JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Good morning, everybody. ALL: Good morning

JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Good morning, everybody. ALL: Good morning. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: We're going to actually each just introduce ourselves the first time...
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JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Good morning, everybody. ALL: Good morning. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: We're going to actually each just introduce ourselves the first time we speak, because it was just too much to write intros and have Maura(?) read them all. And this presentation has actually kind of evolved as we started planning it, which is a good thing. I'm Jeannine Brinkley. I work in the PaTTAN system. My office is in the Pittsburgh office, although I haven't been there very much lately. And my role is I'm the state lead on inclusive practices. I'm really excited to be co-presenting today with our colleagues, Sarah and Mariel, from University of Kentucky, and they'll each tell you a little bit about themselves, as well as Sharon, and our other team members, Dori Anderson and Debi, are here. It's really been a collaborative effort to put this together. And what's really exciting is this isn't just a conference presentation. This is something that really is, we're going to be using this content for continuing professional development throughout this year as part of a larger effort to really target the education of our students in Pennsylvania that have complex support needs. So I'm going to start. We're going to do a little bit of introductory information. You should have a blue folder with you. And in the folder, you have copies of the PowerPoint slides. We made them two slides per page because they're really rich with information, and we wanted to make sure you were able to see those. You also have a document on the right side called Pathways that we're going to have you use as a resource later in the day through the activity. The other thing I want to mention is originally this was structured as a morning presentation and an afternoon presentation. There still will be a morning presentation and an afternoon presentation. However, it's really going to be one big presentation. So if there are any of you who can't stay for the afternoon, you have all the materials, and there will be additional opportunities to get the content shared with you. But as we pulled it together, there wasn't, it was supposed to be instruction in the morning, IEPs in the afternoon, but there really wasn't a good division amongst that. It's really all quite intermingled, and so we made a decision to make it a full day. There are a few people coming this afternoon that weren't going to be here this morning, and we e-mailed them so they won't be surprised when they get here, hopefully. And so we're going to go from there. We have a lot of information. We're really excited about this opportunity. So let me just get started and review our outcomes for the day. Okay. So we're going to be working with you in, pardon me? Oh. Okay. We also, just one other little thing. We want to make sure that we address questions intermittently throughout the day, but we don't want to get too derailed. So we're going to try to ask you to balance the need to ask questions. If it's something that is really pertinent to your immediate understanding and being able to move on to the next part of the presentation, then please feel free to raise your hand and ask.

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If it's more of an in-depth question or something about like future implications of this, things like that, we ask that you put that on a Post-it note and put it on the parking lot. We'll pool those and address those at a couple times throughout the day. Or there may be some questions that we just can't answer yet. We really are in the development process of this. So for example, if, you know, if you have a very specific question about any implications for our IEP form or about assessment of our students with complex support needs, we may not be able to answer that yet, but we will maintain those and provide some answers to those at a future date. Okay? And we particularly want to welcome our IU partners. I know we have many of our folks from our intermediate units that are our partners in providing professional development, and we appreciate you guys being here. And we know you'll have lots of questions, thinking about taking this material and turning it around and sharing it with others, and we welcome those. Okay. So we're going to start with thinking about four outcomes today. So we're going to begin with identifying areas of the curriculum framework and defining instruction for students with significant disabilities. And let me just pause for one moment. We have a lot of different language we've been using to describe the students we're thinking about here. And in just a couple minutes we're going to talk you through which kids we're talking about here. So you'll see students with significant disabilities throughout the presentation. You'll see a few other terms, but we're going to just clarify that in just a minute who we're thinking about. We're going to identify a variety of resources to support instruction and assessment for our students with complex support needs, including using our SAS, our Standards Aligned System, as a resource for that instruction. Thinking about what does access to grade level content mean and look like for our students with complex support needs. We're going to demonstrate with you how to align functional goals that are aligned in standards-based general education curriculum. We're going to spend quite a bit of time this afternoon. You're going to get to delve into looking at a lesson plan and activities, thinking about how we might differentiate and modify that lesson so that it's accessible for our learners that communicate in a variety of ways. And then we're going to be starting to talk with you about potential connections between the IEP and the grade level general education curriculum. We're not going to, we're not at a place yet where we're ready to say to you, this is what a standardsaligned IEP for a student with complex support needs should look like. But we are going to talk with you and work with you in thinking about implications for present ed levels, for what kinds of goals and objectives you might be thinking about, specially designed instruction, as we begin to think about addressing not only the unique educational needs that we know this group of kids has, but also providing access to the general ed curriculum content at grade level for those students. And this is a framework that we've been using. We sort of borrowed it from our friends at University of New Hampshire. Those of you who are going to be here tomorrow will maybe get to hear Michael McSheehan, who's doing a presentation tomorrow on this approach. And we adapted this from their work. But you know, we have been working here in Pennsylvania, as many of you know, really focused work on inclusive practices in the last five years, and thinking

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about what does that mean. What is the point of inclusive practices? What are the pieces of that that need to be in place in order to really have meaningful benefit for our students? And so when you think about inclusive practice, we think about it kind of in three layers. It's membership. So you've got to be there and have opportunities to form relationships to belong, to be a counting member of that group, that classroom community. You have to have ways to participate in the activities, both in and out of the classrooms. And also, we want learning to be happening. We're not talking about just being there for the sake of being there. So this session today is really focused on that learning piece. What does instruction that results in learning, meaningful learning, both in the area of academics and other skills look like or what can it look like for our students with complex support needs? And now, I'd like to just introduce Lynda Lupp from our Bureau of Special Education. And Lynda's going to just give us a little bit of a preview of where we're headed here in Pennsylvania in terms of the future of instruction and thinking about assessment for these learners. Lynda is our, one of our favorite people from the Bureau, and . . . LYNDA LUPP: It depends what I'm, I guess what I'm talking about. So you construe it as a favor . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: . . . and Lynda's, I don't, you could tell them exactly what you role is in the Bureau, because I'm sure I won't get it right. But we welcome your sharing the Bureau's perspective on all this. LYNDA LUPP: Well, thank you, Jeannine, and thank you very much for the opportunity to just be here and be part of this today, and to share the direction that the state of Pennsylvania is moving in. And I must say that Pennsylvania, per se, is also driven by what's happening nationally. So I just want to take maybe five to seven minutes here this morning and just give you a brief overview of where we've been nationally as well as within the state of Pennsylvania, and where we believe we will be going across the next approximately five years with regards to assessment as well as instruction for our students with significant disabilities. Obviously, historically we know that in '97 IDEA incorporated the language for all of our students with disabilities about having access into the general education curriculum. And then shortly thereafter, there was the National NCLB legislation and regulations that then started to help states develop the assessment systems that would evaluate all of our students with disabilities, including our students with the most complex support needs. So as a result, in '99 Pennsylvania started working with the University of Pittsburgh, and we developed the PASA, the Pennsylvania Alternate System of Assessment. And we have had the PASA in place now since 2001. And of course, we started just with reading and math, because that's where the AYP measures were. And then over time, we filled in the grades so we had 3 through 8 and 11, and eventually we added one science back in 2007. So much of what every state does is truly guided by what's happening nationally in those two laws.

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Now both of those laws are actually up for reauthorization. So there is a lot of discussion and also a lot of speculation about what both of those laws will look like for our kids with disabilities, especially in the area of assessment, because assessment is quickly evolving. So let me talk to you a little bit about what is happening there with all of our students in Pennsylvania, and then where we might see implications for our students that we're discussing today. First and foremost, across the last 10 to 13 years there has been a significant amount of research that is focusing on what students can do in the classroom with regards to instruction and learning. And one of the key things that we are finding out is that, well, we have an extremely diverse group of kids that we're talking about today. If any of you have participated in a scoring conference, you know exactly what we're talking about, because there is a broad range of students, from pre-symbolic to emerging to symbolic, that are participating in the PASA. But some of the trends and what the research is showing, that out of the 1% population, we have about 1% of that 1% that is extremely difficult to measure, many times because they don't have a communication system in place. Not because we haven't tried, but just because their needs are so significant. So other than that 1% of the 1%, there is significant findings that we are being able to move a large portion of this group of kids instructionally and to be able to show that they're making progress. So I want you to have that piece of background kind of in there as you think about where we're going. One of the other very current topics, as you know, if you read Education Week, you look at publications from PSBA or PSEA. Of course, the common core, which has been developed through the National Governors Association, those common core state standards to try and have uniform standards across all of our states have actually now been adopted within Pennsylvania, and we have approximately 40 out of our 50 states that have adopted the common core. So Pennsylvania is not unique. This is happening, and the majority of the states have signed on to do this. And as a result of having the common core state standards at the national level, the federal government also made available moneys that states could then participate in what we call consortia, sort of like regional groups of states that could work together collaboratively to try and develop assessments then to focus on the common core and their state standards. Part of the, I think part of the focus has been because we want to be economically and fiscally responsible, and we also know that by joining together as states to have similar assessments, we have that opportunity to be efficient and to be economically responsible stewards of our education dollars, and we're also now developing assessments that are more common across states so we can have greater comparisons in how our kids are truly doing. So those are some of the key reasons that that had happened. And Pennsylvania has signed on to one of those consortia. Newly released, I'd say within the last three weeks, four weeks, was that the federal government now alerted all the states that similar moneys would be available for states to develop and join together and develop their alternate assessments aligned to their state standards and the common core standards. So there was a very quick, hurried flurry of activity among many states, and there were about I want to say six consortia, per se, across the country that a state could sign on to participate in.

