ASD & Executive Functioning Accommodations - EDU 6644

This lesson begins with a student-centered discovery and inference activity. It relies on inference making as well as student-generated criteria to evaluate which documents reveal a cohesive truth about an historical event. As such, I considered the cognitive demands that such a student-centered activity would have on my students who struggle with executive functioning. I was intentional about the accommodations that I passed out at the start of the lesson (e.g. the prescribed group member roles as well as the timeline agenda). These provide a framework for these students to prioritize their role and content at hand and lessen their focus on the structure or stresses they may have about their role in the activity. Additionally, by circling one or two of the questions ahead of time, my students with executive functioning issues can have ample time to prepare their answer.

The second half of the lesson is the direct instruction that ties the larger narrative together and reveals to students how their inferences and evaluations of the primary source documents were correct and how they were incorrect. The direct instruction is a short 15-minute lecture and includes a visually stimulating and relevant slideshow that features mostly pictures of the four main characters of the story – this is a helpful focus for students’ attention. Additional resource accommodations during the lecture for my executive functioning students is to give them guided notes. These can be in multiple forms and have differentiated purposes and student tasks associated with them. The bullet point notes offer a summary script of everything I am saying during the lecture and offer a visual connections to tether student focus. These guided notes can be differentiated in two ways: include the slide pictures with lines for annotations or simply be a tangible resource for students whose motor skills or cognitive deficits might prevent them from taking notes during lecture.

As a teacher comfortable with lecture and a proclivity to rely on auditory instructions alone, I have learned that I need to consider both hands-on and written directions to supplement everything I am saying. Additionally, I need to reduce the stress of uncertainty have sign posts and agendas accessible for my students which will provide structure and hopefully create and environment with a few less things for their over-active brains to worry about and/or focus on.

In studying exceptional learners with specific focusing and processing deficits this quarter, I have become aware of the reality that “distracted” learners’ brains are often overwhelmed – not because they don’t pay attention to anything but instead because the are paying attention to everything. Their brains struggle to sort and organize and prioritize. I think the guided agendas, notes, printed questions, circling the questions you’d like those students to answer are all four specific strategies that I will continue to use with my students whose executive functioning deficits disrupt their learning.