FREE Training: Accommodations & Modifications

 

 

Slide 1: Accommodations and Modifications: A Framework for Access

Hello, and welcome to our training Accommodations and Modifications: A Framework for Access.

My name is Maureen Nevers, and I am presenting this training on behalf of the Vermont I-Team.

The video shows a standard head shot of a woman with fair skin, long brown hair and glasses.

In our logo five stylized, colorful human figures (yellow, green, dark green, orange, and blue) are arranged in a circle with their arms raised. To the right, the text reads “Vermont I-Team” in large bold green and blue letters, with the tagline “Interdisciplinary Support for Inclusion” in smaller green font below it.

Slide 2: Contributors

Let me introduce you to our contributors. This training resource was created collaboratively by the following members of the Vermont I-Team, and the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College.

Catherine Armani-Munn is an occupational therapy consultant. Helene Gallagher is an educational consultant. Tammy Myers is an educational consultant, and I am Maureen Nevers a communication consultant.

Slide 3: Learning Outcomes

We have three learning outcomes for participants of this training. Number one, to identify three parts of the access framework. Number two, to identify one primary feature of accommodations. And number three, to identify one limitation of modifications. Let’s look at our plan for meeting those outcomes.

Slide 4: Agenda

Here is our agenda for the training divided into four parts. The first section is an introduction to a three-part curriculum access process called the A-B-C framework. We then go into more detail about the framework in section 2, and then section 3 will address key concepts related to accommodations and modifications. And in section 4 will wrap up with next steps

Slide 5: Training Resources on Website

Training Resources are available on our website at: go.uvm.edu/i-team

We want you to be able to participate in this training in the way that works best for you. On our website we have the materials we have collected to go along with this training including:

Captioned video

Video transcript

PowerPoint slides

Training handouts

External resources

Feel free to pause this video and access any of these resources if you’d like to during the presentation.  We will reference them during the training as well and you can choose to access them at that time or at any point after the presentation

Slide 6: Introduction

Introducing our first section. In this section we’re going to do a quick overview of the topics.

In our introductory section we will cover challenges, IEP connections. Then we move into the next section which is A-B-C framework, A-B-C steps and then some real life applications. Then our key concept ideas of accommodations and modifications will be the third section. Then we’ll go into some resources and next step ideas.

Those are more specific topics to go with our sections.  Let’s jump into some challenges.

Slide 7: Understanding Our Challenges

Challenges let’s let’s talk a little bit about what’s motivating this conversation about accommodations and modifications. Every year the I-Team works with hundreds of school teams who support students with the most complex needs. And we’re often actively involved in the IEP process.  So the topic of supports always seems to attract a lot of time and energy.

These are some of the challenges that we see and hear about that you might relate to.

The first one is simply difference between accommodations and modifications and understanding that in a way that can be easily applied for quick decision making. So not needing to consult a definition but something that’s practical and kind of hands on, easily functional let’s say.

Also understanding how all of the IEP parts work together. Particularly to support the accommodations and modifications. There’s a general sense of that these are our supports that they meet the needs but what’s the relationship to those and say the the goals? Or to the personnel supports? Or other other offerings for supports? Sometimes it can be a little bit unclear. Not only again which do you choose, accommodation or modification, but then what’s the relationship to the instruction and to the goals and other parts of the IEP.

Sometimes having a logical process for connecting the accommodations to the student, having a systematic way of determining how you get from present levels over to the accommodations. And again in the interim you’ve passed over to the goals. When do you stop at the goals? When do you continue on to the accommodations? Having that process and particularly for our students with multiple needs there’s lots to consider around the present levels. Los of needs to address> So we go through the process frequently and not having a good flowing system can make the whole thing very challenging.

Then the last part may be the most I don’t know obvious or significant is managing the content once it’s generated. So once you have those lists of accommodations and modifications on the paper now you have to push them out into the students program. And into the related service providers, into the general educator, and all the folks that are going to help support that program to be implemented. And they’re going to be measured through the using the goals and there’s so many different connection points that I think it’s easy for this to become unwieldy or for it to be just on autopilot, if you will.

So you know those are some of the challenges that we see certainly there are others but one of the benefits that we’ve had in working with the folks in the field is that they’ve helped us to develop the framework that we’re going to talk about today, the A-B-C framework. Because that’s helped us to address some of these issues.  So let’s learn a little bit more about that

Slide 8: Bridging the Gap

Oh, but first I want to share this image with you of a process that I call Bridging the Gap. It’s been a helpful way for me to visualize the process of creating access to learning.  I thought I would share it with you.

The graphic shows this large hole in the middle with the general education education curriculum on the left side side and the student on the right side and inside of the hole, we see the word barrier written multiple times representing the barriers that exist between the student with disabilities and the curriculum.

