Curriculum Planning for Students with Additional Needs

Curriculum planning for students with additional needs can be particularly challenging. Analyses of textbooks for students with disabilities show that many are too fast-paced with too many difficult concepts and alternative strategies presented without mastery of any of them.

Objectives should be simplified and tied together from one concept to the next. Moreover, the pacing of the textbooks must be such that students learn one concept before tackling the next. While this may seem logical, too many textbooks revisit topics intermittently throughout a year without allowing mastery.

In order to take a textbook and make a curriculum, we share the OPTIMIZE approach. In order to improve the practice format within the curriculum, we propose a mix of blocking and interleaving practice.

OPTIMIZE Curriculum Planning

Since there is no one textbook designed to meet the needs of all students, it is inherent upon teachers and administrators to analyze and amend the curriculum. The OPTIMIZE approach by Brad Witzel and Paul Riccomini (2007) provides eight steps to improve a textbook and make a full curriculum that presents key strategies for students with disabilities.

• Order the skills of a textbook unit before teaching
• Pair your sequence with that of the textbook
• Take note of the similarities and differences
• Inspect earlier chapters to see if they cover the differences. Check later chapters to see if they cover differences
• Match supplemental guides to see if they cover the differences
• Identify additional instructions to complement the current text
• Zero in the optimal sequence with your new knowledge
• Evaluate and improve the sequence every year

Curriculum Application Example

After teachers reviewed three research-based resources, two textbooks, and the Florida state lesson database, the 6th-grade math team developed a list of 10 lessons within the unit. It is longer than either of the original two textbooks. Still, with the additional information on model-based problem solving and integer computation, the team concluded that more time is needed to bring students to mastery of this more difficult topic.

With the sequence of the instruction set, the team wanted to build learning over time. They reviewed how textbook pages were designed so that they would scaffold information from one step to the next. One area that they focused time was on how practice was conducted: blocking versus interleaving.

Blocking Practice

Blocking is a process of practicing what has just been taught, grouping similar problems together. This is an important approach because it helps activate working memory and provides the potential to put what is practiced into long-term memory. Simply, blocking is typical of textbook lessons because practice problems are grouped by complexity, typically ordered from easier to harder.

One concern with blocking surrounds the level of complexity per the questions that students must answer. Typically, the first blocked problems to be answered include little complexity as they are straightforward. With reading comprehension, the first questions are often direct in that the answer requires remembering part of the passage. In mathematics, easy problems are typically part of the first problems listed. As the questions and problems progress, however, they include more complexity.

Example- Reading Comprehension

With reading comprehension, the most complex inferential questions occur near the end of the practice. With mathematics, this is where more confusing word problems exist, or, for the sake of secondary mathematics, rational numbers include factors and exponents.

It is important to match the complexity of the instruction to students’ needs. You’ll also want to consider the order of the questions provided to students. Have students practice complex problems with you present so that they receive needed support. Also, having more direct or less complex questions for homework will allow more independent work during these times.

Interleaving Practice in Curriculum

Interleaving problems is a practice strategy of mixing-up problems. This means that students answer multiple types of problems with mixed problem complexity, not in any precise order. Have students revisit topics that have been previously mastered while practicing homework from the day’s lesson. Designate space for interleaving constructs that were most recently learned and practiced with those previously learned, which improves retention of those concepts.

This means that students would answer a mix of problems addressing different constructs requiring them to analyze each problem before answering. It may increase the cognitive load initially but would help on cumulative reviews and tests where problems are inherently mixed.

In studies comparing the effects of interleaving and blocked practice, students who experienced only blocked practice performed better on immediate measures of constructs just learned. However, students who only experienced interleaved practice performed better on measures taken days after the construct was learned. This means that blocked practice is more helpful in practicing what was just taught, but interleaving improves the retention of information.

When designing a curricular approach, it is important to strategically incorporate blocking practice on difficult skills that were just taught. This helps develops mastery of that exact concept. However, students must receive interleaving practice frequently throughout each week so that the student learns how to attack different types of practice as well as improve long-term retention of key concepts within the curriculum.

A Final Note

When planning for curriculum use for students with additional needs, there are three tools that are helpful. OPTIMIZE planning, blocking, and interleaving practice can ensure your instruction is most effective for your students with additional needs.

• Suggestions excerpted from Rigor for Students with Special Needs, 2nd edition.
• You might also be interested in 3 Critical Elements of an Effective MTSS Program
• A special thanks to Brad Witzel, co-author of this post.