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And Pennsylvania has signed on to work with the National Center of Educational Outcomes, NCEO, the National Center of Assessment, as well as the University of Kentucky, and there are additional partners. But this was a very, very popular consortia. We really topped out our numbers, probably more than any other consortia. When the feds put out the RFP to allow states to join together, one of the things that they based the dollar amount on was really figuring, one, that the maximum number of states that would participate in any consortia would be, at the most, 15. And this particular consortia, we're excited to say, has 19 states at the last time we had looked at things. So that goes to really speak about the integrity and the expertise that these groups have to lend to what we think can be brought to our students with disabilities. So you're thinking, okay, so what does that really mean for me in the classroom and for what I can perhaps expect over the course of the next five years, because that's what we're figuring on. Around 2014 is the time that we're anticipating that we would have a newly changed alternate assessment. We don't know what that might look like, but we do know that it would incorporate, obviously, the common core standards. We know that a focus will likely be upon growth of our students with significant cognitive disabilities, similar to but obviously slightly different from the PBAS(?) measure that we use for all of our kids. And some of that is really being driven by what will happen through NCLB and IDEA, specifically that many people speak to their legislators, parents, educators, professionals, researchers, teachers, and talk about the fact that our kids really can demonstrate growth, but many times smaller increments of growth. So there wants, there really is a desire to have that measure growth as part of the assessment process. So that is something I would say stay tuned for. It's nothing that's going to happen immediately for you in the classroom with regards to an assessment, but by approximately 2014, before then you would start to hear and be given professional development about what this new assessment would look like and how the students will be measured. Additionally with regards to the common core, the state of Pennsylvania, and you'll be hearing about this today as Jeannine outlined, is the Standards Aligned System, or SAS, which many of you at least are familiar with the terminology, and some of you may be actually very intimately involved with it and very familiar with how the system works. But Dr. Vollbrecht, who works in the Bureau of Teaching and Learning, who has raised a son with disabilities, came to the Bureau of Special Education and specifically said, he thought it was very important that we could meaningfully incorporate the alternate standards into the system. And right now, the standards are sitting on the system really as separate downloadable PDF documents, but we know that this is all going to change. We know that across the next four to five years, we have to do some work with our alternate standards, because we have to ensure that they're also aligned to the common core standards. So we know there's some work needs to be done there. But in the meantime, we do want to make them meaningful, we want to make them useful for teachers. So some of the work that we've already started occurred in June, where we used our consultants from the PaTTAN systems. We brought in Mariel. We brought in Sarah and one of their colleagues. We also work with educators, teachers, IU consultants, administrators. And for four to five days in June, we actually

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took lesson plans that were on the SAS system and we evolved them, so to speak, and we made significant modifications to them, incorporated some universal design principles into the systems, and we also broke out what a lesson plan would look like for our kids that are pre-symbolic, emerging, and symbolic as well. Because, as you know, it's extremely difficult. We can talk about what does it look like to include a student, because goodness knows, as a result of Gaskins in Pennsylvania and all the work that Jeannine and some of the consultants have done over the course of the last five years in inclusive education, you all have been exposed to it. But it's not easy work to actually, it sounds easy talking about it, about including a student in a general education classroom, but making it meaningful, like Jeannine was just showing with that diagram, it's more than just participation, it's learning. So we started to incorporate and take these lessons plans and talk about and make them user friendly. And in addition, we're going to be building up a system to start to include some videos of what does this really look like for our students with significant cognitive disabilities. So if you can't go out and see it in your own district or within your IU or a classroom next door in your building, you can at least log onto the system and see what it looks like with students similar to what you're teaching, and see that it can be done and how it can be done. So these are all some things that are happening currently. So I'm really excited. I think there's renewed emphasis on really focusing beyond assessment but also instruction, and making sure that we're moving, and I'm probably teaching the, preaching to the choir here, but really moving away from just focusing on the alternate standards as what we teach. I think we all know that that's just what's assessed. But when IDEA talked about access to the general education curriculum, that laid the groundwork to really say our students have to have access to the general grade level content and curriculum. It's just, how do we really make that happen. So there's a renewed emphasis on really helping everyone come together and get that accomplished for our kids with disabilities, I think in a way that we just haven't done so before. So it's an exciting time. It's going to be ever changing, so I say stay tuned, because we will have additional professional development. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Lynda, thank you very much. LYNDA LUPP: Mm-hmm. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: You guys were like in on the, I don't know, the ground floor, maybe even the basement as we build this foundation and move ahead. We really appreciate you making the trip up here, because it's, it is a lovely drive, actually, from Harrisburg to Penn State. Yes. If none of you have ever done that, the drive from Harrisburg to State College is beautiful. It lets you see parts of Pennsylvania that maybe you hadn't seen previously. Okay. So we're going to just talk for a few minutes in terms of identifying the students we're thinking about. Because you know, one of the things we found as we do our work in inclusive practices, if you can go into a school and you talk to people about, okay, we're going to be talking about students with significant disabilities or students

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with complex needs. What typically happens is the people in those schools, they think about the students they know who, in their mind, have the most significant needs. So if in that school the kids that they know that are most, have the most significant challenges, perhaps have emotional support needs, they might think of kids with significant emotional support needs. Or we've had folks that think about kids that have really challenging learning support needs in terms of, you know, reading many years separate off of grade level. So we just want to clarify quickly who the students are that we're thinking about today, and we'd like you to help us do that. So I just want you to take a couple minutes with the person next to you. Do a little think-pair-share here. And what I'd like you to think about is when you're thinking about students with complex support needs, and we're using this language because we feel that it really clearly articulates the group of students we're thinking about, but it also does not, what we really want to emphasize is that from our perspective, these are students that they challenge us sometimes, but we want to make the assumption that if, for example, as Lynda mentioned, if a student doesn't have a way to communicate, it's not because they don't have the inherent capability to communicate, it's because we haven't yet figured out how to give them that access. Okay? So I want you to just think about, and again, think-pair-share quickly. When you think about who's the complex support needs, what kind of learning characteristics do you think of them as having, what kinds of support needs. Be descriptive. What kinds of supports do you think these, that this group of students has, so that we're all on the same page with who we're thinking about. So really just take about three minutes with a neighbor and discuss learning characteristics and support needs of the students with complex support needs that we're thinking about. Okay. Okay. So just a couple of snippets. Somebody give me a thought about a learning characteristic or a support need. And if I know your name, watch out. You might as well just volunteer. Yes. Thanks. WOMAN: I'm going to say that the medically fragile child that may be on a ventilator and sleeps for a big portion of the day. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. That's one example. Absolutely. What else? Yes. WOMAN: Communication support for the child who is unable to express their language and even receptively being to understand. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. So kids who need intensive communication supports, both expressively and receptively. Okay, great. And what she said back there is students who might be, have medical fragility, needs those kinds of supports, may sleep a lot during the day, etc. What else? Yes. WOMAN: My twist was . . . multiple disability . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. So students with multiple disabilities. WOMAN: . . . hearing loss, speech loss.

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JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Hearing loss, speech loss. WOMAN: . . . loss. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. So needing sensory supports as well as physical supports, adaptations, accommodations. Great. What about this side of the room? Anybody? Yes. WOMAN: Students with dual sensory needs . . . and also . . . activities . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. WOMAN: . . . little volitional movement. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Students with dual sensory needs, little volitional movement, etc. Any other thoughts over here? Any other? Yes. WOMAN: Behaviors. Some students with . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. Students with challenging behaviors. And we do know that those, communication, a lack of ability to communicate your wants and needs often result in what we see as challenging behaviors. What else? Anybody else? Yes. WOMAN: Limited skills that typical peers have for daily routines and . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Limited skills that typical peers might have in terms of daily routine activities. So maybe needs supports for some of those things that other kids don't need supports for. Anything else? Okay. I think that's, that's really interesting, because you can tell this is a low incidence group. Because usually what we get is we get a little more descriptions, like things like kids who need life skill support and things like that. But this group, I think, is leaning towards kids with the most complex needs, which is great. Because we figure if we can do it well for kids with the most complex needs, we can do it for anybody. Right? I just, I want to do two things. First of all, I neglected to find out who you all are, not that I want to know individually. But I just want to get a sense of the audience. And then I'm going to show you two video clips of kids from Pennsylvania who we believe fall into this group of kids with complex support needs. So first of all, let me just see, how many of you are here because you are a teacher? Great. Great. All right. Now how many of you are, would consider yourself a special ed teacher? Okay. Do we have any folks considering themselves general ed teachers? Awesome. Welcome. How many of you are here because you're wearing your parent hat? Great. Great. How about related service providers? Excellent. Folks that are in technical assistance, professional development kind of support roles. Okay. Great. Supervisors, principals, etc. Great. And anybody I missed? Yes.

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WOMAN: School psychologist. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: School psychologist. Great. Wonderful. Okay. Anybody else? Okay, cool. All right. Now we're just going to look at these two clips quickly, because I think one of the things that Lynda mentioned that we all think about is although this group of kids compromises 1% to 2% of all of our kids, within that 1% to 2% of kids we have a huge range, don't we? We have kids, and if you think about the PASA, we have kids that communicate on the symbolic level, kids that are reading some words, kids with Down syndrome, for example. And we also have the kids with very complex needs in terms of multiple disabilities. So I just want to take a minute to show you a couple videos so we all have a good picture in our head. No, they are not captioned. I apologize. They're in the process of being captioned, actually. Sharon, where is it? I'm sorry. Is it on here? Okay, great. And these are, all these video clips, if you're interested in using them, they're all on the PaTTAN website and they are in the process of being captioned. They'll be put up here in caption format. This first video is Kevin and his mom Patricia. Kevin lives in the western part of the state. And they're going to, it's about four minutes long and you're going to hear their story, and then we're going to see Ian. While you're watching this, look at the . . . [Video played.] JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. So Kevin is certainly one example of students that we're thinking of in terms of having complex support needs, even though [video playing] oop, sorry. I didn't realize it would play again. Okay. You know, we still get, we get requests for assistance from parents of kids who have Down syndrome, who say, I'm transitioning my child from early intervention to kindergarten and the school district's telling me that my child needs to go over to this other school for this other school for this life skill support class and they can't be included in kindergarten. And so we need to change that, and we're working on changing that. But when we think about kids with complex support needs, that includes kids like Kevin and it also kids like Ian. And I'm going to let Sharon tell us a little bit about Ian while I get the clip up, and everything in between and around. SHARON: Okay. Ian is a young man who goes to school in an urban school setting. He has been included since preschool. He has been included because his mother has been very strong with that, with the district. And the district and the teachers and the staff have learned through lots of professional development over the years, I look at the consultant who's been working with them, that they are finding ways to connect Ian into what's going on into the curriculum. Ian is probably what we would call one of our presymbolic students. And it's very important as you watch this clip and you think about Ian and what he's learning in school, I want you to think about maybe what his goals might be as well as what might be the goals of the other students who are in the class with him at the same time. [Video played.]