I feel like this is what it’s like when we have identified a bunch of needs and we don’t have solutions.

But when we have the time to look at the barriers and to be thoughtful about addressing them, then we have created a bridge. [visual image of a bridge appears over the hole, connecting the land on either side].

We formed a connection between between the student and the curriculum. We may not have resolved the barriers or filled in the hole, but we have found a way to connect the student to the curriculum while we continue to address those barriers and make that distance between them hopefully a little bit shorter.

Slide 9: IEP in Simple Steps

1. Let’s talk about the A-B-C framework. We’re going to How-To instructions. We’re going to have some examples and we’re going to have some application notes. Give you a little bit more guidance on this process.

Slide 10: A-B-C Framework in Simple Steps

Here’s the A-B-C framework and simple steps. In that format we have a curriculum activity and a student profile that we gathered together. The plan and the profile are compared and mismatches are identified. Appropriate solutions are identified to resolve the mismatches and then a simple plan is created. Throughout this conversation today, I hope you can see the connection between the framework and the IEP because that’s sort of a very important element of the framework is how strongly it relates to the IEP.

Slide 11: A-B-C Framework

1. Let’s talk about the A-B-C framework. We’re going to How-To instructions. We’re going to have some examples and we’re going to have some application notes. Give you a little bit more guidance on this process.

Slide 12: A-B-C Framework Features

Before we get into the guidance just a couple of big picture pieces about the framework that I think might help to give you a context I guess.

When we were planning for this training, we had to really put some thought into what the content would be that would be most useful.  We did end up choosing as our primary focus, the A-B-C Framework and in part because it’s simple but powerful and t is a way of identifying accommodations and modifications and connecting the student to the curriculum.

We wanted to share something was that was solution oriented that was easy to learn and that could expand or contract, depending on the resources that you had. The hope is that today you’ll hear and see enough to be able to give this process a try and then you can judge for yourself whether you think it’s something that’s going to help address the challenges that you have.

A couple of facts about the framework that that might be useful. You can see the activity-barrier-change at the bottom of the screen that’s your ABC.  As I mentioned in the last slide, the framework is derived from the IEP.  it will always be consistent with how the IEP works, and it will promote processes that mirror the IEP and if you are familiar with the IEP, you should understand this vice versa.  They complement each other at all turns.

Second the framework uses a single simple format. It’s clear, it’s concise. There are no choices or decision decisions it’s not a special version or general aversion. There’s just one chart and it’s for all users and all applications.

Third the framework is very flexible. It can be used with any grade any subject. Any topic any team members. Maybe the most powerful feature is the range in the level of detail that it allows.  ou can use it for a very basic content like we’re probably going to do today and then you can expand it to be really complex very complex information and processes.

Slide 13: A-B-C Chart Resource

Just as a quick reminder. We talked about the handouts that are available.

This one in particular is the A-B-C chart resource and that is the document that gives instructions on the framework that we’re going to talk about now. It also gives you a blank chart the chart that you see on the screen here the screenshot it has the three columns.

This is sort of more typical of what I use than what you’ll see on the screen what you’ll see on the screen is easier to read, but when I’m writing, I like to use like a word document with a table inserted.  that I can have a lot of room to write lots of stuff down. Certainly the format is up to you but just reminding you that that is located on our website

Slide 14: Examples of A-B-C Resource

As well as the examples of the A-B-C resource that is also on the website. This one is a little bit of a labor of love it [laugh].

It has examples from five different students, and I give you a little description of the student for a context and and then I give you the chart that one of the charts at least that I had used with their team. using the A-B-C framework.  Know that I did not make any changes to the chart other than to remove the students identifiers.

Everything else is the same .  Good, bad or indifferent, it is the exactly as I would use it in the field.  Hopefully you appreciate the fact that they’re real models and they look like what they would look like for you or you know in the field and I hope that they inspire you to jump in and just try it with what you’ve got, where you are.

Slide 15: How-To Instructions

1. How-to instructions for our A-B-C framework. We’re going to focus on using the framework to create small access plans for specific activities right.

Using simple examples and individual activities for our content is going to make it a little easier for you to understand and for you to try it. Along with that I’m going to emphasize some of the accommodations more than the modifications on the support side.

What I’m trying to do is to keep the curriculum as intact as possible and certainly once we get into modifications it’s a little little bit more complex.  I’m just going to point out that I am hoping to use more examples of accommodations than modifications, which is what we hope to do anyway right that’s something we would hope to promote anyway.

Slide 16: A-B-C framework with prompts

A-B-C framework with prompts here, we are our first look at the three-part graphic organizer with our prompt questions.

