Practical Modifications for the Elementary Classroom

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Practical Modifications for the Elementary
Classroom

• Jan Deaton
• Atlanta, GA

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It takes forever to do the assignment if you
dont have the skills!
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Visual Modifications
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Highlighting

• Helps to
• Identify
• Sort, prioritize
• Recognize and recall

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Handwriting

• Handwriting Without Tears!!
• Keep a model of what you want the letter to look
  like on/at their desk/table
• Practice use large muscles
• Use small (short and skinny) pencils/crayons

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• Highlight Texts, tests, worksheets
• Yellow vocabulary
• Pink main idea
• Blue supporting details
• Highlight signs for math (, -, x)
• Highlight words for directions in math
• Highlight every other one

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Windows

• Use tachistascopes- make from tag board, post its
• Use windows from envelopes

6 x 5 30
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Writing Spelling/Vocabulary Words

• Use color!!!
• separate separate separate
• separate separate separate
• separate separate separate
• separate separate separate
• separate separate separate

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Teaching vowels, blends, vowel teams, etc.

• Use more color
• tree far nice block
• feed car rate flop
• team fir cite play

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Organize Herringbone Technique

• Students answer these questions as they
• read
• What is the main idea? 4. When was it done?
• Who was involved? 5. Where was it done?
• What did they do? 6. How did they do it?
• 7. Why did it happen?

3. Landed on the moon
4. July 16, 1969
2.Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Michael Collins
1. Man landed on the moon
6. Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia Lunar
Module Eagle
5. U.S. to the moon and back
7. To explore space
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Mind Maps
Apollo 11
Spacecraft
Date
Astronauts
Columbia Command Module
July 16, 1969
Neil Armstrong
Michael Collins
Buzz Aldrin
Eagle Lunar Module
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• 345 843 407 246
• 762 791 - 234 97
• ________________
  _________________
  _________________
  ________________
• 976 472 543 777
• - 86 875 135 -
  67
• _________________
  _________________
  _______________
  _________________

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Faded Prompting
827 x3
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• 3 2
• 2 3
• 1 4

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Use color to designate assignments/organize

• Put assignments on the board and require copying
  before class begins.
• Math Spelling
• p. 27 1-10 CW 1. Copy paragraph on
  board CW
• WS 20 CW 2. Underline blends p. 23
  HW
• P. 30 5-10 HW
• Use colored overhead markers, colored chalk,
  colored dry erase markers

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Color code folders/notebook tabs, etc.

• Math blue, etc.
• Language Arts - red, etc.
• Science green, etc.
• This helps students remember where to put and
  retrieve papers. Be consistent across teachers
  and grade levels! Color coding papers is the
  ideal.

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Teaching Vocabulary

• Must be multisensory
• Students must see word, say word, write word (big
  and small muscles), find a way to associate word
  for usage.
• Word Hint Image Definition
• gravity grab hand coming out
  Force that pulls
• of ground,
  things down to earth
• grabbing a leg
• and
  pulling down
• satellite light lamps flying around
  object that revolves
• the globe
  around another

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Utilizing Visual Cues

• Many think in pictures and patterns
• Illustrations help recognition and recall

BOSTON TEA PARTY 1773
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Picture Chains

• Helps in remembering sequences/details
• Try it!
• In 1773 colonists, dressed as Indians, threw
  tea into Boston Harbor to protest unfair taxes.

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Use Exact Number of Spaces

• Tell 4 . . . . . .
• 1. _____________ ____________
• _____________ ____________
• Why does. . . .
• 2. __________________________________
• __________________________________
• __________________________________
• Who did. . . .
• 3. __________________
• 4. Name the kinds of . . .
• ______________ _____________
• 5. Explain. . .
• ___________________________________
• ___________________________________

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Advance Planning
Jack Spratt Date Spelling 4B 1. 6. 2.
7. 3. 8. 4. 9. 5. 10. Dictation
1. 2. 3.
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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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Rebus Words
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(No Transcript)
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KISS Rule

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• Matching
• Dont give more than 5 in a row.
• Teach children to read the definition first.
• Never, ever give more definitions than words or
  more words than definitions.
• Avoid being wordy.

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Modify!!!