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JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. When you think about Ian's classroom, and particularly think about that PE class at the end, what do you think might have been some of Ian's goals in that particular class? WOMAN: Maybe range of motion. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. Range of motion. WOMAN: Just tolerating the sounds . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. Tolerating the sounds and the noise. WOMAN: Turn taking. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Turn taking. How about gross motor? You think some gross motor skills? Okay. What do you think some of the goals might have been for some of the other kids that were in that classroom? Do you think turn taking would have been one? Gross motor? Right. Though Ian was getting some supplementary aids and services to help him be able to participate in that, he really had some of the same types of goals. Yeah, some different ones, but some of the same. Ian has been on quite the journey. And one of the things I do like to point out is that while we are talking about accessing the gen ed curriculum, and looking at instruction that's aligned to the standards, in this particular case Ian's IEP team determined the best place for that is in an inclusive setting. We certainly understand, and we want to, that there is a continuum of services, and we want to be clear about that, that we're not just talking about inclusive settings. But we have found that some of the richest access to the standards and instruction aligned to the standards occurs in that setting, but we understand that that can happen in a lot of different settings, as IEP teams might determine. So with that said, we're going to think a little bit more about our students. And we've been using the term symbolic, emerging symbolic, and pre-symbolic, and I do want to define that for you, because it's going to set the stage as we continue working through looking at content and what that instruction could look like throughout the rest of the morning. And when we talk about symbolic, we're actually, what we're talking about, there's students that are, these are communication levels and these are students that communicate using words or reading words and are looking and using sign perhaps, pictures. They are able to communicate with devices. Our emerging symbolic students are students who are using like tactile symbols, objects to communicate, maybe some beginning of sign, some beginning use of symbols, different type of symbols to represent picture symbols, to represent thoughts. Our pre-symbolic communication level are kids who are using eye gaze, gestures. These are kids that are leaning more toward using sound to communicate. So we just wanted to be very clear about that as we work through the rest of the morning.

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And then we also have to bring this up, because this is probably one of the largest aha moments that I had getting into some discussion at the national level with the experts and researchers across the country. And they use this term a lot, least dangerous assumption. How many people have heard that term before? Least dangerous assumption. What that means is that we, in the absence of conclusive data, it is our responsibility to assume that our students, that when we teach our student, that what we teach, even if incorrect, will have the least dangerous effect on the student to be able to function independently as adults. Translated, that means instead of saying, you know, if this student can learn this, if this student is able to do this, we turn that around to say, how can this student learn it. We don't make a judgment saying, you know, maybe they can learn about the history of the United States. Nah. We say, how can we teach that to this student. We make decisions based upon presuming competence, and that what we teach, we need to look at our instruction. And this is Anne Donnellan from back in the '80s. This has started a long time ago. Talks very clearly about if the student's not getting what it is that we're trying to teach, we don't just say, okay, that student's just not able to do it. That student can't learn. We say, what can I do to teach it differently so that that student can learn? How can I use what I know that student's strengths are and interests are to bridge those barriers so that student can learn what it is I want to teach them? Puts onus on the teacher. Lots of teachers here. And as a former teacher and a teacher for many, many years, I understand the responsibility that that puts on all of us. So I want to take, I want you to take a minute and I want you to turn to a partner, and I want you to read this quote together. Read it through the way it's written, and then I want you to read it again and I want you to take the dis off of disability and I want you to make the statement reflect viewing students through the lens of ability and what might this say. Viewing the students through the lens of ability may increase the likelihood of judging abilities and providing opportunities to learn what other students their age are learning. That sound something like yours? I heard some great discussions as I was going through the room here. There are some constructs we want to be very clear about as we move into really digging dip into the instruction and thinking about the IEP. And I'm going to start here at the bottom, just because I like to be different. When we think about general education and special education services, and we think about state standards, we need to recognize that state standards really drive the development of curriculum. It's not like, oh, there's those state standards and here's this other stuff that we teach. We know that state standards are assessed by no child left behind. There are certain contingencies we need to be aware of. And state standards reflect what, what's that word? ALL: All. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Louder. ALL: All.

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JEANNINE BRINKLEY: All students should learn. Okay. Now the IEP, when we think about the IEP, the IEP is not a curriculum. We're not going to be writing everything down there. We're going to be, as teams we determine what are the critical goals and objectives for students. But it does describe how students access education, how they make progress in the general curriculum, which is driven by state standards, and the IEP also addresses other very unique needs. Very important. What we're going to do is we're going to take a . . . WOMAN: Ten minutes. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: . . . ten-minute break. MAN: . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: It is . . . WOMAN: 9:49. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: 9:49. We want you back here and in your seats ready to go. We are starting, whether you're here or not. WOMAN: At 10:00. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: At . . . WOMAN: 10:04. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: 10:04. Thank you. See, I look to Maura. 10:04. And then we are going to turn it over to our colleagues from the University of Kentucky. All right. [Break] JEANNINE BRINKLEY: . . . really enjoy and learn from the information she has to share. SARAH KENNEDY: Good morning. I'm with the University of Kentucky's ILSSA group, and it sounds like a bunch of Norwegian women, but ILSSA stands for the Inclusive Large Scale Standards and Assessment group. And we're multi-gendered, so it's, I don't know how we ended up with that name, but somebody said, oh, we can make an acronym of this, mainly because we believe in all the things in our name. So we're okay with that. ILSSA is housed in the same office as the National Alternate Assessment Center. So very often, ILSSA staff are subcontracted with to develop materials, do meetings, you know, whatever NAAC needs. NAAC is ending their five-year federal, excuse me, grant before October 1st. So we were also contracted with building

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materials that kind of capsulize everything that has been done in the five years with the National Alternate Assessment Center. There will be observation tools for administrators to take and use and be able to walk into a classroom that should be standards-based and integrated individual needs of students, and be able to tell what's going on, where are some needs for that classroom, and how to address those needs. That will be materials for teachers in how to put together standards-based curriculum. But in addition to that, we know that IEPs need to be accessing those, that standards-based curriculum, but they also need to address the individual needs of the students. So a lot of our instruction is how to do a mind meld of the two so we don't lose anything. Trekkies come in all sizes, you know, mind meld. Anyway. To get that done, it takes a lot of professional development across the nation. And so Pennsylvania is very smart to help you . . . WOMAN: We lost the . . . line. SARAH KENNEDY: The materials I'm going to review with you this morning are from the National Alternate Assessment Center, and they are in draft. So if you're on slide 10, if you could just write draft across that. The reason, when we kind of put them into this PowerPoint, it lost the draft watermark. No, no, that's not your, that's the way it came to you is without it. The materials not only include just a stream of consciousness and how do you do this and what should it look like, and how close to the standard does instruction need to be, and when do you know when you've hit the mark, that you're on the mark with the standard, and all of the pieces of it, it also will include video. NAAC has had two meetings and another one going on as of tomorrow, where we have pulled expert panels together in reading, math, and science, and had them look at the common core of standards and review what are the big ideas, what are essential learnings that would go into a national alternate assessment or might be considered within that by one of the six consortia that are moving now. Within that group, they also looked at the PowerPoint that you're going to be reviewing with me right now, and made suggestions for additions. So I have a whole list of comments of add more samples, add more samples. Those of you who are teachers, you know that unless you see a picture of your own student up, in your stomach you say, that's not my kid. My kid's lower than that. But statistically, we know that in the alternate assessment . . . WOMAN: Testing. Testing. SARAH KENNEDY: . . . 1%. We only have 30% that are in that pre-symbolic, 30% of the 1%. The rest of the 70% students are emerging into symbolic. There's also a new federal grant that has just been put out, which the director of the National Alternate Assessment just received, Jackie Kearns, which is an in-depth study in communication. And their premise and beginning findings, the reason they got this grant, was that they found that most students who are pre-symbolic, whose communication is with cries and facial gestures, are really the ones that we have not figured out. But with good intense instruction, which will be their charge to share all that

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good stuff, with good intense instruction those students can become emerging communicators. So that their in-depth study in the beginning was with eight students in four states. And with that type of consistent intense instruction, which every teacher would love those people to come to my classroom and help me, found that all but one student had made progress in the six-month period. So it's what we're doing. We always look to ourselves, and never, and always presume that we have just not figured it out yet. So those are all the things that are coming with the National Alternate Assessment Center. Besides the grant that Lynda was previewing for you, the National Alternate Assessment will go away, but the ILSSA staff will take on their part in the GSIG, and we'll do all the professional development for the 19 states in that thing. So you know, during the day I always go, oh, isn't that wonderful? We will just be so busy. And about 2:00 a.m., oh, my heavens. Yeah, we can do this, we can do this. So if you want to look at all the materials that are up, they will be finished, they will be elaborated upon. The video will show more complex students. Even though, remember that that's only 30% of that 1%, so there will be video that shows students with a little more capabilities in learning and those who don't. But that will be up October 1st or 2nd. And the, for our one administrator here, the observation tools will be up at the same time. Another place to look for really good information in some of the research that's being used as they put together the GSIG is the National Center for Educational Outcomes out of the University of Minnesota. We just did a research study on the rubrics and types of assessments across the nation, and that's interesting reading if you want to know how, what any state does compared to other states. What we have found, though, through the research in the National Alternate Assessment Center is that no one way works better. You know, checklists don't work any better than portfolios. Portfolios don't work any better than performance tasks. What works best is a triangulated view with pieces of all three, because all three have their strengths and weaknesses. So that's part of the final report that will come out from NAAC is, guess what we learned? There's good and bad to all of it. There's no one way. And I think that that really is reflective of our students. There's not just one way to teach our students, because they are so diverse. And in one classroom you'll have so many different communication styles and needs and assistive technologies to get to everyone, that we need multiple ways to teach and multiple ways to assess. Most teachers assess standards either by assessing one specific skill within the standard or they will stop at a certain grade level and not get the student to the grade level they would be assessed in if they didn't have a disability, or they oversimplify concepts. And the difference, I think, in making this shift and gearing up to standardsbased instruction, it's really thinking about instruction not in terms of activities, like how to balance a checkbook, how to do something in a, grow plants in the window. You think about a self-contained activity. Think of concepts, mathematical concepts, text structure, text feature, concepts in reading that you integrate in many different lessons and not just separate activities. So what I'm going to show you are more units of study and also the background of how they came about. When we started putting together this material, we used some

