Academic Problems

1. Academic Problems • Academic problems can occur at any level of education. • Three main symptoms of academic problems: • 1. High number of incorrect responses • 2. Low number of responses • 3. Inconsistent responses.

2. Principles of Instruction • Learning is defined as a change in behaviour • Teaching is defined as a demonstration that learner behaviours have changed • Instruction is a means for effecting student behaviour change • Determining instruction is based upon • Assessment determining the teachable to independent levels of learner functioning • Establishing learner objectives • Instruction, review, and reassessment of learner progress on learning objectives • Making future instructional decisions informed by assessment and measured learner progress

3. Adapting Instruction • Is defined as changing teaching methods to facilitate learner behaviour change in meeting learner objectives • Students with special needs can participate in many classroom activities • Participation should be determined by the student's skill level, the instructional support required and its usefulness to the student • Teachers should not modify what is taught, but how skills and information are taught to students with disabilities

4. Major Factors for Student Achievement: • Teacher behaviours: • Teacher maintains academic focus • Teacher maintains direction and control of learning environment • Teacher holds high expectation for all students • Student behaviours • Students are academically engaged • Students are accountable for their work • Students work together cooperatively • Climate of classroom environment promotes student academic engaged time

5. Two Approaches to Instruction: • Active or direct teaching or explicit instruction is characterized by teacher directed activities and supervision • Discovery Learning; an approach where teachers arrange the learning environment in a way that allows students to construct their own knowledge • Point of Discussion: Many argue that students with disabilities do better with the direct teaching approach

6. Five steps of direct teaching: • Selecting and determining a learning task and creating learning objectives • Modeling and prompting of new learning tasks. • Instructional Practice of the Learning task. • guided practice with immediate feedback and • independent practice to determine learner acquisition of new tasks • Mastery of learning task: The student performs the task independently. • Generalization of learning: Student performs similar task Application generalizes from previous learning.

7. Principles for Successful Instruction: • Select appropriate learning tasks • Break them into teachable components • Use systematic instructional procedures • Consider both speed and accuracy • Maximize engaged time • Give clear task directions • Provide immediate feedback • Check for maintenance and generalization • If change is needed, try least intrusive intervention first

8. Strategies for Adapting Instruction • Determine Pre-requisite Skills • Modify Materials and Activities • Clarify task directions: Give oral and written directions. Give additional presentation of skills. • Add prompts: They are cues that help students understand tasks. • Teach to specific student-needed objectives • ELLs (with and without disabilities) “teaching to two objectives”)

9. Adapting Teaching Procedures: • Teach additional skills and information. • Provide additional guided practice. • Make consequences for successful performance more attractive. • Moderate the pace of instruction.

10. Strategies for Adapting Task Requirements (or Selecting Alternate Tasks): • Change the criteria for successful performance; Decrease number of tasks or increase time limits • Change task characteristics: Allow student to use aides, such as calculators or tape recorders. Or change response mode for student, like typing instead of handwriting • Break task into smaller subtasks • Substitute task with similar or prerequisite task. This is the most drastic intervention

11. Strategies for Adapting Assessments • Making Test Accommodations: • One way may be to allow more time to complete the test • Accommodations can also include changes in scheduling, setting, presentation and response variation • Sample Framework for Testing Accommodations: From Minnesota Department of Education

12. Summary: Things to Remember • Students may experience learning difficulty at any stage of their education. • Academic problems are indicated by incorrect, inconsistent or low number of responses. • Successful instruction needs to be systematic. • Students performance needs to be assessed to find the student's level of functioning before modifying instruction. • Unsatisfactory student performance can be increased by modifying the materials, teaching procedures or task requirements. • Substituting of an alternate task should be the last resort. • Students who benefit from instructional modification may also need modifications in their assessments.