Faculty Toolkit Accommodations and Adaptations

General Instructional Strategies for Students with ID

Up to this point, the discussion has been about adapting instruction to include students with ID in a college class. It is also important to share with teaching faculty the basic principles of how to teach students with an intellectual disability regardless of the environment. In many FPCTP programs, instruction goes beyond the classroom and takes place in the community. Job coaches and supervisors of internship or pre-employment sites need to understand the basic teaching principles for individuals with ID. Teachers do not need to be experts in the field of intellectual disabilities; instead, sharing a few key effective practices will support their instruction and build their confidence.

Task Analysis

First is the concept of task analysis. Simply stated, task analysis is the process of breaking down a skill into sequential steps into component parts. The hardest part of task analysis is that being experts as a given task causes us to skip steps. Think about how you would teach a person to use an ATM. Simple. Take out your card, push it into the slot, select the amount you want, and the money comes out. Don’t forget your card! Here is an example of that simple skill broken down into a teachable task analysis. Breaking down the task into smallest parts helps the student work through the project and attain goals.

Steps:

  1. Approach ATM
  2. Remove ATM card from purse, wallet, or pocket
  3. Insert card into machine, orienting the card as necessary
  4. Enter personal identification number (PIN) using keypad
  5. Accept or decline additional fees as necessary
  6. Select type of transaction
  7. Select specific account to be used for transaction (checking)
  8. Enter amount of transaction
  9. Select receipt requested when prompted by ATM
  10. Remain at ATM while processing occurs
  11. Collect money from machine when dispensed
  12. Place money in your purse, wallet, or pocket
  13. Collect receipt when dispensed
  14. Collect ATM card when dispensed
  15. Place receipt and ATM card in purse, wallet, or pocket

Task analysis allows a student to progress through a series of thoughtful steps to complete a task. This can be applied to reading a chapter, studying for a quiz, taking a quiz, or completing a class activity. The process of task analysis provides the learner with the steps necessary to accomplish a task and not rely on memory or past experiences. Students without disabilities will also benefit from a task analysis of a complex task. Think about how much easier writing citations for a research paper might have been if you knew the “hidden” steps in the process. Using a task analysis helps make the invisible visible.

Prompts or advanced organizers are important for teaching students with ID. Often, we think about prompts to reinforce positive behavior. Prompts are also useful to engage learners in academic tasks as well. A prompt may trigger a strategy to be used or direct a physical response. When used, prompts work best when they are concrete and clearly presented. That means that a gesture, directing a student to work in a specific place in the class, can be lost if it is embedded in a series of gestures or prompts. Some academic prompts are called advance organizers. The instructor announces the goal of the lesson and then sets about to work toward that goal. Some advance organizers are detailed and give goals and expectations, others are succinct statements of what we are doing today. It doesn’t matter which prompt is used, rather it is important that the instructor gives a verbal and visual clue to a shift in activities or a direction to be taken.

Wehman and Kregel (2004) list the types of instructional prompts commonly used in classes for students with moderate disabilities. These include

  1. ambiguous verbal prompts (Keep going! What’s next?);
  2. specific verbal prompts (Ok, what we are going to do now is …..);
  3. modeling (instructor demonstrates the task to be accomplished);
  4. gestures;
  5. priming (enough physical assistance to start the task); and,
  6. physical assistance (p. 51).

This list is written in order of least to most intensive in terms of prompting or intervention. It is desirable to use the least obvious prompts when possible.

Teaching self-determination (S-D) skills is central for students enrolled in an FPCTP program and can be part of a general class with some simple additions to practice. S-D can be defined simply by explaining that a self-determined individual exercises influence over what they do and how they do it. Self-determination includes choice making, decision making, problem solving, goal setting and goal attainment, risk taking, self-observation (reflection), self-instruction (self-talk), and self-advocacy (Wehmeyer, M.L (2007). A college instructor can create situations to practice S-D by offering choice in assignment completion, talking aloud about problem solving possibilities, presenting a task with self-monitoring components built in, using group activities, providing feedback on student progress using S-D skills.

Some online resources can be shared with instructional faculty as part of a professional development session or in monthly newsletters or emails. The resources below are accompanied with a short description to help the user make decisions about its value.

  • Self-Advocacy Skills and Self-Determination: Keys to Postsecondary Success explains the value of Self-Determination and Self Advocacy in higher education. One part of the document that stands out is the 6 myths about disabilities and self-determination. These ideas could be used as starting points for professional development activities.
  • provides ideas for how faculty can help students with and without disabilities to prepare to succeed in college. It explores the idea of what students have found to be the most useful Self-Determination tactics in their own college experience. It also describes the idea of mentoring to build self-advocacy skills.
  • Kansas University provides a technical manual that describes the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction. This model is used frequently in high school special education classes. It is not intended as a handout to faculty, but rather as a resource for program administrators who are looking for support ideas for the teaching faculty. Pull pieces from this model and share bits of it in an ongoing manner.
  • Training and Technical Center at Old Dominion provides tools for helping teach goal setting. While faculty may not use this, it may be a useful tool (The one-pager) to use in conjunction with a learning contract to discuss student skills and needs.
  • Key Considerations for Postsecondary Leaders is an excellent resource to explain how Self-Determination and Self Advocacy combine for success in college. It is expected that students with disabilities should be able to talk about their disability with their instructors. This brief explains the basis for that expectation and provides ways to help faculty work with students who are learning how to advocate for themselves.
  • What I Learned about myself last year is a short video sharing stories from young adults talking about their achievements and what they have learned about self-advocacy.

This list is written in order of least to most intensive in terms of prompting or intervention. It is desirable to use the least obvious prompts when possible.

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