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of the language that Diane Browder from the University of North Carolina used with the alignment studies for alternate assessments. So some of those are very easily transferred into instructional questions. So we're going to really think about instruction. There was a paper written about 12 years ago that said what gets tested gets taught. Well, the opposite is not true. What you teach doesn't always get tested. So if you're not teaching standards based, and that's what gets tested, then your students aren't ready from the test. So there is a direct correlation between instruction and assessment, and we need to get ready for the change, holding on to the best of what we've done before and moving ahead with how to look at the standards, unpack them, which is a term we use in just what are they, what do they mean? And if you don't have access to general ed teacher, no matter where you're teaching, that makes that task very hard. But after we unpack them, how do we present them? When do we know that we're on target with what that standard really means? So here are some questions. Is it academic, first and foremost? Is it math? Is it reading? Is it science? And when do we know when we have watered things down or come in at such a low level that it's no longer reading, it's no longer math, or it's no longer science? Is the content reference to the students assigned grade level? So even if within a conversation of scope and sequence or developmental, we have to always worry that the content and the material that we start with are grade level. We adapt from there, we modify from there, but that's our starting point. Does the focus of achievement maintain fidelity with the original grade level expectations? So what is the child doing? Is the student doing what other students in the same grade of the same age and in the same content area doing, just modified? And have we changed the complexity without changing the focus? You know, it's not how hard it is but what is it, what is he doing. And then, does the focus of the performance level maintain fidelity or is it closely aligned to the original content standard? What are they doing and at what level are they expected to perform? And that gets to that complexity. How many of you all have heard of Dr. Norman Webb's Depth of Knowledge Levels? Okay. Not very many. Well, you're going to hear about that several times today, because that's how we find out how close we are on target to the grade level content standard that your student needs to have access to the curriculum based on it. That was a big long sentence, but it's just that, that that's how you find out if you're on target, by knowing the DOK level. DOKs are all about verbs. So if you know where your verb falls in what you want the student to be able to do, then you'll know if you're keeping on track. And we're going to give you some tools this afternoon to be able to do that a little easier. Basically, a DOK level of one is a recall of information. How many of you watch Jeopardy? The entire show is based on a DOK level of one. It's not brain surgery. It's recall of information. So when we ask students to match or, you know, just come up with information that is readily available and right in front of them and they just got, then that's a DOK level of one. If we ask them to do some comparison between one character and another in a story, then we're asking for them to do a little higher order thinking, and that's a DOK level of two.

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If we ask them to analyze what they thought about the character and how that character relates to another character in another story, and we get to the question of why, that's a DOK level of three. And a DOK level of four is extended thinking. It's looking across time and many different materials to come up with an answer or a studies answer. We're going to study this problem and you're going to come up with a solution at the end of an extended period of time. And that's why state assessments rarely, if ever, have DOK levels of four, because it's, you can't do that on a ready test that a child sits down and does multiple choice. So one through four are the DOK levels. By knowing where your verb falls in that, if I'm asking a student to match the character with his motivation, I need verbs that go along with DOK 1. He can identify, he can match, he can draw a line between the two, but I'm staying all on the same level. When I get up to analyze, DOK level of three, then I have to do specific things in instruction to keep him at the level of that, or I need to understand that my student isn't ready to analyze and I need activities to help him understand underneath that, compare, contrast, and getting ready to analyze. But part of it is just understanding where you are and what your goal is within that content standard. So within the questions that we're going to go through today, we picked out just a few so that we could isolate the conversation and really get to where do we need to be and when do we get to the target. So is it academic? Is it reading? Is it math? Is it science? Is the learning target typical of students in the same grade and in the same content? Are we expecting the same level of performance as this student? That's that DOK level. If we're going for compare and contrast, how do we modify materials so that our students can get into that level of understanding within material? And then, is it meaningful? Now the conversation around meaningful has changed in the last few years. We're really rethinking what functional is. And as we do that, we have more and more to integrate into instruction. I was head of Kentucky's Alternate Assessment from 1990 to 1997. And in the beginning, most of Kentucky's teachers looked around and saying, why are you making us do this when no one else is doing this? And then after about five years, it was, how can I do this on top of whatever else I'm doing? And after five years of all that instruction, I finally looked at them and said, what are you doing? So you really have to understand how to do that mind meld, because you will be worn out at the end if you try to do everything you're doing now, if you're not teaching to the standards, plus trying to put in the standards-based instruction. So I think today is a good mix of rethinking what functional is, keeping students' individual IEP needs in mind, and also slowly moving toward, step by step, to standards-based instruction. So let's look at some examples of this. How teachers should use the strategies involved is to make clear learning targets instruction. What do I want my student to know, and do I understand when I've met the standard or that I'm still working toward it and not stopping too short of the goal? Identify what's being measured. If you're doing formative assessment, which that data collection, you teach, then you take a classroom assessment, and you teach, and you take a classroom assessment. What are your goals? When do you know the students made the mark and when do you know that the mark you have set is getting

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the student to that grade level content standard and the curriculum that has been based upon it. So when we look at instruction, we need to recognize, is this just, this is an initial activity. I'm getting the student into the content. Am I building skills, getting them ready for the big target of meeting the standard? Now most alignment studies of alternate assessments, and alternate assessments are a byproduct of instruction, hopefully, would say that our students will never absolutely meet the standard. So we use the language of we're near the standard or we're really off, we're far from the standard. And that's the language I'm going to use today. When we're far, that means may be working at a different grade level. We may not be hitting all the components of a content standard. And then when we're near is that we are hitting far more of the components of a standard and we are on grade level, either they're in materials or using the skills around that content standard. So let's go through a reading activity and see how these questions play out with the materials that a student is using. This comes from the common core. And the way the reading is laid out in the common core, it is integrated with writing and also integrated with social studies. So there, it's not just reading in isolation. It's reading within many different content areas for understanding. We're going to specifically use a grade 9-10 standard, and it's analyze how an author's choice concerning how to structure a text, order events, like parallel plots, and manipulate time, such as place, pacing and flashbacks, to create such effects as mystery, tension, and surprise. Now at least four of you have just said, ah, no way. But that's the goal here, is to show you a way to adapt this for the majority of alternate assessment students. We can't show every adaption, but we can show the most common ones. So here's the question. If a student, Josh, is going to put, use, the material is Romeo and Juliet. All right, I just lost another four people. You're teaching this student. He's going to take the story of Romeo and Juliet that has been modified down and adapted with pictures and words, and he's going to order the events of what happened in the story. Now how does that go back to the standard that I just read to you? So is it academic? Yes. He's reading Romeo and Juliet, modified and adapted. Is the learning target typical of a student working at the same age? Well, now we're going to call that a far link, because students working at the ninth and tenth grade level would not need to order the events of a, you know, put the story sequence in order. So he's literally putting picture symbols in order as they happen in the story. No, other ninth and tenth graders are beyond that. Is the level of performance typical? Now remember, he's just putting in order. That's a lower level DOK. And he is not looking at how pacing a story, building suspense moves to him analyzing and using pieces of evidence within the text to know how the author did that. So, no, it's a far link. He's just ordering events, and that's an application, which again is a DOK level of one. So building skills and knowledge. Now this is using a graphic organizer. So now the student is being taught to get to the detail of the story, not just putting them in order but what are the parts. Story mapping, graphic organizers used with picture symbols and objects are great tools for students to organize information and gather information. And it's a tool that really goes far beyond just reading. They can use it for so many

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different functional activities as well as content activities. So this is Romeo and Juliet got married. It's a secret. These are all the details around the main meat of the story of that they got married. Now he completes the graphic organizer and lays out the details. Is it academic? Yes. Is the learning typical of a student at his grade level? Well, he's working on Shakespeare, but he's just doing the details and he's not really thinking about how the author's craft and pacing created that mystery. He's not thinking about that. He's not being taught that. Is the level of performance the same? He's just recalling detail and he's not really getting to the DOK level of analyze. So now let's see how much, how close we get with this. He is getting to text structure. Now do we know what text structure is? What's text structure? I wrote down a list, just so to help you along. It's when an author uses cause and effect. They set up a problem and then there's a solution within the story. There's a description. There's sequencing and/or compare and contrast. But all those things are what authors use to set up and develop plot. A text feature would be like the heading, a table of contents, a picture with a caption. So just so you, you know, there are all type of literary language pieces, and it's just knowing what you're going for. Now when you look at a standard, part of that unpacking is understanding what you need to go for. So if you looked at that standard and said, what is text structure? Structure, okay, it's on three pages, that's structure. Well, but it's not. And how we learn how to do that is to have your best friend ever be a grade level reading teacher, and that's how we learn what these things mean. So, and wait until we get to math. It gets worse. So setting up, teaching the student about problem and solution. He has a list of questions and he answers the questions, and he has questions that don't apply. Those are the distracters. And we want to get him to the point where he can tell us, because of the structure of the text and the problem and solution setup, how does the author manipulate it to show suspense. So he has sentence strips that he puts next to each of those, that he can choose from an array of sentence strips that answer each of those questions. Now how you get to the point where you can use sentence strips with Boardmaker or Writing with Symbols, well, that's where you're teaching each of those and you use them many time across many different stories. So that's vocabulary instruction, which is really the bedrock of all instruction, is to get to the point where your student can communicate at many levels. Now if I had a student who could not do sentence strips, I may have one-word answers paired with a picture, paired with an object. So I'm using multiple means of representation. I would never stop at just an object. Even though I know that the student is learning to use objects, I would always use the full communication breadth of object, picture, word, because I don't want to ever assume that I know where he'll stop. I always assume that I'm going to give him all the tools he needs to learn, maybe in very small chunks, but he's presented with all three levels so that, you know. Students don't learn on my timetable. They learn on their own. This student is at the point where he can use sentence strips and read along.

