Making Sure the Curriculum is Accessible to All Students

Mark Holodick, Concord High School Principal
Beth Mineo and Marvin Williams, Delaware Assistive Technology Initiative
Lynne Robinson, Executive Director of Paws for People

Mark Hollodick, Concord High School principal, spoke about that fact educating ALL students is the primary role of everyone in the building. Mark said he was proud of Concord's Special Ed program and that this year it is serving students better than ever. However, the program continues to evolve and there is always room for improvement. This year at Concord they have two models for Special Ed. They have a Community Based program for some of the students. Everyone else is is included in the Regular Ed classrooms. There is no longer separate academic classes for Special Ed students - they attend the same classes as everyone else and get extra help as needed. This allowed all students to have access to all the great staff and facilities at the school.

Mark told the story of a class he observed where students were broken out into groups and each group was given a paper to read on the topic at hand. The student groups summarized their papers and reported back to the class as a whole. Later, after the class was over, Mark found out the groups had been created around reading levels the teacher had pulled from NWEA MAP reading scores. This allowed the teacher to provide each group with reading material at different levels. Each group got the same sophistication of core material but the students who had trouble reading got passages on a lower reading level so their reading level did not hinder their ability to join the discussion at the same level as the rest of the class. Concord is striving for a culture where staff are constantly looking for acknowledgement that students are learing and continually adjust teaching to meet the needs of the students.

Principal Holodick credited his forwarded thinking teachers, in particular his Special Ed dept, as well as support from District staff in helping the school move forward. Mark was pleased that Stetson and Associates came back over the Summer to help Concord create a well organized Master Schedule.

Beth Mineo and Marvin Williams from the Delaware Assistive Technology Initiative (DATI) spoke on Breaking Down the Barriers Posed by Print Disabilities -the presentation is posted on the BSNPTA website. Making educational material accessible to students accross a wide variety of media is part of the larger topic of Universal Design for Leaning. According to the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST):

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing curricula that enable all individuals to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. UDL provides rich supports for learning and reduces barriers to the curriculum while maintaining high achievement standards for all.

• Project Gutenberg is a respository of over 20,000 free books in both text and audio versions. Online links at the site claim to provide over 100,000 free books. Just as Joannes Gutenberg revolutionized accessibility and availability of books by mass producing them via the printing press, the Project Gutenberg web site is making books even more widely available through the internet. The titles on Project Gutenberg are most those already in the public domain. That means you can find all the "classics" but not Harry Potter or the latest Geography text book.
• The Recordings for the Blind and Dsylexic sells copyrighted material in various formas and special devices to play the material in audio format. This is a place you CAN get the latest Harry Potter book among many other titles. Yearly subscriptions start at $60 and special players start at $200. It is not free but may be a good option under some circumstances
• Kurzweil is a compay that produces sophisticated platers that for a computer that can help students listen to or every read along to digital text. Kurzweil is one of th only "accessible" accomodations allowed on the DSTP.
• Bookshare.org is another organization dedicated to making printed material more accessible.

• One child's stutter disappeared when he was reading to the dog.
• Another student was "too cool" to engage with the teacher or reading tutor but he was so excited to work with the dog that he even practiced at home to be prepared for follow up sessions.
• A young non-native English speaker the teacher thought couldn't read fluently jumped at the change to work with a dog. It turned it he was self-conscious about his accent and hesitated reading to the teachers or in front of the class. I front of the dog, he was much more fluent.

• BSNPTA Assistive Technology Forum Page
• Assistive Technology Links on the BSNPTA More Resources Page
• UDL articles from Cast.org
• National Center for Accessing the Curriculum (NCAC) publications
• UDL page from Dept of Ed's Office of Vocational and Adult Education
• SchwabLearning Technology Topic Page
• Universally Designed Assessments from the National Center on Educational Outcomes
• 4 paws for Ability