• Circle the best answer
• The body of salt water that covers much of the
  earth is
• a. ocean b. island arc c.
  trench
• A smaller body of salt water found along the edge
  of a big ocean is the
• a. abyssal plain b. rift valley c.
  marginal sea
• A chain of islands, usually curved, that
  separates a marginal sea from a major ocean
• a. Island arc b. ocean c. echo sounding
• Note Separate with a line, etc. after 5
  questions.

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Assign only what you really want them to learn.
Everything is not that important!

• Modify worksheets
• 3. The Indian who helped the Pilgrims grow food
  was
• a. Cabot b. Mayflower c. Smith d.
  Squanto
• 4. Many of the people in the colonies wanted to
  have their own nation because
• a. they thought English laws were unfair
• b. they wanted to pay more taxes to England
• c. England had claimed too much land
• d. they wanted their own army
• P. 1

• Our country was named after
• a. Christopher Columbus b. Robert LaSalle
  c. John Smith d. Amerigo Vespucci

2. The first English settlement in America was
at a. Boston b. Jamestown c.
Pilgrims d. Plymouth
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• Decide whether each sentence is true (T) or false
  (F). Write T or F is the blank before each
  sentence.
• (THIS IS SOOOOOOOO TRICKY FOR CHILDREN. TRY NOT
  TO USE TRUE/FALSE.)
• 1. _____ George Washington wrote the
  Constitution.
• Modified
• Did George Washington write the Constitution?
  _____
• ____ America fought France in the American
  Revolution.
• Modified
• 2. Did America fight France in the American
  Revolution? _____

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Down and Dirty/Quick and Easy

• Name _________________ Date ______________
• --- Chapter 13 Test ---
• Part 1 Words and Ideas
• A. Write the letter in the blank
• a. impressment e. Henry Clay i. Francis Scott
  Key
• b. Daniel Boone f. neutral j. Zebulon Pike
• c. Trail of Tears g. Davy Crockett k. William
  Clark
• d. Sequoyah h. pioneers l. Sacajawea
• ___ the first people to settle a new land
• ___ seizing sailors and forcing them to work on a
  ship
• ___ wrote The Star Spangled Banner
• ___ taking no sides in a dispute
• ___ name of the journey taken by Indians forced
  to move west
• ___ early explorer of Colorado
• ___ Indian who went with Lewis and Clark
• ___ explorer and early settler of Kentucky
• ___ frontier lawmaker famous for his stories
• ___ famous War Hawk and Kentucky senator

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Study Guides

• Create/distribute before beginning unit
• Use facts to make Pick-an-Answer cards and
  Memory Bank Cards
• Facts will be those needed for the test only

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Auditory

• Use a tape recorder
• Use a phone
• Repeat directions dont assume
• Number steps first, next, then, last
• Have them repeat directions
• Be sure they picture the same thing you mean
• Be specific Where is away?

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Encourage and Prompt

• Call on all children we call on boys 5-8 times
  more than girls
• Ask questions they can answer let them know you
  are going to ask them a question and then give
  the answer to them before class
• Give choices Is it Stephen Austin or Sam Houston
  who is called the Father of Texas?
• Call their names before asking a question

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Mnemonics/Auditory Cues

• Miss Venus Eats Mint Juleps Sitting Under
  Neptunes Porch
• Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter
  Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto
• Dr. Mario Sometimes Chooses
  Big Donuts
• Divide Multiply Subtract Check
  Bring Down
• I Am A
  Pig
• Indian Atlantic Arctic
  Pacific
• i before e except after c or when sounding like A
  as in neighbor and weigh
• When two vowels go walking, the first one does
  the talking and the second one is silent.
• Good, Better, Best
• Never let it rest
• Until the Good is Better
• And the Better is Best

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Aunt Alice Ate Apples Nearly Every Saturday
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Kinesthetic

• Use colored glue to write vocabulary/spelling
  words
• Use craft grids to write/trace vocabulary/spelling
  words/math facts
• Write words/facts in the air/in magic sand, on
  carpet
• Use Pick-an-Answers and Memory Banks

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Rounding Train
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You must teach/practice/model

• How to stand in line
• How to walk down the hall
• How to understand first, next, last, middle
• Time concepts such as yesterday, tomorrow, next
  week, last year, soon yes, even to only LD
  kids.

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Use tapping/movement
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• It takes time and effort
• What works for one child wont work for all
  children
• All children will usually benefit from some type
  of modification
• Modifications are NOT accommodations