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WOMAN: . . . do you consider Josh to be a symbolic . . . SARAH KENNEDY: Emerging to symbolic, yes. Now how can I tell if he's, the difference between emerging symbolic with this example? I would probably have far fewer pictures and more words. And that's one way that you can get a student to go from emerging to symbolic, is start taking out the pictures of the words you know he knows. So you might have a sentence strip that then only has two pictures, and then a sentence strip with just maybe the first cue so that he gets an idea of what things are about until he's reading without pictures. But still in greatly modified text, which means they're very small chunks, that very clearly give the meaning of what you're going for, like the story of Romeo and Juliet. There is just, because you asked me that, the deaf-blind project at the Rhode Island College or the University of Rhode Island, and I'm sorry. I'll look that up and get right back with you this morning about what that is. They have taken many classical texts and modified them and put them in picture symbols. So if you want to see what that looks like, that's a good website. Just deaf-blind project Rhode Island will get you to the same place. WOMAN: . . . say that . . . SARAH KENNEDY: The deaf-blind project in Rhode Island. WOMAN: I'll write it . . . SARAH KENNEDY: Okay. WOMAN: . . . Juli Baumgarner, who is their state . . . blind person to be able to direct you to . . . WOMAN: She's here. SARAH KENNEDY: And she's here. Yeah. I talk about their work all the time, because they did that eight years ago before anybody was taking classical text and doing it. They take text that, a lot that is not under copyright, so it could be fairytales or myths that don't have copyright problems and they'll use those to teach students stories. We went for a long time, we didn't read to students. We didn't expect them to understand the story, so we didn't bother to read to them. And they lost that candus(?) of speech that a story gives, the rhythm of reading. So that's all part of changes in the wind in the last few years. All right. Looking at text structure and problem and solution, is that academic? Yes. Anybody think it's not academic? Because you're not nodding. I just thought I'd tell you. Is the learning target typical of a student in that grade? Well, they're passed that, and he's not relating the problem and solution to absolute text. And is the level of performance the same? It's recall. It's recalling detail to answer questions, but it's not, it's comprehension but not analysis.

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So analyzing how an author uses structure of text to show tension. Now we're getting closer to the mark. It's not like we had to go through all those steps, although some kids have to go through all that in a unit of study about text structure. But this is closer to being the near link. Shakespeare uses pace, and the student marks the answer, to create tragedy, tension, problems. Romeo and Juliet marry in secret, and that's a fast pace within the book. And Romeo kills himself. We did some video that goes with this, and the student was in that, was doing that very first activity of putting the sequence in order. And he did really well right up to the end, and he would never put that Romeo kills himself. And he, and the teacher kept going, you know, I don't understand why he won't get the last part of the sequence. And he told her. He didn't want Romeo to die, so he wouldn't put the picture down. Smart kid. Yeah, if I don't pull that picture down, it doesn't happen. And then analyzing how the author uses structure of text to show tension, and this is pacing. How, when does this happen and what does it do? Does this part make you happy? Does this part make you sad? Are you scared at what's going to happen to Juliet? And they pace through the story. Now, answer the questions. Is it academic? Yes. Is the learning target typical of what another student would do at the same grade? We are near the link. Yeah, even though drastically modified and adapted, we are still working with the standard and its components. And as a near link in the level of performance, Josh is analyzing how fast pace and order of events causes emotion in an audience. How does this make you feel? So that's the reading. All right, now hold on, because here's the math. And the reason I say that is that I took four semesters in geology at UK as an undergraduate so that I would not have to do math. So my eyes will glaze over, as yours do, if you're not a math person. Okay. One thing that when we understand about math is that last piece. It is why a mathematical statement is true and where does the math come from. That I understand. Why is this correct? Now if you use a calculator, you can't peel the top off the calculator and say, why did you do that? I really don't care why it did that. I just want it to do it. But I have to know what buttons to push to get it to do it. So you have to have some understanding of what mathematical concepts are, and especially for our students. And when we get to the high school level, it gets to the point where you've really got to understand what the math is to be able to teach it. And if you're not a math person, again, your best friend ever is a math teacher to break it down. So if you look on the website for the common core, and I'm not sure if Pennsylvania has a link to the common core standards or if it links to the Department of Education in Washington for the common core. But we'll find out for that, too, so that you can look at them. The reading and math are now close to being on a draft, but they haven't worked on the science yet. They are in the process of working on common core science. But in reading them, they are broken down into very clear areas of mathematical concepts, and you find your grade and the concept that you're thinking about, whether it's fractions, data analysis, or just number and operations to . . . ten, and then you could read the skills underneath that. The way that they're written, it really breaks down within the concept of number and operation where, because they're in grade band, you can see where the student

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would have been working the year before and what they should be working on this year. And by looking at it that way, it gives you a better idea of what does that standard really mean if you don't have access to that gen ed teacher. So the example that I'm going to show you is working on linear equations with only one variable, and giving examples of linear equations with one variable, with one solution. Now we're going to break it down so that it's a little easier to understand, and I would read you the equation at the bottom. X equals A, A equals A, or A equals B. That sounds like my checkbook. And I want you to know that that is always where A and B are different numbers. All right. So this is the standard as it stands, and this is probably why so many special ed teachers, who have no content background, have a problem. So I'm going to read this to you. Construct a function to model a linear relationship between two quantities. Determine the rate of change in initial value of the function from a description of a relationship from two, like X and Y, values, including reading these from a table or a graph, interpret the rate of change, the initial value of the linear function in terms of the situation it models and in terms of its graphs or table of values. Raise your hand if your eyes just glazed over. See there? I'm not alone. Okay. Now we need to break this down so we understand it, because you cannot teach what you don't understand. So let's start, as we did in reading, with where do we start with this or what do I need to do first or where would most teachers stop. Because they don't understand it, they're only going to do this much. Now are they on the mark? Create a growing number pattern with the rule of five. We so often teach students to count by fives. Five, 10, 15, 20, 25, that's a pattern but not a linear equation. So is it math? Yes. Is it the same learning typical of a high school, this is an eighth grade student, pardon me, is it typical of that? No, it is a far link, because he's creating a number pattern based on a constant rate of change. It's always by five. So now we know what that constant rate of change means. Is the level of performance typical of a student working at the same grade? No, it's a far link. I mean, he skipped counting. He's not determining the rate of change on a variable or an outside influence or between two variables, and we were just going for one. If the instruction was to complete an input/output table with a rule, all right, so I have one and I always add two. So on the output it would be, on the input it would be one, and if I always add two, the output would be three. If the input is five, what's the output? WOMAN: Seven. SARAH KENNEDY: Seven. Oh, you're so, you're really good. Okay. So the learning target is typical of a student the same age? No. Eighth grade, that's not what they do. And is the level of performance typical for a student? Is at the same level that we need to be? It's a far link, because he's not determining the constant rate of change for a linear equation and he's not using variables or outside influences or knowing the relationship between those influences.

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If the instruction was that Josh would use models to determine the relationship between variables and determine linear functions, would that be closer to the link? It's academic, it is math. And is it typical learning of other students at the same grade? Yes. Now we're at a near link, because he's determining the relationships between variables and determining how that affects a linear equation. It's also a near link in the performance, because he's going to model, he's going to use a model, and the model are he's making a fence. So we've taken a very abstract, you know, kind of mind-boggling what is this, and got it down to where it's an application that our students can understand and still be a near link. So rate of change first. If every hour a builder can put in one unit of fence, then this is your input and output. Every hour is a unit of fence. In two hours, it's two units of fence. In three hours, it's three units of fence. Five to five. Yeah. So he can understand that in a linear equation, he can get, in six hours, how many units of fence can be done? And he has one variable and the linear equation, and that's how he was taught this mathematical standard or concept within the standard. Yes. WOMAN: Can you just talk a little bit about how you or the people that came up with that sequence to get from the standard of what you just showed us, what the process was that they go, or how would one know? Is that a typical sequence that one might take in a math class and . . . SARAH KENNEDY: Yes. WOMAN: Okay. SARAH KENNEDY: The question was can you explain how they ever came up with fences. And it is from the special ed teacher's best friend ever, who was an eighth grade math teacher, that said, now let's just break this down. This is how I teach it in the classroom, but they may take it to many other different levels, but this was one example that the special education teacher says, I know how to do that. Now I understand what linear equations are. Now I know what a variable is. It's the time in the input and output, and it all came together. And she figured if it comes together for her and she understands it, she can teach it. So that's part of the battle with all this, is being able to understand and teach. Now I do have a video that I'd like to show you of another student learning about patterns that go to linear equations. And I just need to go out of this for a second and go into this. [Video playing] MAN: Leslie is a high school student who is nonverbal. She uses eye blinks to answer yes, no. She uses eye gaze and augmentative communication devices to communicate. Leslie is working on identifying patterns. There are four choices on a rotary . . . WOMAN: Okay, Leslie. Use your head switch and show me a pattern from which quadrant has its pattern. All right.

