Question

For High Scope Curriculum how should a preschool teacher accommodate for diverse needs? Discuss ways to communicate and collaborate with families to accommodate their diverse needs, such as different cultures, languages, and abilities.

Answer 1

I. Early childhood educators/preschool teachers are being asked to have deeper understandings of child development and early education issues:

i) to provide richer educational experiences for all children, including those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged;

ii) to engage children of varying abilities and backgrounds;

iii) to connect with a diverse array of families; and

iv) to do so with greater demands for accountability and, in some cases, fewer resources, than ever before.

Research on early childhood professional development must go beyond basic questions that address caregiver characteristics (e.g., credentials, experience) and their associations with attributes of knowledge, skill, or practice.

Accommodations:

Instructional accommodations are not just for students who are struggling. When accommodations are made, all students benefit. Accommodations do not fundamentally alter or lower expectations or standards in instructional level (conceptual difficulty), content, or performance criteria. Instead, changes are made in the instructional delivery method, assessment method, or both to enable the student to have access to the same learning and equal opportunity to demonstrate learning.

1. Content: What the student needs to learn. The instructional concepts should be broad based, and all students should be given access to the same core content. However, the content’s complexity should be adapted to students’ learner profiles. Teachers can vary the presentation of content, (e.g., textbooks, lecture,demonstrations, taped texts) to best meet students’ needs.

2. Process: Activities in which the student engages to make sense of or master the content. Examples of differentiating process activities include scaffolding, flexible grouping, interest centers, manipulatives, varying the length of time for a student to master content, and encouraging an advanced learner to pursue a topic in greater depth.

3. Products: The culminating projects that ask students to apply and extend what they have learned. Products should provide students with different ways to demonstrate their knowledge as well as various levels of difficulty, group or individual work, and various means of scoring.

4. Learning Environment: The way the classroom works and feels. The differentiated classroom should include areas in which students can work quietly as well as collaborate with others, materials that reflect diverse cultures, and routines that allow students to get help when the teacher isn’t available.

Ways to communicate and collaborate with families to accommodate their diverse needs:

1. Create a Plan for Adapting Materials: it is important to involve administrator andcurriculum or program coordinator from the beginning, and identify exactly who will be responsible for making, implementing, supporting and evaluating the adaptation over the course of the year. As much as possible, involve students, parents, paraprofessionals, and others. Adaptations that can benefit an entire class or several classes are more likely to be supported and   maintained.

2. Identify and Evaluate the Demands that Students Are Not Meeting: Observe students' performance when they usetypical instructional materials. They may have difficulty acquiring or getting the important information from written materials, storing or remembering the information presented in the materials, or expressing the information or demonstrating competence on written tests. If students have difficulty with a given task, different solutions may be required depending on the level of difficulty and the student’s individual needs.

3. Inform Students and Parents About the Adaptation: Adaptations are more successful when they are offered and introduced to students at the beginning of the year. Parents should also be informed about them at the beginning of the year. Students should be taught explicit strategies to use any adaptation effectively and how to process the information received through the adaptation. As students progress, they should be taught how to recognize the need for and request materials adaptations.

While the specific instruction will vary depending on individual student needs, all instruction for struggling students should be explicit (directly taught), systematic (sequenced so that skills build on one another, not left to incidental learning), scaffolded (supported instruction that is gradually withdrawn as students become more proficient) and modeled (teacher models both the task/skill and the thought processes to complete the task/skill).