Adapting and Modifying Lessons or Activities

Imagine the following situation. A language arts teacher is guiding students through annotating a text to find the main idea. A few students have read the text already and have lost interest. A few others are struggling to decode the words because the text is above their reading level. Another student has difficulty comprehending the plot because he has never experienced a situation like the main character’s before. Others are enjoying the text and noting personal connections in the margins.

Does this situation sound familiar? Perhaps you have been the teacher, trying to meet the needs of all of your students at once. Or perhaps you have been one of these students, either connecting or not connecting with a specific lesson.

One of the greatest challenges teachers face is how to meet the needs of all their students simultaneously. Differentiation, accommodations, and modifications can assist with this goal and help all students succeed in the classroom.

Differentiation, Accommodations, and Modifications: How Are They Different?

Though these terms are often confused, they have specific meanings. Let’s explore each term now.

Differentiation

Differentiation refers to tailoring instruction to students’ needs. Teachers take students’ prior knowledge, existing skills, interests, cultures, and other factors into account when considering how to differentiate instruction for all students within a classroom.

For example, if teachers overhear students displaying interest in current events, they may incorporate newspaper articles about the events in language arts lessons. Students’ interest in these topics may lead to greater engagement with the texts.

If teachers identify that some students have already mastered a concept, they may provide a quick review and move on rather than forcing students to sit through additional lessons.

Similarly, if teachers observe that some students are struggling with a concept, they may provide additional scaffolding, reteach the concept in a different way, or use more small-group instruction.

Although people often associate differentiation with struggling learners, it is important to consider the needs of higher-achieving students too, who may become frustrated if lessons are too easy or repetitive. In these cases, teachers may provide more challenging materials, menu-based project choices, or other options to adequately engage students.

Teachers should also consider culture when differentiating instruction, understanding that some traditions and norms may be different. For example, some students may be hesitant to ask their teachers questions based on cultural norms of teacher-student interactions. Therefore, the teachers may need to incorporate more knowledge checks to gauge understanding rather than relying on the students to make it known when something is unclear. It is also important to ensure that various cultures are represented in reading materials and encourage respectful sharing of ideas during class discussions.

Best Practices in Designing Instruction

Many instructional best practices assist with meeting diverse student needs. Carefully crafted lessons can provide a variety of ways to motivate students, provide access to content, and assess learning simply by the way they are designed.

Some of these best practices include introducing students to a wide variety of text types and genres, delivering content using multiple mediums, allowing students to demonstrate learning in multiple formats, and building student choice into learning when possible.

Let’s look at an example of this.

Students in a fifth-grade classroom are learning about the civil rights movement of the 1950s-1960s. The class explores songs, video footage, images, and newspaper articles from that time period, along with the information provided in their textbook. Access to an audio textbook is also provided so that students can listen to the content.

As a final project, students are encouraged to research one area related to the civil rights movement that interests them, and they can choose to work independently or in small groups. Examples and graphic organizers are provided to assist students with their research. Students are allowed to choose from multiple formats how they would like to demonstrate their learning including creating a podcast, a multimedia presentation, a speech, or a written report about their topic.

Teachers may refer to the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines for suggestions on how to design instruction to meet the needs of diverse groups of students, no matter the age or subject area.

Some students may need additional support, even with carefully designed lessons and differentiated instruction. In these cases, accommodations and modifications may be needed. These are typically outlined in a student’s 504 Plan or Individualized Education Program, also known as an IEP.

Accommodations

Accommodations are changes in how students access the content without changing the learning goals. In other words, students are expected to learn the same things as their peers, but they may achieve that learning in different ways. Examples include providing materials in alternate forms, allowing extra time to complete assignments, offering manipulatives, and allowing oral rather than written responses to questions.

For example, a student with a visual impairment may use an audio version of the textbook. The student is still expected to meet the same history-related learning objectives, but access to the needed content is provided using another means.

Similarly, one student in a class may solve addition problems mentally, while another is given manipulatives for support. However, both students are expected to find the sums of the same problems accurately.

Modifications

Modifications are changes in what students are expected to learn or demonstrate, and typically include providing alternate assignments and assessing learning in a way that is appropriate for a specific students’ learning goals.

For example, a second-grade teacher may give one student a spelling list of consonant-vowel-consonant words, like hat, while the rest of the class is assigned words with a more complex spelling pattern. Or, a student may be tested on only five words, while the rest of the class is tested on ten words each week.

Review

Let’s review what we learned in this video.

• Differentiation refers to tailoring instruction to students’ needs. Teachers consider students’ prior knowledge, existing skills, interests, cultures, and other factors when designing instruction.
• There are some best practices that can be used when designing lessons to help meet the needs of diverse students. The Universal Design for Learning Guidelines are one resource teachers can use to identify these practices.
• Accommodations are changes in how students learn or access the content without changing the learning goals. An example is allowing extra time to complete an assignment.
• Modifications are changes in what students are expected to learn or demonstrate. An example is having one student solve single-digit addition problems while classmates are expected to solve double-digit addition problems.

Questions

Let’s go over a couple of questions before we go:

1. A student struggles with writing due to poor fine motor skills. Writing is stressful for this student, and it often takes her an extended amount of time to get a few sentences down on paper. What can the teacher do to assist the student with meeting the same learning goals as her peers in a science class?

2. A teacher is getting ready to read a new book aloud to students. The fiction book describes how the main character celebrates a holiday with her family. How might the teacher consider prior knowledge to differentiate instruction for this read aloud?

That’s all for this review! Thanks for watching, and happy studying.