1/9/2024

Welcome to
SPLED 403A!
Evidence-Based Instruction for
Elementary Students with Disabilities
in Reading, Math, and Writing

Introductions

● Open the ppt in Collaborations and pick one of the slides. Fill it out
with the following information:
● Your preferred name.
● What experience have you had in education or working with
students?
● What experience have you had with people with disabilities?
● Do you have any time in schools this semester? Let me know
which dates and whether it will be full or half days.

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2. How to Succeed in this

Course
SPLED 403A

General Advice

● Students who do the reading do better in methods courses.

○ Read the required content and assignment guidelines.
○ Use a voice-reader to listen to readings if that works better for you.
● Don’t make it difficult for graders to find and read your submissions.
○ Upload a copy of group projects to your own link on Canvas.
○ Use a doc format other than Pages on Canvas.
● Consider whether you have elaborated sufficiently for the point value of the
assignment.

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About SPLED 403A

● Methods course- how-to content with background information.

● Instructional strategies developed for special education work for all
students.
● Not every student with special needs is identified -- they will be in your
classes.
● The textbook is digitally available to you from the library at no cost -- link
is in the syllabus.
● Hughes and Archer textbook will be supplemented with readings and
content from PaTTAN and other relevant sources.

Course Format

● You are responsible for textbook reading, other content, and information
presented in class. Not all key information will be in lecture notes.
● Activities and Children’s Literature project can be done in groups of no more
than 3. Each person in the group needs to upload documents to grade book.
● There will be time in class to work on activities, but they will very likely
require work outside of class to complete.
● Lesson Plan Project-lesson can be completed in groups, but each student
needs to record themselves teaching it and reflect individually on the
experience.

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Expectations: Grading

● Explicit Instruction Lesson Plans – Don’t worry, I give feedback and

then have students revise and resubmit to recover points.
● Quizzes- Multiple choice, take them individually-open book. Can retake
quizzes one time, but the grade on the final attempt will count toward
your grade in the course.
● Children’s Literature and Lesson Plan Projects-consist of several parts
that all need to be completed for full points.

Attendance

● Attendance in college courses is mandatory and important.

● Please do not come to class if you have an active respiratory illness that
has not been diagnosed as a cold.
● An excused absence is notice given in advance with a medical or
university/program activity-related reason.
● Unexcused absence is no-show, no-notice.
● Students with 3 or more unexcused absences will not pass the class.

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How to Demonstrate Learning

● Show you have synthesized course content by using terminology and
concepts from your course work in your responses.

● A key competency is writing observable descriptions of behavior:

○ Objectives
○ Pre-skill lists
○ Whenever communicating about student behavior

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Evidence-Based Principles
Evidence-based practices have been demonstrated by
rigorous research to improve student learning.

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Evidence-Based Strategies Work

Efficacy Effectiveness
Strategies and practices that How well effective strategies
work to improve student and practices work in real
outcomes in research studies. world classrooms and schools.

EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES
● Collaboration among educators.
● Positive behavior supports.
● Cooperative and peer supported learning.
● UDL
● Direct and differentiated instruction.
● Strengths-based approaches.
● Interventions that incorporate elements to develop students’ executive
functioning and study skills. 12

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High-Leverage Practices for Special Education

Council for Exceptional
Children
Most prominent professional organization for special educators.

Explicit Instruction
A feature of many effective multi-component
interventions. HLP 16.

Learn More About HLPS

https://highleveragepractices.org/four-areas-practice-k-12/instruction

HLPS IMPROVE EFFECTIVENESS OF EBPS

High-Leverage
Efficacy Effectiveness
Practices

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Principles of
Explicit
Instruction
Lessons
Module 1.1

https://youtu.be/APyvwPzxZ7I

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What is Explicit Instruction?

An unambiguous and direct approach to teaching that incorporates

instruction design and delivery. (Archer & Hughes, 2011)

Explicit and direct instruction is systematic:

■ Makes connections with prior learning explicit.

■ A logical sequence of skills and understandings taught in “just

right-sized tasks”.

■ Makes connections to future learning explicit.

What is Explicit Instruction?

