Living the Speducator Dream

 Practicing Statewide Assessments with Accommodations in Small Group Here in Washington State, students take the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) in grades 3-5, 6-8, and 11.  There are practice interim assessments on the SBA website , which you must have a login to access. After students are identified and their accommodations are loaded into TIDE, they are able to use accommodations while taking practice tests (interims)! This is a game-changer in preparing students for success. How do we expect them to use accommodations successfully (even if they use them in class daily with the Read&Write extension, for example), if they don't have an opportunity to practice with something that is formatted like the statewide assessment? Here's how we practice: 1. Over 2-3 opportunities, I pull them in a small group setting to walk through the accommodations and general test-taking strategies. 2. For students who qualify in math, they use the same 100s number table and multiplication...

 Read&Write  for Students  with Characteristics of  Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Why Read&Write? 1. Fosters independence And isn't that the goal? My #1 job as a special educator is to be sure that kids have tools to be successful without me - either in their gen ed classes or in the future as adults. It's important kids learn to use tools that they can use to support reading and writing tasks. 2. Gives kids access to text Across students' school days, if they can't access text (either in small group or in a general education setting), it is very difficult for them to be successful. In the gen ed setting, teachers often don't have time to read text aloud to them. Read&Write allows students to independently access texts: pdfs, Google Docs/Slides, webpages, etc. 3. Builds confidence with reading and writing tasks I've found that where students otherwise would attempt to fade into the background, Read&Write allows them access. Specifically with writing, k...