The first block there is labeled Activity and that reads what is the curriculum activity? The second block is labeled barrier and that reads “what is preventing the students access?” and then the third block is labeled change and that says “what will make the activity accessible?”.  Pretty straightforward questions

Slide 17: A-B-C Read Aloud Example.

Here’s a pretty basic example. It’s a read aloud example.

I’ll have a couple of examples in a few slides, and I’ll go into detail about the content of those. Here I’m just going to show you the framework itself in the format.

I won’t get into the specifics of the content but looking at the first box under activity teacher read aloud students listen at desks, right summary and then under barrier mechanics of writing and vocabulary and then under change, it says word, bank, and speech to text.

I know you don’t have the background again, but hopefully you can find it beneficial to just see this is a typical version of what framework might look like. Let’s see moving on

 

Slide 18: A if For Activity

How To Instructions

Slide 19: Activity Steps

Activity steps. The outcome for this step is that you want to have identified the context that you want to make accessible for the student, and you want to have identified enough of the specifics about that that you can easily see if there are barriers for the student in the next step.

Select your target activity from the class schedule.  We’re definitely promoting the inclusive activities, so we want to pick something that’s happening in the classroom, with peers. You can look at the schedule. Lots of times when we work with teams they have an idea of particular activities that they would like to make more accessible for a particular student. We can target that, whatever works for you.

You want to do sort of a little mini task analysis. I don’t know if that’s frightening word or not, but we want to breakdown the activity into its component parts. Then we can see which ones are accessible and which ones are not.

Think about specific actions what what skills or abilities are the kids using? What is some of the materials? And as you’re doing that try and just be really brief like bulleted forms. You definitely don’t want to go into a narrative form that is just not sustainable.  Do a quick description of that activity.

At this point don’t don’t do any adaptations to that. Folks often want to share like oh this is how the student participates or this is how we would adapt it for them and we do want that but not not at this step. This step we need like a clean picture of what this looks like for all students.

We’ll just stick with that specific one and then the recording of the academic target.  that is that’s going to be a theme throughout.  As we go through, you’ll see if we are making changes to the academic targets, that is what is going to be our modifications.

We’re going to start now looking for are we going to make in addition to the accommodations that we’re going to look at it step two? Are we going to need to make some modifications?  Know that we have to look at what are the academic targets?  This is where having the general teacher and the curriculum present will be helpful. Basically what’s the non-negotiable learning outcomes that they’re hoping for.

This should hopefully take just a couple of minutes to put this down and be able to move onto the next step.

Slide 20: B is for Barrier

1. B is for barrier to instructions

Slide 21: Barrier Steps

Step 2 barrier, How to. The barrier section introduces the student to the sequence.  We talked about the curriculum, now the student is here.

Our outcome is to determine where the student’s disability is impacting their ability to participate in the activity as their peers do.  You want to look for the mismatches between what is expected by the curriculum that’s your form A.

What’s possible for the student?  We first want to gather together, we have our section A filled out. Do we have the student’s present levels? That’s our source of information. We may find that that does not have what we need in which case we generate as we go.

But start with gathering together the materials that you need in order to make that comparison. And if you have present level resource, that could help you, grab that. If you don’t, again, you can do this as you go and the nice thing about that is now you do have the information and when you go back to the IEP, you can back map and sort of backfill the information that was missing.

Let’s see, you want to compare the activity steps to the students’ needs.  You’re going to have a list of needs for the present levels. These things that are missing for them.

Now you’re going to have the activity steps and you’re going to put those two together. I literally put them next to each other and I look line by line and say “what do they expect” what is the child able to do?” back back-and-forth. I ultimately want to be able to identify those mismatches, discrepancy and you want to capture those. Again succinctly but clearly. The clearer you are about what the issue is that creates the barrier the easier next step is going to be.

Also, this is an important point again about the academic alignment. We found out in the first column what was the intended outcome for the academic outcomes. Now we need to find out what is the student’s status relative to that?  Whatever that target is, where are they relative to that?

That’s the information that’s going to inform the next step, which is where we’re going to decide do we need to use accommodations only or do we need modifications as well? Just a note about the barriers as you are recording them.

Try not to think about the fact that you’re going to have to solve them in the next column. Just capture as many as you can because if you miss barriers, you’ll end up having to come back back and find them. Because they’ll still impede the student’s participation. Sometimes we find a lot of barriers and we resolve some of them and then we sort of circle back around and we find others.  You can do it sort of iterations as well if that’s necessary

Slide 22: C is for Change

How-to Instructions

Slide 23: Change Steps

Change steps. Already the last step in the process. So what we’re going to do taking the information from the activity and the barrier, mostly the barrier, and we’re going to try and identify changes. Different accommodations, hopefully, that will address each of the barriers.