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SARAH KENNEDY: Head switch moving. MAN: Leslie is a high school student who is nonverbal. She uses eye blinks to answer yes, no. She uses eye gaze and augmentative communication devices to communicate. Leslie is working on identifying patterns. There are four choices on a rotary . . . WOMAN: Okay, Leslie. Use your head switch and show me a pattern from which quadrant has its pattern. All right. [End of video] SARAH KENNEDY: Now Leslie is a student who would have been identifying, sorry, who would have been identified as pre-symbolic. For most of her early education, she laid on a mat because she couldn't tolerate her wheelchair. So they finally figured out, and it's not a finally. It's not like they weren't working to try to figure her out. It took forever for them to get expert help in to say, do we see a response to stimuli. And when they did, they saw that she does eye blink and can do eye blink to yes, no. Now I always think that, you know, while we took eight years to figure out that she eye blinks to yes, no, Leslie had something inside of her that was learning but couldn't tell anyone she was learning. That always really bothers me. You know, I think that's why I always presume competence, because of what I don't know not because of what I know, and not because I know how to do something. I always figure that I just haven't figured out something yet. So for all those students who would laying on a mat and not communicating for eight years of their schooling until we figured out that she can do this, and now she's learning patterns in algebra. That's, I like situations like that. Okay. So let's go to science. Oh, doggone it. I'm sorry. Okay. We're going to talk about a young lady called Marnie, who, she has no peripheral vision. All her materials . . . WOMAN: . . . SARAH KENNEDY: Okay. All right, stop right there. WOMAN: . . . SARAH KENNEDY: That's good. That's good. She needs high contrast colors and she uses a Big Mac switch to communicate. Now in the past, all her communication has been with a Big Mac switch of yes and no. Now you think about instruction of what you can do with yes and no. It's very limited. So they are learning, they are expanding her repertoire of answers with her Big Mac switch, more than yes and no. But this still, this is how it's used in this. The fourth grade concept in science is magnets attract and repel each other and certain kinds of other materials. So, you know, elementary students would take a

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magnet and they'd go all over the room, what makes the magnet go to it and what makes it not go to it, and the keep charts about what's a magnet go to and what's it doesn't. And that's the beginning of that concept learning. So what she first worked on was to cross midline, because she had to put whatever was a magnet over in a bin. So they put data on how was she crossing midline. And then the science teacher said, well, now we know how she crosses midline, but what does she know about magnets? So you have to watch that when you rethink functional that you don't rethink all the way out of content. So if following directions is a functional task, following directions to do what within the content. So we can practice following directions in folding laundry, but you can also follow directions in how to take, look at a magnet, does it fit? Yes. Put it in the bin. You have step by steps in a process of scientific experiment. So you have to watch how we do this and make this change. So she's crossing midline. Is it academic? No. If we're taking data on crossing midline, it is not academic. Is it the same learning typical of other students in her grade? No. And it's not at the same performance, because none of this is academic. So if we want to read and we're looking at a science content skill, reading alone would not be content or science. It's what you're reading, what you're learning that's science. So, now she has a big magnet and she has an elevated board in her field of vision, and she has yes and no switches. And so she puts, she's handed an object, and if it sticks to the magnet it's a yes. She hits the yes button and moves it over to the yes, it is, the magnet will go to it. It goes in the yes bin. So she looks first at the objects and she makes a prediction. Will this be hooked to the magnet, yes or no? Now that prediction, using her voice output, is academic. And is this the learning of a typical student? It's far closer to what other fourth graders are doing as they go around the room and they're trying to find out, make a prediction, and then answer their prediction. It's scientific inquiry. In fact, most science standards all the way up through high school first ask students to set up scientific inquiry, make a prediction, run your experiment, check your prediction. Is the level of performance the same as other students? Well, we're not to the target yet. She's making a basic prediction, but it's not based on the properties of the material, like all metals do something, all wood does not. She's not making a global answer to what does and does not attract a magnet. So what if she sorted objects that were attracted to the magnets and objects that were not so that she could group wood, metal, paper, glass? Is that academic? Yes. Is it something another student would learn in the same grade level? Yes. They would sort and learn the properties of different materials and if they attract magnets. And is the level of performance the same? It's still a far link. She's still just classifying rather than really making that jump to a broader statement. And she's working at a very simple level, but that is where she is at this point with her communication. So what the teacher needs to know is that you're on the track but you haven't hit the target yet. So teachers who use the materials that all right here from the National Alternate Assessment Center, that's to ask those questions and see where you are with instruction. All right. High school, heredity, biological evolution, behavior of organisms. We're going to talk about meiosis. And meiosis is if your father has brown eyes and

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your mother has brown eyes and both sets of grandparents have brown eyes, guess what? You're probably going to have brown eyes. See, I just modified that down for you so you wouldn't have to worry about it. All right. Students will develop an understanding of the molecular basis of heredity. Remember your best friend ever is a science teacher. Meiosis is taught in the classroom many different ways, and it can be as easy as knowing traits, heredity traits. So X's may have all squares on one, all big squares on another, and different colors. How do they cross over? Now you can learn a process where you set up the chromosomes, you show the crossover, you illustrate the results, and you explain what happens. Have you hit the content standard yet? Cory will model and explain the process. This is his process. Is it academic? It is. Is this learning of other typical students? No. Well, it is close. It's a near link, I'm sorry. Students who are working on meiosis do this, but what they don't do is just follow a series of steps. Because he really can't explain the steps, all he can do is follow them. So it's not at the same performance level. So let's look, he is building a Rebop. Does anybody know what a Rebop is? WOMAN: Nope. SARAH KENNEDY: There are two terms here, Rebop and Punnett square. Punnett square is that my dad has brown eyes, my mom has blue eyes, what are you going to get? Purple eyes. You know, it's what your recessive and dominant genes are in your family. Sometimes it's easier to think about a little mythical animal who has two antennae, a curly tail, and two humps than to talk about what your mom and dad had, because a lot of kids don't live with the parents they were born to, born with. They live in adopted or foster care. They live in a residential placement for our students. So it was easier to take them to a different level about what does this little animal have. So a dominant AA is two antennae, and a recessive is an Aa, one antennae. The Punnett square is below, where what is Aa? It's one antennae. And he takes the antennae and he takes picture symbols and puts them where they belong with dominant and recessive and dominant/recessive genes. So he's making a model. Now is this academic? Yes. Is he learning what other students would learn about Punnett squares and meiosis? Yes. All students are working on this to show dominant and recessive traits. The only difference is that he gets a lot of information given to him, and it's very much reduced, and most other students would be doing this independently who were learning this concept. So we get a little bit more complex, and that he'll identify the traits of the Rebop, his little animal, using selected indicators. So it's an antennae and the tail and how many humps. So you go through. I won't read you all those, but he is making a circle or a dot over what equals what this little guy on the side has, one antennae, two humps, and a curly tail, noting which are dominant and which are recessive genes or indicators. So is this academic? Yes. Is it what other students are doing? Yes. And, but he's doing it but not at the same performance level as all students. He is matching hereditary traits and indicators, but not working through the process of meiosis itself.

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So we go to a higher level. Cory will predict if his Rebop will be the same or different when comparing indicators as another. So same or different. He's predicting up at the top scientific method, and then going through Rebop 1 and Rebop 2 to see what are dominant and recessive indicators. He'll check his prediction, which is also part of scientific investigation, to come up with the total of dominant/recessive genes. Now is this academic? Yes. It's also a near link to both not only what other students are learning but also how it is set up in the level of performance for students who are working at the same grade level. So you may have to start a student in the initial activity and build the skills until you finally reach the target. Our goal in working with these materials is that they are expanded to many more examples, and they also go into greater detail on different standards. And then we have a video to match, and I do have the video for this, and hopefully we have a better chance of getting back into the . . . [Video playing] WOMAN: Okay, Cory. We're going to fill out the Rebop that you created and a Rebop that John created. First, let's make a prediction. Do you think your Rebop is going to be the same or different than John's? CORY: Different. WOMAN: You think it's going to be different? Well, let's fill it out and see, okay? How many antennas did you say you had in your, on your Rebop? CORY: I said one. WOMAN: Good job. Could you select the answer and put it right here? Okay. Let's look at John's and see how many antennas he had. CORY: He had two. WOMAN: Good job. He had two antennas on his Rebop. So, Cory, can you explain your answer here? Are they different or are they the same? CORY: They're different. We have one, I have one and John's have two. WOMAN: Great job, Cory. You're exactly right. Can you find the answer? You said they were different, because your Rebop has one antenna and John's has two. Let's move on to the tail. Do you think your and John's Rebop is going to be the same or different? What's your prediction? CORY: They'll be the same.

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WOMAN: You think they're going to be the same? Well, let's see if you're right. How many, or what did you say your tail was going to look like on your Rebop, curly or straight? CORY: It will be curly. WOMAN: Good job. Let me get you some answers. Okay. Can you find, you said your Rebop was going to be? Good job. Let's look at John's and see what he had. What did he have for a tail? CORY: He had a straight. WOMAN: Good job. Okay, Cory. Your prediction was that the tails would be the same. Let's explain your answer. Are they the same or are they different? CORY: They're different. WOMAN: They are different. Can you show me the answer and then tell me why they're different? CORY: They're different because my tail is curly and John's is straight. WOMAN: Good job, Cory. You're exactly right. Your tail on your Rebop on your curly and John's is straight, so they're different. Good job. The last trait that we're going to look at is the humps. Can you look up here and show me what you had as your Rebop? Did you have one hump or two humps? CORY: I had two. WOMAN: Good job, Cory. You're going to put your answer here. Now let's look and see what John had. CORY: John had two humps. WOMAN: Okay, good job. Can you put your answer here? Okay. Now let's explain what we have. You have two humps and John has two humps. Are they the same or are they different? CORY: They're the same. WOMAN: Good job. Why are they the same? CORY: Because both of them had two humps. WOMAN: Good job, because they both had two humps. Good job, Cory. Okay, Cory, overall when we look at your Rebop and John's Rebop, are they the same or different?

