Madison Young

Spec_Ed 420

Assisting in the Use of Accommodations

In my 4th grade classroom, I have two students in my class who are IEP students. Both

students qualify for additional help in the Resource room for math, reading and writing

instruction. When thinking of modifications I could use to help these students, I decided to

focus on my one IEP student who struggles more with whole-class math instruction. While

observing this student during math instruction, I often notice this student raises their hand for

help every couple minutes and often seeks validation in their work individually by the teacher.

At times, I also noticed that this students has dismissed themselves from content that is too

difficult by asking to go to the nurse, using the restroom, or just zoning out completely. I

discussed these observations with my mentor teacher, and since then, we have brainstormed

ways we can reduce the amount of times they leave the classroom and how we can modify our

math lessons to make learning easier for our student.

During math instruction, our class often uses personal whiteboards to practice new

math material. An accommodation used to help our student on an IEP was to have one of us

teachers sit next to them while the whole class worked on solving the math problems on their

personal whiteboards. Having a teacher sit next to our student allowed the student to express

what they needed help on to understand the math lesson, and also provided the student with

helpful one-on-one supplemental instruction. The student stayed on task better and seemed to

understand the material more. Additionally, the teacher was able to repeat directions as

needed, which is listed as a support on their IEP. Other accommodations we use to help this

student are to sometimes circle the problems we would like them to complete. In this students

IEP, it is listed that the teacher should reduce the lengths of assignments. This way, the student

is not overwhelmed with too much work, and they are able to concentrate better.