We’re looking at gathering up some resources to be able to do this. So you can look at the students IEP for accommodations. You can look at the assistive technology resources, gather some of those up. Some of those guides, I’ll speak to one later, have like problem solution formats so they lend themselves well to this. If you can find something that will give you some ideas.

We’re not going to make any content changes at this point so we do want to know are we going to be looking to be making modifications? Are we going to be looking to be making changes in the content? For the planning part we’ll stick with the sort of more access based more format based changes. So the plan that you’re making should focus not so much on the content changes that you might make but on the other types of changes.

In terms of the format sometimes this section the content can run a little longer than the other two because sometimes you are generating multiple solutions for one barrier. Sometimes teams will have a menu version of this and then a plan version. So they write down a bunch of ideas for the barriers to address them based on their resources. Then they’ll pick one or two that they want to try out to start with. So they have the bigger menu and then they have the smaller plan that they base that off of.

That’s your choice how you want to do that. You still want to try and be succinct about the language so that we keep it manageable. I think that’s everything for the for the last step. We’re just wrapping everything up. Again identify are you gonna need to take that modification path that we’re gonna talk about umm shortly.

Slide 24: A-B-C Framework Checklist

Would you believe that that is all of the steps of the framework? I put them in a bit of an abridged form here. The framework checklist is:

Record an activity task analysis

identify the academic skills that are targeted

Compare the student’s present levels to the activity and record the barriers.

Identify the changes for the barriers

And then consider whether you’re needing modifications

That would be sort of a satellite activity, but that’s the whole process all in one place.  Let’s take a look at some examples. I think that’s going to be helpful for you

Slide 25: A-B-C Examples

A-B-C examples of the framework

Slide 26: A-B-C Word Work Example

We have the A-B-C Word Work example example and this one I’m going to explain to you all of the parts and pieces. We have this one and then we have a math example as well well and don’t forget I told you in the handout there were a bunch.

The A-B-C Word work example shows you what the framework looks like with content and this is an actual student.  We have the same three-part graphic organizer with just brief notes in each box.

What I’m going to do is tell you the context of the example 1st, and then we’ll go back and look at what did I enter into the framework.

In this case the activity I was observing a student in a large group activity, and the peers were taking turns going up to the whiteboard and the teacher would give them a word and then they would circle the word family on the whiteboard.

As I was watching my student I could see there were a couple of issues that are impeding his participation.

One was he has poor distance vision.  He wasn’t able to see what was happening at the board from his seat.

Then the second issue was he has mobility issues that were interfering with his ability to stand and use his hand to draw our circle.

In terms of a solution solution had a couple of different different things going on primarily my solution was to have him use his iPad to help help with the distance and with the mobility issues.  he would stay at his desk. He would use his iPad and take a photo photo of the board. He would put it in his Whiteboard app, and then when it was his turn, he could use his finger or stylus, or whatever he needed to mark the answer on the board. He also could turn that and show the teacher in the class.

Everyone was able to see it from his desk.  He was able to share with the group. The issue of seeing his peers’ response – two solutions we had for that one was he would use the Zoom feature on his iPad camera to get up close where the peers would walk by his desk after they wrote their answer on the board and they would circle the answer on his iPad.

1. how did I record that for the activity block? I wrote: stand at the board, listen to the word, ID the word family, and circle it.

For the second block I recorded for the barrier: distance vision, standing, and hand coordination. Then in the final block the changes were: whiteboard photo on iPad and then zoom camera or appear. Use iPad.

What worked about this ? One, the underlined target skill, I did not change that. He didn’t actually need any support for the content. No modifications were required but I did highlight that this was the target that I didn’t want to change.

I also retained as much of the original activity as I possibly could, including the fact that he was using technology as well as the Eric group was using the technology.

I used tools that he already had such as the iPad and I was able to use one solution basically for three issues. You know trying to cut or use as few different options as necessary.

I use very minimal language here trying to describe what was happening. I just described it enough that I could. I could understand if I was sharing this with someone who I wasn’t collaborating with live you know it hadn’t been part of the conversation. I may have put more information but honestly, it’s you gotta git ‘er done.  Can’t be too wordy on these things – if I remember what it means that’s that’s OK.

Part of what I wanted you to see here was the simplicity again right.  Even though the framework has the capability of being very complex you can you can scale it down to be really simple.