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CORY: They're different. WOMAN: How come? CORY: Because I got one antennae and he got two antennas. And I got a curly tail and his tail is straight. WOMAN: Good job, Cory. Even though you had one thing that was the same, overall, your Rebop is different. Good work. [End of video] SARAH KENNEDY: Some of the things that will be changed are, in this PowerPoint are, thank you, are that additional standards will be met, but also that the students would have, we'd show more students with more complex needs doing the same type work, and how would you modify it, and what type of communication needs would they have. So we'll have a range. Not every example would be always for the most complex needs, because that doesn't reflect the total number of students in the alternate that need that type of adaptations. So if you have comments or you have a suggestion on how to improve the PowerPoint and what would be meaningful for teachers, if you could write it down and give it to me or Mariel, we'd appreciate it. But this is set up for your next conversation about how do you take an activity or a lesson, excuse me, from a general ed classroom, and especially from all the material that you have on the SAS, and adapt it to specific learning needs and still stay on the target of that activity. So pace it over to Jeannine. Thank you. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: I know the first time I saw and listened to this, it gave me a lot of things to think about. So what I'd like to do, actually, is give you a few moments just to talk again with someone at your table, and just think about the three activities we just saw, the reading, the math, and the science. And I'd like you to think about students that you know and think about what the implications might be for a student you know, thinking if you were going to maybe tackle one of those lessons for that student, and see if you have any questions. We also have some questions back there, so we're going to get those and respond to some of those in a few minutes. So let's just take about five minutes and talk with one of your neighbors, and just think about a student you know and think about how you might, the implications of beginning to think this way about instruction for that student. SARAH KENNEDY: . . . of how on earth can I do all these adaptations for all my students, and I understand that problem. And the best way to think of it is small steps, just start building materials and keeping them, and then you'll use them again next year for when you teach magnets to the next class, and you end up with more and more adaptive materials. Share across your district, share with teachers in your school, and

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share with your gen ed teachers, or if you have access to gen ed teachers, I would share with them, too. Because they, we have found that adaptive materials, that even general education students like to use adaptive materials, books that are on tape, books with picture symbols. They learn in many different ways, too. So everybody uses them. The study that I talked about with the eight pre-symbolic students and the one made progress, that was a study that was used specifically to get this grant, and they'll be expanding on it. And the final study with, I think it's a three-year endeavor, that would, it'll be put out in whatever venue was required by the federal grant they received, whether it's, how it's delivered, I'm not sure. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. And, you know, related to some of those questions, I do think, and I have a couple to answer, but we're going to, in a few minutes we're going to share with you the Standards Aligned System portal, which is a tremendous resource. And while I think we are, as we said, we're really on the ground floor here. So we absolutely know that we need to be able to show and demonstrate how this kind of instruction can be provided in a variety of instructional settings. But I also do think that as you listen, certainly as I listen and think about the reading, the math, the science, I know myself that I didn't know what a Rebop or a Punnett square was the first time I heard this. Therefore, it would have been really, really hard for me to teach this if I was by myself, if I didn't have an opportunity to at least collaborate in planning with someone who knows the content. And so while we know that kids are in a variety of settings, one of the challenges before us is going to be if I am in a setting and I am teaching and I don't have access to general education content experts, content specialists, how do I do this. SAS is absolutely a resource but, and Sharon's going to share some of that with you. But you know, you and I, I think most of us would agree that looking on a website and reading something versus having a conversation with a science teacher and saying to this science teacher, well, or the math teacher, and the math, you know, how do you teach linear equations, you know. Where would you start with your students and what prerequisite skills do kids, you know. That is going to probably result in richer, more effective instruction. And what we have to figure out is how we need to maybe think differently about structuring our system so we can provide that access. And we don't have the answers yet to how that happened. So one of the other questions we got is what about a teacher who's teaching kids with multiple disabilities? Could they teach these kinds of lessons in a separate classroom, if there might be difficulty with following a general education schedule, feeding, OT, PT, and positioning needs? So let me answer that in two ways. One is yes. Again, given that you maintain the level of knowledge, the link to the standard, you have the information you need to address that outside of the general ed classroom, you certainly could. But the other thing we know, and there's quite a bit of research on this, and that is that when kids are educated in inclusive classrooms, you can very effectively address the unique needs and functional skills that that child needs to learn in that setting.

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For example, when Marnie started, she was crossing midline. Did she continue to get that crossing midline practice while she was addressing content? Absolutely. Social skills, communication skills, motor skills, all of those things, there are multiple opportunities throughout the day and throughout instructional activities in a gen ed classroom that those things can be addressed, but it requires thinking differently about that. So it requires looking at distributed opportunities. When Ian was in phys ed class, he was getting range of motion. If you're Ian, what do you think is a, perhaps a better way to get range of motion practice? Sitting along with an adult, having somebody move your arm and interacting only with an adult or being with a group of your peers playing a ballgame and moving your arms? But then we have, okay, well, if we have a goal for this, then how do we make sure we monitor progress? So it's a lot easier to take data. If I want to see seven out of ten or something, right, it's a lot easier if I'm going to sit here across from Maura and I'm going to have her in a mass trial ten times try to do something. I can go yes, yes, yes, no, no. So if, indeed, we're looking at integrating those goals across a day, then we need to make sure that we have however many opportunities and we find a way to continue to monitor progress so we can adjust etc., etc., because we don't want to lose the importance of addressing some of those skills. So it is quite complex. The other thing related to materials and resources and who does this and, you know, how does this all happen is, there are implications, too, for the number of kids with these kinds of needs that we have together in one place. So if we think about this group of students, these students with complex support needs being 1% to 2% of all kids, and that 1% to 2% of kids is naturally distributed across schools and classrooms, then no one school or classroom is going to have a huge intensity of needing to create these materials, right, because there aren't going to be that many kids in one place. But right now, we may have kids grouped together. So if you have eight to ten kids with this kind of needs in one school, across grade levels, it becomes, I think, overwhelming to think about how you would do this. So you'd really have to have a strategy and a plan and share. But you know, the other thing is, that Romeo and Juliet example. I love that Romeo and Juliet example, don't you? That is just so cool. And I'm thinking about, you know, my daughter, who doesn't have a disability, who, when she was exposed to Romeo and Juliet, some of the strategies that they used to build, you know, that selection, you know, plot structures, she might have learned it more effectively with some of those strategies we were using for our kids with complex needs, rather than just simply having it, having to read assignments and fill in a study guide or, you know. So some of this is about just, you know, if we perhaps are universally designing our instruction, we're going to get to that this afternoon. If we take a lesson plan and we modify it to address the needs of our learners who are communicating at the symbolic level, the emerging symbolic, and pre-symbolic level, what we'd have is a really universally designed lesson that could be delivered to a group of students that include learners of all sorts of needs and levels. But it's a long process to get there. We have to start somewhere. And you know, someone asked here, how do you get to the near links when students may have had limited instruction with the far links? Absolutely. You have to

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instruct. You have to scaffold. You know, you don't teach that Romeo and Juliet in one day, right? You know, that's a unit of study, and it's over time and with multiple texts. You're looking at text structure. But even, I don't know if Sarah or Mariel would agree with me, but even the very beginning, the very, the farthest link they started with, with Romeo and Juliet, I was thinking to myself, for many of our students that would be closer to accessing the general curriculum than any opportunity they've ever had before. You know, it's really thinking differently about that. Yes, Mariel. Let me give you a mike, please, because we want to make sure everyone can hear and we're getting it recorded. You're on. MARIEL ZELLER: Okay. As I was going to say, you made a very good point. You said Romeo and Juliet was a lesson, a unit of study. And Sarah, when she was talking about it, was saying that they were looking at text structure. Those are two, Romeo and Juliet is just a way to get to learning about text structure. When students in the general education curriculum are learning about text structure, it's being repeated over and over again through multiple units and lessons, they read Romeo and Juliet, they read Of Mice and Men, they read The Scarlet Letter, I mean. And I know that Sarah mentioned materials that had been adapted. I know a lot of teachers in different states that have gone to sparknotes.com, where most high school students go to get a lot of study resources, and they have downloaded a lot of those same materials. And you know, you can copy and paste into Writing with Symbols. You can copy and paste all those materials, and it'll type it right out for you. And one of the other things that I was going to say when Sarah was talking to you about how you can adapt materials and how you can fade out some of those pictures, Writing with Symbols does that for you. You can start with just symbols. You can add the words. You can then fade out pictures at different times. I mean, you can set it up so it's very specific to individual children. And Writing with Symbols is very economical. It's not a very pricey product. So I'm not trying, and I have no relationship to them. I'm just saying I think it's a wonderful tool. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: We have a comment in the back. Yes. WOMAN: Writing with Symbols is no longer being produced by Boardmaker, by MayerJohnson. They actually stopped the production and there are no more. I've tried to get them. MARIEL ZELLER: You can't? WOMAN: It is imbedded into the new v6 Boardmaker under Symbolate. MARIEL ZELLER: Oh, Symbolate. That's why we have that in some of the documentation that we have. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: So let me just repeat that to make sure . . . MARIEL ZELLER: Symbolate . . .

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JEANNINE BRINKLEY: . . . everybody heard it and make sure I get it right. Writing with Symbols is no longer being produced as a separate piece of software. It is integrated into the new Boardmaker under Symbolate. WOMAN: Right. The v6. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Is that Symbol . . . MARIEL ZELLER: v6. MAN: Symbolate. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: . . . 8 or? MAN: . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: S-y-m-b-o-l-a-t-e. WOMAN: Yes. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. See? MARIEL ZELLER: Thank you, and I'm assuming, I'm just going to take a guess. Are you a speech language pathologist? WOMAN: And . . . MARIEL ZELLER: Yeah. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: And . . . great. Wonderful. And we have wonderful . . . MARIEL ZELLER: Very good. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: . . . resources related to assistive technology here in the state of Pennsylvania. All of our intermediate units have AT folks. We have AT folks in the PaTTAN system. A wealth of resources are available to help you, should you want to explore this and not be familiar with these kinds of supports. All right, I have one last question and then Sharon's going to answer a question and we're going to move into SAS. This is a very good question. However, I don't know if we have a good answer for it. The question is, are the state's higher ed programs teaching special ed teachers how to link standards to instruction? I would say it varies greatly from institution to institution. I think we have something, what, around 100 institutions in, how many? WOMAN: Ninety.

