Accommodations Galore

Accommodations are huge in any classroom. Most, if not all of our students, need something accommodated at some point. In my opinion an accommodation is anything a student needs to access their grade level curriculum. The technical definition is that : Accommodations are supports and services provided to help a student access the general educationcurriculum and validly demonstrate learning.

For example, if you have a student who is struggling with adding or subtracting they may need a visual number line or manipulatives to access the math. This does not mean that they can’t do math, they just need something a little extra for the concept to click. We all need something a little extra to help us at some point or another.

This post is a broad overview of accommodations but throughout the months I will be going into great detail every accommodation (I refer to them as tools) that I use in the classroom. For now though I have an amazing website you can check out to learn about basically all of them by Tech for All Learners.

Anything and everything can be accommodated and scaffolded to help a student eventually be able to meet the grade level curriculum. At first accommodations can be extremely daunting because every student is different and it can seem like they all need a different tool. I have learned though to take it one day at a time and focus on the most important. The best part about making and providing these tools in the classroom is that once you have it, you always will. It may take a few years but after a while you will rarely have to make a new one. I’ll go into greater detail about how to make your tools last in a future post.

At the moment, visuals are a huge tool that I use in my classroom for my students. A lot of them are guides to remind the students about when to put a capital or what order their opinion writing should be in. If they are able to access their grade level curriculum with these tools that is awesome! Let’s face it in life I am always using a tool like a calculator or translator so why don’t we make them available for our students.

I hope this gave you some ideas and made you think of some tools/accommodations that your students may need in the classroom.

Happy Teaching :)