The other piece that I’m want to point out I don’t know if we got to this part yet but the first column in the activity column, I had originally recorded circle the word family was the bullet that I wrote. Then when I went back through it, I was like oh wait a minute I’ve sort of collapsed two different skills in one, and in fact, I had compromise the target skill by adding circling to the target skill.  I had to separate those out and say wait a minute, circling it is one thing and then identifying the word family is another thing. In fact the student had trouble with the circling, but did not have trouble with the identification of the word family..

that’s the kind of thing where,as you get better at filling this out you’ll realize like oh wait those two things that I recorded as if they were one or actually two separate things and that’s honestly going to be really critical to be good at that because lots of times this is what happens as our kids can have trouble trouble in one area and then it will kind of overflow into another area unnecessarily. It’s not necessary to have that fine motor issue affect his academic performance, but I just wanted to highlight that that’s the kind of thing that that we need to look for.

Slide 27: A-B-C Math Game Example

Then the next example is the math example that I promised you. In this example I interviewed the teacher and then I went through all of the class routines with her. Then I went through and wrote up the class routines, each one in a separate little block. I just tried to record them with minimal language, right?

The basic parts of the math game were roll dice, hold the pieces, move the pieces, read the card, hold the card, verbal negotiation and cooperation with peer, and then great level math skills.

I underlined the math skills because it was something that happens all year long the particular math skill that they were targeting was changing.  if I were to do this, in real time I would actually find out what are the math skills that they’re working on this week. This is a routine, so I’ve done this once and now this is going to work for the rest of the year, whatever the solutions are that I found for this.  That’s that’s a benefit,

Just so you know that the math skills I didn’t have more more detail than that at the time because it is something that crosses multiple weeks months.

The barriers the student had trouble with hand coordination and that will affect his ability to roll the dice. To handle the game pieces. He also has barriers with the verbal negotiation because he’s not verbal. Then lastly I don’t have good information about his math skills.

I don’t know if that content is accessible to him. I’m making a note here, if you’re keeping score, basically all of the activity elements are barriers for this students.  Rolling the dice, moving and holding the pieces, verbal cooperation – all three of those I know to have barriers and math skills. I’m not sure.  This is not necessarily atypical for students with lots of needs that you would find most of the bulleted points are going to have a mismatch. Doesn’t mean what we can’t find solutions.

Let’s see what did I recommend for a change?  I recommended that they use an electronic spinner. Instead of rolling the dice. It would be an option for all kids to have a spinner with the numbers on that. For the card he was going to use text to speech, which basically meant that the computer was going to read the card and he could draw the card and have it read through the computer. Then he would have an eye gaze board.  it’s a low-tech board that the partner would hold it up and he would be on the other side and he could look at different different locations on the board. They would have negotiation [phrases] kind of like like you know that’s not right or do it again or it was my turn or you know you try it. Different kind of verbal negotiations based on what other peers were using.  Then he could participate with kind of that back-and-forth with his peer and and benefit from that as well.

We’re not addressing the math skill in this because we’re not doing that modification piece. ButI do want to make a point about that which is I included in as a barrier unclear math skills.  I want you to see that sometimes the barrier is you don’t know if it’s a barrier, right?  I don’t know if the math is at his skill level.  I can’t say that it’s accessible to him, and that’s a problem.

I remember I was working with the team and we were talking about morning meeting, trying to identify participation barriers, and the teacher said “I can’t tell what’s not working cause I can’t tell if he’s listening and understanding what I say.” A ha! That is a barrier, then, right? Not knowing means that we have to find out. We might be over or underestimating what he’s taking in and they’re both problems right?  You can record where you’re not not sure about about something and then that’s another benefit of this structure is it can help you uncover what you don’t know. Now, I know I need to find out more information about his math skills and I can continue an investigate that.

Let’s move on. Those are the two examples reminding you that there are more examples off-line that you can delve into

Slide 28: Real Life Reminders

Real Life Reminders. Three reminders I’m going to talk about here. I’m going to tell you what they are and then I’m going to go back and describe them.  Number one in the framework process we want to invite all roles and especially invite the student to be involved. The second point is that the A-B-C charts ,if we collect them for reference, they can really save us time and add to consistency of our our work. Then the third thing is documenting the “how” and “when” of the support plans.

1. First the notes here let me explain, for the team members. We really want to encourage seems to work together, right on this kind of content. Whether it’s within the IEP or part of a smaller planning meeting, every team member has the ability to contribute to this process. The more people that are around the table, particularly if they’ve got specific expertise, the more likely the challenges are going to be accurately identified and then the solutions are going to be appropriately applied right. This is going to be helpful for you when you’re choosing the supports and you want to choose ones that are the least amount amount of change. We want to promote those accommodations over modifications. It’s a mirror process of the IEP as well.  When the related service providers use the framework with you it’s going to help to make sure that the information that they are providing, the input that they give, supports the bigger picture. That it’s aligned and useful.

