbers, so I usually break this objective into even smaller increments so they really get a lot of practice with decomposing. |
3. Provide additional practice. Most general education programs won't provide enough guided or independent practice for our students to really master the skill. Supplement the program and use other materials to provide additional practice opportunities. Just make sure they are actually practicing the same skill that you just taught and modeled. You can use the intervention or enrich parts of the program that you are teaching from to provide extra practice. I love using TpT resources to supplement! This is where I pull out file folders, task cards, games and iPad apps to provide a variety of practice. I also have the students work on the skill during math centers.
4. Assess. Look at the end of the unit/chapter assessment and determine how you can use it or find an alternative to assess the skills. It's ok to do a hands-on or verbal assessment if a written assessment is not a good option for your students. But it is important that you are assessing the objective that you determined in step 1. I will sometimes pick and choose questions and present them one at a time instead of giving the student the whole worksheet. Sometimes, I just take data on the independent practice that we do and don't actually use a real "assessment." As long as your data shows that the student understands and can perform the skill, you've assessed.
5. Move at a slower pace. I basically throw timelines out the window when using a general education curriculum. It's ok to spend more than 1 day on the lesson. Maybe you need more time to model and more guided practice before moving into independent practice. Here's a few more Go Math examples.
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The pacing chart from this chapter shows a total of 13 days to complete. But most of my groups can get through this chapter in 5-7 days. |
That being said, don't forget this. When we are teaching at instructional level, it's important to make sure that the student is still receiving instruction based on their current grade level standards. When I make my curriculum map at the beginning of the year, I align my Go Math K lessons to my 7th-8th grade essential elements. For example, I''ll teach the Kindergarten chapter on 2D and 3D shapes, and throw in extra practice on rotation, reflection and translation, which are my middle school geometry standards. That way I am making sure that the student has the basic fundamental understanding at their level and I'm extending their knowledge to higher level concepts through adapted standards. I also provide additional instruction on grade level standards through standards based centers because it's not always possible to align K level concepts to middle school standards.
Whew, that was a lengthy post but I hope it was helpful! I'll have more posts coming this summer about how I incorporate student IEP goals into these programs and how I collect data. Feel free to leave any questions below!
