Much has been said of the supposed “learning loss” that students have experienced this year due to pandemic teaching. It may be true that there are students who struggled to fully grasp concepts they would have had a more solid understanding of if they had been in the physical classroom. Yet the last thing we want to do is widen the achievement gap by going backwards in our teaching. As I reflect upon the situation, I think back to my role as a 2nd grade classroom teacher in which more than 80% of students were reading at least an entire grade level behind standardized expectations. I could have essentially become a teacher of 1st grade standards – focusing on skills from students’ experience the year prior. However, rather than “mitigating learning loss”, I focused on “accelerating learning”. Students need exposure to grade level content. Rather than excluding them from this opportunity, we can provide accommodations to increase access. While we can continue to work with groups of students to bolster foundational skills from previous grade levels, it is vital that we not spend the majority of our instructional minutes doing so. This does a disservice and widens the gap and leaves students perpetually behind. All students deserve access to grade level content.

Accessibility Tools – Necessary for Some, Beneficial for ALL

It has become a more common practice in many districts to include rather than exclude more and more students with special needs into general education classrooms. Accommodations allow for universal access to the grade level curriculum and accelerate the learning process. We can now expand this concept to include a larger portion of our class – those that struggle with so called “learning loss”. These accommodations that were specifically named in several individual education plans can now become more common practice. This is no different than adults who are incorporating more self-care strategies into their day – accommodating their stress with coping strategies that have become more the norm than the exception. When we encourage the use of accommodations rather than modifying our curriculum, we empower individuals to increase their access to content not merely for the year they are with us, but also for their future.

Increasing Access to Grade Level Text

Are students struggling with decoding, comprehension, and/or vocabulary within grade level text? Rather than spending the time to search for watered down versions of the content, encourage students to use immersive reader. This aligns to the neuroscience of Universal Design for Learning and its principle of multiple means of representation. Immersive reader is embedded into most core microsoft products, including flipgrid. If students are using chromebooks, they can add the immersive reader extension to access its features when reading content on websites. The tool allows for text to speech, translation, a picture dictionary, masking, text size adjustment, and more. Click here to download the free immersive reader unofficial extension.

Increasing Access to Student Expressions of Learning

Are you struggling to determine if students comprehend grade level content? Perhaps students understand more than you realize but are held back by writing skills, vocabulary, and/or language. We can better measure student learning by allowing multiple means of action/expression (in alignment with Universal Design for Learning). Provide students with choices as to how they will express their learning. Flipgrid allows students to verbally explain their learning and features accessibility via immersive reader. Sketchnotes encourage students to use visuals to express their learning. Even if a students’ final product is a written essay for example, when we give students opportunity to express their learning in alternate ways prior to writing the essay, we are able to truly assess whether they understood the content, without being clouded by their writing abilities. (Want to learn more about flipgrid, sketchnotes, and other tools to help students communicate their learning? Click here for info about a 2 hour mini-workshop focused on getting your kids to communicate with technology.)

Let us provide supports and build upon strengths as we approach student learning. Rather than watering down our content, may we empower our students to be resourceful learners who become experts at using resources to increase their accessibility.