Then that other participants that we want to include as the student. We want to invite them to be a genuine contributor to the conversation about what are the best ways to support their participation in the general education curriculum.  When the student is involved in that accommodation selection process, they tend to use the supports more than if they’re not included.  Ask their opinion see what their ideas and preferences are, get their feedback on how things are going.

The second point is about making a plan to build on the system by keeping copies of the A-B-C pages.  Once you’re starting to do these whether there for one student multiple students, I’ll guarantee that you were going to start to see similar activities that have similar barriers and could benefit from similar solutions that you’ve already generated.  This is one one way that you can really maximize your time and energy is create a paper trail. Keep them together. Keep the organized and then others can also see that work and benefit from it, but I guarantee you it will get exponentially faster because there’s only so many different different types of activities that you then start mixing a matching and you’re going to find you can reuse different solutions and save lots of time

Lastly we talked about one of the challenges with support is that we don’t have a whole lot of guidance with what to do with them once the ink is dry.  By having this solutions list, you could build on that by adding two parts to it, which is a “when” and a “how” .  When are we doing this and how are we doing this? Even if you just have just a little bit of information for each each of those it would make such a huge difference. Going from the words ‘visual supports’ in the IEP to something that’s actually usable – what did you mean by that right?

I’ll have in a couple of slides I think information about one of the resource documents that has a blank form and a sample form and instructions on how to do that if you’re interested.

Slide 29: A-B-C Framework IEP Based

The ABC Framework is a graphic organizer that mirrors the flow of the IEP. There are three sections, which have the Activity, Barrier, and Change labels from the ABC Framework These three sections also align with three parts of the IEP process.

The section labeled Activity is aligned in purpose with the General Education Curriculum. The section labeled Barrier is aligned with the Present Levels section of the IEP. And the final section, change, aligns with the accommodations and modifications.

In the framework, the first cell corresponds to information about the activity, or the context that we are trying to make accessible. In the IEP process, we look to the general education curriculum to provide us that information. Even though that is not part of the IEP, it is a very important part of the IEP process. It provides the information needed to determine present levels. It essentially is accessed before the Present levels section can start. So just like the IEP starts with “what’s going on in the general education curriculum?”, so does the A-B-C Framework

The middle section of the framework is about the student and how well they can access and participate in the activity from the first cell. In the IEP, the present levels section fulfills this same purpose. The two sections are closely aligned in purpose.

The final cell is called change, because it is for content from a variety of areas, such as accommodations and also modifications, or goals, that relates to change, solutions, etc. For this training we are focused on accommodations mostly, so that is the term that is matched to the “change” column.

It might help to think of this framework like a story graphic organizer. There are some standard fields and you can enter in content from lots of sources to achieve a consistently arranged picture The framework is basically saying “This is where I want to be (GEC), this is where I am (PLP) and this is what I am going to do to make it work.”. With that translation you can see how it could work with content from a variety of sources. And whether you use the Framework terms or the IEP terms, the process works the same.

So why do we need a chart to do what you have on a piece of paper? Well, two reasons. One, we want you to be able to use a small amount of information and time to make a strong impact on a student’s access to their education, particularly their participation in the general education curriculum. The IEP writing process is deals in very detailed with large volumes of information coming in and out. The Framework allows you to work with just a small amount of information at a time. Rather than have the whole grade-level curriculum to manage, you might look at just one activity. But, if you were to repeat that, choosing a new activity each time, you could build up a set of materials that would add up to a bigger profile. Or you may like being able to work with different areas when you need them.

As for why we need a format for that, it has been my experience when people write without a structure and some guidance to the content that the product is much different. The entries can be unbalanced, inconsistent, and incomplete. When you follow the prompts that correspond to each step of the framework it is a bit of quality control. It helps to ensure you have what you need in the right spot – no more, no less. And each time you use it the process is the same. The other benefit to using the structure is the ability to have similar results across time, team members, and content. As long as you pretty much follow the guidelines you should have an expectation of good results each time.

Slide 30: Accommodations and Modifications

Here we are our accommodations and modifications!  Let’s just see what we got here. We’ve got accommodations and modifications. We got a modification plan process. We’ve got some resources. Let’s do it.

Slide 31: Working Definitions: Accommodations vs Modifications

There are so many different ways to talk about accommodation modifications, and I’ve sort of come to think that most of them are not very very useful [laugh]. Some of them sound better than others but quite honestly, I think there’s a fatal flaw and I’ll tell you what it is in just a second. I’ll first give you these working definitions of the accommodations versus modifications. Accommodations. They don’t change expectations for learning. They do affect the format and they are connected to access skills, which are developmental, non-instructed naturally occurring biologically based foundational skills.

