Modeling
Modeling ensures that students have a clear understanding of the components of a skill or strategy. Modeling is used to represent what experts do and to make skills and strategies explicit. When teachers model, they provide a clear explanation and demonstrate how to complete a task, often using a think aloud. When working with students with disabilities, models should be frequent and detailed.
Why is modeling important for students with disabilities?
Issues with memory and information processing are particularly challenging for students with disabilities. If their brains are consumed by committing information to memory or recalling information, it means that they can less fluidly complete tasks. Modeling lessens the cognitive load by breaking skills or strategies into essential steps; students with disabilities benefit from someone demonstrating a skill successfully and from hearing the internal dialogue of someone who is proficient in that skill.
What could this look like?
- Using clear and concise language
- Naming, labeling, and breaking down procedural and/or conceptual skills and strategies
- Using think aloud to externalize their inner dialogue
- Using examples and non-examples to highlight what is critical for students to understand and to correct common misconceptions
Eliciting Student Responses
Special education teachers use a variety of verbal and nonverbal strategies to elicit student responses. They elicit student responses regularly and for one of two purposes: to check for student understanding and to engage students in constructing knowledge. By checking for understanding, teachers can gauge whether students are ready to move on to practicing a skill or strategy, or whether any content needs to be retaught. Teachers may also elicit responses to help students elaborate their thinking or make connections between critical concepts.
Why is eliciting responses important for students with disabilities?
For teachers of students with disabilities, questions plays a number of key roles in the classroom. When students have attention issues, frequent responses ensure that they maintain their engagement in instruction. Further, for the student who is not confident in their own expertise or who is overwhelmed by complex learning tasks, effective questioning may serve to scaffold students’ construction of knowledge.
What could this look like?
- Using strategies (such as response cards, think-pair-share, choral responses) that elicit thinking from more than one student at a time
- Drawing out student thinking through the use of visual, verbal, or gestural prompts
- Using many closed-ended questions to build to more cognitively-demanding questions
- Encouraging students to explain, justify, or elaborate on their or others’ responses
Providing Frequent and Targeted Practice Opportunities
Teachers provide practice opportunities to a) check for errors or misconceptions, b) build fluency and automaticity, and c) eventually allow students to work without support. These practice opportunities can be either guided or independent. Many students are not ready to practice independently after a teacher models a skill, so guided practice provides teachers with an opportunity to use prompts to gradually release responsibility to students. On the other hand, independent practice is a time for students to apply a new skill or strategy with minimal support. Throughout guided and independent practice, teachers frequently monitor students’ work for errors or misconceptions.
Why are practice opportunities important for students with disabilities?
After the initial round of modeling, many students are not ready to work independently. Students need to practice new material as they learn it. We also know that students with disabilities benefit from more practice. According to Rosenshine (2012), “Students need to spend additional time rephrasing, elaborating, and summarizing new material in order to store it in long-term memory.” This type of rehearsing helps students to retrieve information from their long-term memory quickly and helps them to develop fluency and automaticity with foundational skills. When students spend time becoming automatic in a skill, they have more time and space in their brains to devote to higher order skills such as comprehension and application.
What could this look like?
- Explicitly stating how the practice opportunities are related to the instructional target
- Adjusting the complexity of practice opportunities based on student responses
- Leading students through a skill or strategy using prompts and cues, such as mini-reminders
- Encouraging students to self-prompt
- Allowing students to complete independent practice and then providing specific feedback
Using Affirmative and Corrective Feedback
Teacher feedback helps students to understand two things. First, affirmative feedback tells students what they have done well and should continue doing. Second, corrective feedback tells students what they have done incorrectly, and how they can improve their work. To be effective, this feedback should be timely; during guided practice, it should be immediate. During independent practice, it should be delayed to allow for practice.
Why is feedback important for students with disabilities?
By offering feedback throughout guided and independent practice, teachers create additional learning opportunities for students. They quickly and explicitly teach students the expectations for high-quality work. They prevent students from inaccurately practicing skills and strategies — and therefore decrease future errors and ensure successful learning.
What could this look like?
- Providing corrective feedback to address specific errors and misconceptions (e.g., OK, James, 7 x 3 is 21 but 7 x 4 is 28. Let’s try it again… )
- Prompting students to re-apply a skill or strategy successfully following corrective feedback
- Providing affirmative feedback that highlights what a student did well(e.g., Yes, James, you are correct that 7 x 4 is 28. Good job! )
- Offering feedback in a timely and direct manner
Restructuring Tasks and Activities
Sometimes, students aren’t successful using skills or strategies the first time around. They might have misconceptions about new content or be focused on irrelevant or distracting details. When this happens, instead of continuing down the same instructional path, teachers restructure tasks and activities to efficiently and effectively help students succeed. Using student responses to drive their instructional decisions, teachers adjust tasks and activities so that students are consistently moving toward mastery of the planned instructional objective.
