Additional Supports for Learners with IEPs or Defined Language Needs

Learners engage in learning activities tailored to their unique profile of defined learning needs and preferences.

Tier I: This Look For is one of seven that represent Quality First Instruction for all learners.

WELL-DEVELOPED LEARNERS

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Understand how their strengths, styles, and patterns as a learner impact their ability to complete a task or learning goal

Evidence of Learner Behaviors

Use their known strengths to benefit their learning process (i.e. process in the manner most helpful to them, ask for clarification, use appropriate accommodations without prompting, etc.)
Articulate how they learn best and ways they struggle to learn and how their learning environment supports them in this

Questions to Ask Learners

In what ways do you feel you learn best? What are learning ways or styles you struggle with?
What strategies do you use to learn best?
What tools do you use to help you learn?
How are you supported if those tools and strategies aren't working?

Seek support and resources from others

Evidence of Learner Behaviors

Have a process to follow if they get stuck that does not involve the learning facilitator as step one

Questions to Ask Learners

What do you do when you need help?

Consider the demands of a learning target or task, evaluate their knowledge and skills, plan their approach, monitor their progress, and adjust their strategies as needed

Evidence of Learner Behaviors

Ask questions and seek clarification for any and all purposes in a task or learning experience (i.e. language, tools, processing, etc.)
Describe how they receive extra support in certain skills or tasks because of their learning needs or consideration of the task

Questions to Ask Learners

How do you plan for learning? When you are getting ready to accomplish a task, project, or a goal, walk me through the process you use.
What are some ways you get additional or extra support if you feel you need it?

THE RESEARCH SHOWS

Each learner has a unique learning profile. As a result, it is critical to have information on how they learn best as well as how they are unique in other ways. Customized and dynamic opportunities to access learning reach learners where they are. Learners are able to engage in a learning experience that includes multiple points of entry for individuals with varied modes of learning.

MINDSETS

When we consider every child’s unique profile, including their interests and how they best learn, we are able to design opportunities for learners that maximize their potential and deepen their interest in learning.

Educator Actions

Learning facilitators incorporate the fewest number of scaffolds needed for Learning facilitators to provide a variety of ways for learners to work toward learning outcomes that align with defined learner needs.

CSTPs: 1.4, 3.2, 3.5, 3.6, 4.5, 5.6

QUICK WIN

For English Learners, leverage the Big 5 district strategies, including targeting learners’ instructional proficiency levels, aligning instruction to the ELD standards, building meaningful interaction and using culturally-responsive practices.

For learners with IEPs, ensure the accommodations provided them are active parts of daily learning experiences, and they are offered opportunities to provide feedback on their accommodations and what is working for them in their learning.

LESSON-PLANNING AND DESIGN STRATEGIES

Provide multiple sources of information that vary in type (e.g., visual, written, audio for hearing impairments, dyslexia) (P)
Incorporate different types of learning activities (e.g., individual work, group work, computer-based activities, physical activities) that support learners with defined needs (P)
Organize content to increase access to academic tasks for English language and special education learners (e.g., graphic organizers, sentence frames, leveled/chunked texts) (P)
Offer English language learners explicit and direct instruction in language skills and repeated and purposeful opportunities to practice and apply the new skills (P/F)
Use a variety of research-based instructional strategies to support English language and special education learners’ academic needs (e.g., building background, comprehensible input, explicit teaching of skills) (P/F)
Provide learners with any special accommodations (e.g., headphones, ability to sit in the hall, quiet rooms) that support their abilities to engage in active discussion without noise levels disrupting learning (F)
Support all learners in developing an understanding of their own learning differences and needs (P/F)
Look out for and identify learners who may have particular learning needs (F)

P = planned F = facilitated spontaneously

RESOURCES

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