Modifications on the other hand they do change the expectations for learning they affect the content they affect academic skills. This slide here kind of tells you all you need to know about differentiating those those two things. I use this little mnemonic that’s like OK accommodations, ACC, access.  it’s like getting to something, like I’m going to access something. I’m going to get to something. Whereas modifications, I looked at the DIF in the middle and I was like that’s something different that’s going to be a change. It’s going to be something different.  I’m going to change it as opposed to like sort of accommodate or adapt right.  just my little mnemonic .

Here’s why here’s why I don’t think a lot of the definitions are incredibly helpful is a lot of them seem to rely on your ability to judge whether the thing that you’re looking at is in accommodation modification.  it will say like you know does it change the expectations for learning or does it affect the format? The implication is sort of that you’re looking at something and you can say oh yes, this affects the format or oh yes, this is related to the academic content.

The fact is we generally generate our accommodations modifications. We don’t generally have a close set that they were looking at it picking from. We’re generally saying OK this math is inaccessible to him. What am I going to do about it?  if we’re generating these having definitions that are sort of more based on evaluating something that already exists, I don’t feel like is terribly helpful and maybe that’s why we still have this conversation right?

I’m going to give you a few other a few other definitions I guess because there are some features that are specific to these two things that may not differentiate them, but that might be helpful for you to know, but I think you could use this slide and get 90% of where you need to be around different these two.

Slide 32: Accommodations vs Modifications

Asking the question is the academic content changed? Are the learning expectations changed? How has the learning changes compared to the peers?  Modifications are going to move that academic content., period. Accommodations are not.

Also remember that it’s not the materials that make the difference right.  You can have a calculator and it could be a modification or an accommodation. It depends on the application. What are you doing with it? How is it helping? Is it helping with access or helping with the academics? Remember that. That’s why it can be confusing, because you can’t attach a label to a thing you have to ask what are you doing with it?  And then that becomes specific to that child what do they need you to do with it?

Slide 33: Key Features of Accommodations

A couple of other core features or key features of the accommodations. Lots of times people use the phrase level of playing field if that works for you. Removes a barrier to the content created by the curriculum. I kinda like that phrase because it reminds us that the barrier is not not the students. I know I’ve been using that terminology all day, but the technically the barrier is created by the curriculum.  The student was the student the barrier was created when the curriculum said this is how we’re going to make this activity accessible to people who can draw circle.  This is a reminder that the barriers are created when we introduce them to the curriculum.  Ill get off that soap  boxes.  There’s no change to what’s being taught or tested in an accommodation and you’re not making the test or giving an unfair advantage. I think that’s a really useful concept is like where we trying to make sure that they’re not at a disadvantage for their disability, but we don’t want to give them so much support support that they have a better chance than the peers of getting the right answer right.  We’re not going to prevent them from making a mistake. One of the tests that I like to use is to say “have I made it possible for the student to do this task without actually having the target skill?” and if I have then I’m not doing them any service because now they can’t learn the skill.  I just want to know truthfully whether they know that or not.  Accommodations we’re not going to make it easier. We’re not going to do anything to the content. We’re going to stick to other areas that are creating a barrier and those are more of those access skills.

Slide 34: Key Features of Modifications

Some of the key features of Modifications. You’ll see the term depth, breath, and complexity. Those are complex terms quite frankly, but those are the allowable ways of changing content to be accessible through modifications.  if you are finding yes, this is a modification has to happen to this content you are headed into the depth, breath and complexity world because that is the key to creating a modification. Not to scare you off, but that’s that in the core content connectors, and the general education teacher that is the land of modification.  it’s not quite as basic or straightforward as accommodation.

There is a risk when you do create a modification because you are moving the learning target the expectation you can oversimplify the target.  if I take a math experiment and the students are supposed to name out that the steps of the experiment and I recorded on a button and now it’s a motor activity for this kid. That’s a huge gap in the difference between what that skill was supposed to be and what it is now now.

The other issue that can happen completely well intended, and I don’t know the answer to to avoid it completely but when multiple people over multiple years are making decisions about changing the content there’s no common roadmap.  It can be really hard to be consistent about those decisions and then you can end up with a Swiss cheese program again even with a good intentions.

I just want to note that modifications are a legitimate option for some kids there what allows them to have access to the curriculum. There’s just caveated to making sure it’s an informed decision that you’re making about that and the next slide I think has some limitations of modifications that might be useful.

Slide 35: Modification Ask and Plan

Consideration of modifications.  I tried to be to the point and yet not skimp out on some of the elements of this process because I think that it’s more involved. Again it’s not an accommodation modification sort of flip of the coin coin. It’s accommodation has sort of these characteristics and modification is a much heavier load and it does take more to make that happen with fidelity.  In terms of for the ask versus plan the questions that you want to ask is what is the target skill that you’re thinking about needs modification and what is the soonest present levels regarding that? Are there specific areas of challenge with this task for this skill? What are the accommodations that are in place related to that now and have there been in the past? Do you have relevant student data and have you considered the role of executive function skills?