Why is restructuring important for students with disabilities?
In special education, teachers restructure tasks and questions in order to ensure that students experience high rates of success and make progress toward the planned instructional objective. This is different than in general education, where teachers might restructure tasks based on student interest or questions with the goal of extending learning.
What could this look like?
- Making a task more or less complex based on student responses
- Remodeling a skill or strategy when students do not demonstrate mastery
- Using instructional prompts, reminders, and cues when students are unsuccessful (e.g., saying, “OK, let’s look at our anchor chart and use it to guide our steps when solving this problem”)
- Reviewing previously learned materials and explicitly connecting the review to student errors, misconceptions, or exhibited needs
During a lesson on symmetry in her high school math class, Ms. Hutchins models how to find point symmetry and distinguish it from other types of symmetry. In this segment, we see her using enlarged playing cards to provide both examples and non-examples of point symmetry.
During a lesson on measuring physical objects, Ms. Ngyuen stops to model how to use a yardstick to measure the distance between the classroom desks. In this segment, we can see Ms. Ngyuen using clear and concise language to walk her students through the skill, breaking down the skill of measurement into small steps.
During a lesson on the “magic e” (or silent e), Ms. Boothe uses many strategies to elicit student responses. In this clip, she has her students respond verbally, by using their white boards, and by using songs and movements.
During a warm up focused on estimating using a number line, Ms. Salia elicits student responses. In this segment, we see her using questions to both check for understanding and to scaffold her students’ construction of knowledge.
After teaching his student to identify two dimensional shapes, Mr. Xin elicits responses to check for understanding. In this segment, he uses two simple approaches to assess his student’s progress.
As they prepare to read a new text, Ms. Mullen elicits responses to get her students engaged in the reading. In this segment, she primarily uses verbal questions to draw out her students’ prior knowledge about crows.
After her students have learned how to subtract two digit numbers on the number line, Ms. Salia engages them in several iterations of guided practice. In this segment, she completes two problems on the board with their input, ensuring they each have multiple opportunities to respond. This allows her to check for errors and determine the extent to which her students might need support.
Following a lesson on adding single digit numbers using manipulatives, Ms. A. sets aside time for guided practice. In this segment, we see her providing prompts to support the student in completing the problem accurately using manipulatives. Then, when the student struggles, we see her re-modeling how to use manipulatives to arrive at the correct answer.
After modeling how to match shapes of different sizes, Mr. Xin and his student practice together. During this practice opportunity, we see Mr. Xin offering enthusiastic and clear affirmative feedback, prompts, and cues to guide his student’s learning.
During a small group lesson, Ms. Melvin and her students are learning how to match multiplication sentences with accurate visual models. The students sort cards into examples and non-examples and Ms. Melvin reviews their answers with them, providing brief, concise feedback along the way.
Ms. Boothe and her students are reviewing their knowledge of “the magic e” or silent e. In this segment, we see her reviewing previously taught content with her students and skillfully eliciting responses from them, giving her an opportunity to provide feedback on their learning. Throughout this clip, she weaves in immediate, affirmative feedback to help students understand what they have done correctly.
In a one-on-one reading lesson, Mr. LaSalle and his student are using the text Green Eggs and Ham to practice making inferences about characters’ feelings using text and picture clues. As they read, he asks questions and provides his student with affirmative feedback.
During a one-on-one math lesson, Ms. Raines and her student are practicing computation using manipulatives. As a part of the lesson, they focus on the number zero. While her student practices, Ms. Raines uses affirmative and corrective feedback to help her stay on track.
In a one-on-one lesson with one of her young readers, we see Ms. Boothe stop and restructure when her student struggles with the difference between the words “me” and “my”.
In this lesson on r-controlled vowels, we see Ms. Fournier restructuring a task in response to a student’s misconceptions. In this segment, when her student incorrectly sorts the word “bear”, she uses a variety of strategies to make the misconception clear and help her student get back on track.
In this lesson on locating text evidence, we see Ms. Palazini restructure a task in response to her students’ needs. In this segment, when a student struggles to identify the season in which the story takes place, she uses a variety of strategies to help him arrive at the correct answer and then uses this to reteach critical content to the group.
As her students are practicing using the number line to draw models of multiplication, we see Ms. Melvin stop and restructure a task for a student who is struggling. We see Ms. Melvin guide a struggling students’ thinking by using questions, providing a clear model, offering additional practice opportunities, and using clear feedback.