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JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Ninety. Well, that's about 100. That prepare teachers here in Pennsylvania, and it varies greatly. I think we're going to see more with the revisions that happen in terms of certification. My daughter actually is in an undergrad special ed and general ed preparation program. And I was so pleased, she, they, she knows, she has all the standards, she, you know, and at one of our state universities. I imagine you could also find people at other places that don't have this. WOMAN: There's a higher ed and PaTTAN consortium related to SAS working to . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. So there's a higher ed PaTTAN consortium related to SAS, and we were doing a lot of work. Janet, did you want to add something? JANET: Just hopefully, it seems like it was about a year ago, and I think it was only about two months ago, we did do an institution(?) for institutions of higher education around the SAS program. And I think the most important thing is . . . their new certification requirements. So what you won't see is for a couple of years. It takes a while for the system to turn itself over. So you'll probably . . . graduates that are graduating this year or next year that might not have sufficient exposure to it, but graduates from '12, '13, '14 on should have that exposure. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. Thank you very much. One more? Okay. WOMAN: . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Sure. WOMAN: . . . WOMAN: Move over a little bit so . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: She's trying to stay off camera. Now you've defeated her . . . WOMAN: There was a comment about somebody who was saying that, you know, for teaching meiosis they would prefer that we use people for that and, instead of Rebops. And I just wanted to make a comment, because there was just a question about why wouldn't we use people. In my discussions with science teachers, one, Rebops are something that's typically taught in biology classes on heredity for general education students. They all do Rebops. And there are reasons why. And part of it has to do with when they, in the past, used people and their parents, they came up with some things that couldn't actually explain the student's heredity, why . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Whoops.

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WOMAN: So there are some very . . . reasons why you don't use your parents anymore in science class. So if you go in, what they're going to do is they're going to teach Rebops. And so it may seem strange, but in this way they can look at all the different combinations. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Well, and again, if the concept, if the purpose is to teach the concept of meiosis and dominant and recessive genes, and that's the strategy that is used in general ed is, I'm guessing the person that asked that question is thinking about generalization or the challenges. I don't know why we're all, or feed-backing all of a sudden. So generalizations. So you know, generally with our kids with more complex needs, we teach exactly. You know, we don't expect a kid to be able to generalize from the Rebop to people. I'm also guessing, though, in the science curriculum, at some point they get to that, but not with this instructional piece where they were. So, okay. Ms. Sharon, and then a couple questions, and then you're on for SAS. SHARON: In a few minutes. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: And you need a microphone. I'm sorry. Turn it off before I pass it to you. SHARON: Okay. The question that I'm going to talk about is there was a question that came to us that said, should we be encouraging teachers to teach to the standards for all or do we encourage teachers to teach to the alternate standards, which are located on the SAS portal? And I have given Lynda a head's up, because I'm going to have her fill in the blanks, but I'm going to take a shot at it first and then you clarify for me. The alternate achievement standards are aligned to the standards. They are the alternate achievement, the anchors are very clearly and closely aligned to what we are putting out there under the standards and anchors for all. So when we are encouraging folks to look at grade level content, and we are encouraging and our message is to look at those near links to grade level content standards, we are going to be talking later about a way that we've mapped those from the alternate anchors, for the anchors aligned to the alternate standards, I should say, and how they clearly link. So let me . . . LYNDA LUPP: Yeah. Sharon is correct in everything that she had said. And one of the things that we really want to delineate is that, really, back in '99 when states were required to develop an alternate assessment, states developed their alternate assessments based on what we called alternate achievement standards. So let me be very clear in the language. An alternate assessment can be limited in complexity, some limited depth or breadth. Because we recognize that for a student with complex support needs, they can't cover all of the same material that a general education student without a disability can cover. So a group of educators got together and they looked at, for example, a standard at that time that a general education student was expected to learn and be able to do. And they said, well, what's the essence of that? Like, what do we really think one of our students could show us with that?

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And so you'll see that the terminology over the years has changed a little bit. As Sharon gets into the SAS system, we're calling it the big idea. So we take a general education, we took a general education standard and we said, what do we think this looks like for one of our students? But what you have to recall is the general, the alternate standards were for an assessment. Okay? We know that assessment, the PASA is not about necessarily all of the instruction that a student should receive. Just like any student who's assessed on the PSSA or the PSSA-M, there is an expectation that those students are being exposed to a much broader range of content that what, than what is on the PSSA or the PSSA-M or, in this case, the PASA. So I don't know if that is a shift in thinking, per se, for some folks. The PASA, it is a test. It's a snapshot of some skills content that we think kids should know and be able to do, but their instruction should be much greater. And IDEA has told us that for over a decade, that they're to be receiving access to the general education curriculum, thus the general education content standards. But I don't know how well of a job we at the state level have truly done in really conveying that. And I honestly do believe that where we are in 2010 is very different than where we were thinking in 1999. So we have moved, we have evolved, and some of what Sharon is going to show you is that you could take an alternate standard that perhaps you're using in your classroom to guide your instruction, and you can work and see that that alternate standard or that anchor, per se, that is truly tested is aligned to a PSSA and general education anchor. And if you do kind of the step-by-step, almost like seeing it as in a step up, you start with that PASA anchor, it's connected to a PASA standard, which is connected over into the PSSA assessment anchor and standard. So there is a connection. And the work that we did in June with educators, PaTTAN consultants, the University of Kentucky, started to make those connections in SAS by looking at instructional lesson planning and helping teachers to say, okay, I do want to take my fourth grade student, who's an alternate assessment student, and I want to instruct them on plants and biology. And here is a lesson plan off the SAS system that any student might, a teacher might be using with any student, but we're going to make this practical and applicable for an alternate assessment or a student with complex support needs. And we're starting to show teachers, and we're learning, as Jeannine is saying, we're sort of on the basement level. So this is new to us. It is possibly new to you, and you will be seeing that we're going to continue to expand this SAS system in the area of materials and resources, and in the lesson planning to help teachers see how this can be done. So I hope that answers your questions. Okay. SHARON: Okay. Show of hands. How many folks have heard about the Standards Aligned System? This is trying to help me do my assessment. How many people, keep your hand up if you feel very familiar with the Standards Aligned System? Oh, good. How many people have used this portal which helps us understand the Standards Aligned System? Okay. So we have a pretty good crowd here. Just a couple things that I just want to just be very clear about so that our vocabulary is on the same level, you understand what I'm talking about. Standards are

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the very broad statement of what students are to learn. The anchors narrow that down a little further. The eligible content very clearly gives us the information, explicitly what we want students to know. So in the portal, you know, there are six circles. We're going to look very briefly at clear standards, just to show you that. Yeah, go there. And you can select a grade level and you can pick anything. Ninth grade sounds good. Subject, pick math. Math. Oh, that didn't work. You know why? Because it's probably in select a course. When you see that select a course, that's semi-new, for those of you who have been on the portal. The select a course is really looking to the end of course exams that are, have been put into regulation in Pennsylvania. And then you see your standard, your assessment anchor, and then this one, the standard model and compare values via rational numbers. Here's the anchor, operations with real numbers and expressions. And then you say, what does that mean? And here's your eligible content, simplify square roots, compare and order any real numbers, rational and irrational may be mixed. So that's what that is. Do you want to go back to the main page? Where we're going to focus or where I want you to focus your thinking, and perhaps maybe at some time go out and explore, and I did put the Web link out there if you do not know it. Go to curriculum framework, because this is really, I call this one of the gifts that we have gotten from PDE. For many years as a teacher and then as a consultant working with gen ed teachers and special education teachers, trying to think about some of these concepts that we would want to focus our students towards and link into what everyone else is learning. As we go here and select a subject . . . WOMAN: . . . SHARON: Yeah, go to the course. Go to the one we were at. Do I just get a signal? I'm watching the time, because I know 11:45 is lunch, and they teach you in trainer school to let people out on time for lunch. Okay. What happens, when she went to Algebra 1, which is one of the math courses at the secondary level, all of a sudden up popped the big ideas, and this is when you tease away all the minutia and details and everything that are the supporting facts in teaching. It gives you the big concept. This is the thing we want people to remember when they're 40. I sat with a group of . . . WOMAN: Or 50. SHARON: Or 50, if you can. I sat with a group of educators last week and they were like, I don't understand. Algebra 1, what does that mean for this population of students? And I said, okay. We went around the table. I said, I want you to tell me one thing that you remember from your Algebra 1 class when you were in high school. And just like me, they came up with a pretty big blank. And I said, okay, now let's think about how do you use algebra in real life? And boy, they were whipping it off around the table. So that's our big ideas. And if you click on the big idea, I have like two minutes left.

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JEANNINE BRINKLEY: We can come back to this after . . . SHARON: Okay. The big idea gives you an essential question. It gives you the concepts, what it is we want all kids to know at the end of this instruction. Competencies, what are they going to be able to do. And if you hover, just hover, don't click on it, up comes your eligible content. Exactly, explicitly what the expectation is that students need to learn as a result of that. Just incredible. Can you go back to the front page? I'm going to show materials and resources, where the lesson plans are. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: . . . easily come back to this after lunch for a few minutes. SHARON: Well, I did see, in my assessment. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. SHARON: I know this, that there were many folks who were very familiar with this. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: Okay. SHARON: Are you familiar with the curriculum framework? Raise your hand if you've been there, seen it. It's almost a matter of like manipulating it, and I don't to re-teach something that's already known. Okay. In here . . . JEANNINE BRINKLEY: I picked algebra and ninth grade. SHARON: Yeah, algebra and ninth grade. This is where you're going to find your lesson plans. And for the work that we'll hear after lunch, this is where we kind of focused when we thought and decided to look at lesson plans and what would that look like, what does that mean for a student who is at the symbolic, emerging symbolic, or pre-symbolic level. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: And we actually . . . SHARON: Okay. JEANNINE BRINKLEY: We'll find the time . . . SHARON: Well, yeah, in the math one. Yeah. The science one we had to go out, because they didn't have any in the voluntary model curriculum right at this point. But as we continue to build and as the portal continues to be built, this is where you're going to be able to find your resources that will help . . .

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