And then in terms of planning you’re going to get with your general educator cause you’ve gotta have someone close to the standards for this. You’re going to grab some options together.  You’re going to pull together access options which are executive function supports, core content, connectors, depth, breath, and complexity options tiered support.

Basically find what other ideas can you bring to the table either before or with with your modification. Then at the end it says plan for instruction and monitoring.  Whatever whatever your next step is with regard to finding the right solution, this is how it’s going to be implemented and when are you going to come back to see how it’s working

Slide 36: Modifications in the A-B-C Framework

This is the same information just sort of vertical form. Academic targets barriers options for change and it repeats the same content for the last two sides.

Slide 37: Resources

If you’re still with me, we got resources.

Slide 38: Executive Functioning Handbook and Checklist

We have the executive functioning handbook which is checklist of classroom behaviors they are calling them and then the solutions general strategies.  You may benefit from looking at some of those classroom observations because they’ll describe for you what a different executive function might look like.  What do attention challenges look like? What do memory challenges look like? I found it very, very helpful.

It’s like 31 pages that has multiple levels early middle and high. I found it just world of good to look and see one, to see definitions in descriptions of issues that I know my students have to put words to that. Then also sometimes I would see descriptions and say oh I did not know that that could be a classroom behavior associated with that executive function. Look and seeing some of the patterns open up my mind to what else might be happening with the student other than just either academics or “behavior or something like that.

Slide 39: Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative

This is one of the assistive technology Wisconsin assistive technology technology initiative manual has the AT challenges and solution. Kind of one to punch available that I talked about earlier.

Slide 40: OCALI Domains List

The OCALI domain list has the same thing. It’s just much shorter actually, the OCLAI list.

Slide 41: Support Implementation Chart

Then this was the implementation chart that I told you about where when and how for implementation. This is an example what that might look like. You can see the narrative, I can’t read it from here but if I could, I can see sometimes it just like one line or less than two lines long and that could be your implementation guide right there.

Slide 42: What’s Next?

What’s next? What is next? We gotta move on.

Slide 43: Ideas for Next Steps

Next steps.  good ideas are great right and then then what. Let’s think of a couple of things that we could do to act on our great ideas. Here they went from good to great. Just sit and draw three boxes or 3 lines and try to do a quick A-B-C sequence for one kid, one activity. What do they want to do? What are they going to do? What are you going to do? You can print out one of the grids. You could download the handouts. You could navigate to one of the links and either download the document or bookmark options.

Slide 44: Bigger Ideas for Next Steps

Good options. You need some bigger ideas for next steps? I got you covered.  How about creating a list for the student’s change options? What are all the ideas that we might try particularly again for accommodations? Share the link to this video with your colleagues and talk about about it at the next meeting.  Also during your professional development time create an A-B-C chart for one student, multiple activities and your solutions.

Slide 45: Thank You!

Oh, thank you. Thank you for your time your energy of interest in our training. We hope that you’re able to take just one small action step and create an opportunity for this information to make a difference in your practice. You know what just being here you are already thinking differently about the process of curriculum access.  we love that, and hope to see you soon. And remember, you can do this!

Slide 46: Training Resources

This training highlighted several resources created by the Vermont I-Team and by other groups. All resources are available on our training website.

The 3 I-Team created resources are:

– Activity-Barrier-Change Framework

– Examples of A-B-C Framework

– IEP Support Implementation Chart

And the 3 resources created by others are:

– The OCALI Domain List

– The Wisconsin AT Initiative Manual

The Executive Functioning Handbook & Checklist

Slide 47: Attribution

All rights reserved. Any or all portions of this training and I-Team created resources may be reproduced and distributed without prior permission, provided the source is cited as:

Vermont I-Team. (2026). Accommodations and Modifications: A Framework for Access. [Online training]. https://go.uvm.edu/i-team

Slide 48: Vermont Agency of Education

This training was created a partnership Vermont Agency of Education.

Slide 49: I-Team

The Vermont I-Team is focused on interdisciplinary support for inclusion. We encourage you to reach out if you have questions, would like more information, or are interested in collaborating with us. Please go to our website (go.uvm.edu/I-team) to find out more.

Slide 50: CDCI

The Vermont I-Team is a project of the Center on Disability and Community Inclusion, in the College of Education and Social Services, at the University of Vermont.

Our Center has been promoting inclusion for 50 years. For more information about our Center, please visit our website (go.uvm.edu/cdci).

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