○ Teachers provide supports that guide students’ learning. Supports
are gradually faded to increase students’ independence while
maintaining high levels of success.
○ EI includes evidence-based delivery and design procedures:
■ Lesson routines
■ Sufficient practice opportunities for students to master learning
■ Immediate error correction
■ Continuous formative assessment

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Explicit Instruction Teaching Functions

● 1. Review
● 2. Presentation
● 3. Guided Practice
● 4. Corrective Feedback
● 5. Independent Practice
● 6. Spaced Review Over Time (Weekly and monthly reviews)

What is Explicit Instruction NOT?

● Focused on students’ limitations.

● Only for students with special needs.
● Rote learning.
● Boring and dumbed-down content.
● Students sit passively while teacher talks and tells.

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Principles of Effective Instruction

● 1. Optimize Engaged Time/Time on Task

○ Available Time

○ Allocated Time

○ Engaged Time

○ Academic Learning Time (ALT)

Time in
a
School
Day

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Optimizing Instructional Time

(can add up to 50 instructional hours a year)

1. Increase allocated time.

2. Prepare lessons in advance.
3. Start lessons on time.
4. Use routines and procedures to decrease transition time.
5. Use clear and concise explanations—avoid ‘teacher talk!’
6. Confirm students understand expectations for everything.
The more time they are learning, the more they can learn.

Principles of Effective Instruction

● 2. Promote High Levels of Success

○ Affects sense of competency as well as achievement.
○ How successful should students be?
■ Initial instruction: 80-85%
■ Guided practice: at least 95%
■ Mastery approaches 100% accuracy.
■ Independent practice: Highly accurate before increasing speed of
retrieval.

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Principles of Effective Instruction

● 2. Promote High Levels of Success continued…

○ What is critical for success to occur?
■ “Practice makes permanent”.
■ Minimize errors by making information and directions
unambiguous.
■ Provide immediate corrective feedback.
■ Avoid negative responses to errors (no, wrong, that’s not it).

Principles of Effective Instruction

3. Increase Content Coverage/Opportunities to Learn

○ Curricular decisions
■ What is taught.
■ Build content knowledge (teach to mastery) so reteaching is
kept to a minimum.

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Principles of Effective Instruction

3. Increase Content Coverage/Opportunities to Learn

○ Teacher planning decisions
■ Select appropriate material and level based on demonstrated
mastery of preskills.
■ Design organized lessons that follow a routine.
■ Teach explicitly.
■ Use effective instructional and classroom management
strategies.

Principles of Effective Instruction

● 4. Group for instruction

○ Teaching in smaller homogeneous groups increases academic learning

time and content coverage.

○ Smaller practice groups allow the teacher to monitor student

performance and provide more immediate individual feedback.

○ Intensive core instruction—Tier 1.5 is whole class instruction followed

immediately by small group additional practice opportunities for
students.

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Principles of Effective Instruction

● 5. Scaffold Instruction*
○ Temporary, individualized, and adjustable supports.
○ Address zone of proximal development-”just right-sized tasks”.
■ Reduce tasks to right number of steps to learn in one lesson.
■ Provide enough practice opportunities to bring students to
mastery.

*special education terminology

Principles of Effective Instruction

● 5. Scaffold Instruction* continued…

○ Sufficient practice opportunities to bring students to mastery.
○ Provide explicit demonstration with think-aloud.
○ Promote student elaboration by encouraging student explanations.
○ Provide cueing as necessary and hand off to students as soon as you
can.

*special education terminology

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Principles of Effective Instruction

● 6. Address Different Forms of Knowledge

○ Declarative knowledge (what something is: e.g., facts, vocabulary).

○ Procedural knowledge (how something is done: e.g., how to use

steps of a rule or strategy).

○ Conditional knowledge (when or where to use a skill or strategy).

Importance of Prior Knowledge

● Activate and Organize Knowledge

○ Show students how to organize, store, and retrieve knowledge
○ Teach students to activate their own prior knowledge.
○ Assess whether students are accessing and using new learning
before moving on

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Importance of Prior Knowledge

● Address problem areas

■ Insufficient knowledge base—build prior knowledge and
leverage informal knowledge.
■ Poorly organized knowledge base—make connections between
concepts explicit. Use procedures that don’t interfere with
understanding the content.
■ Conditional knowledge—make explicit connections between
knowledge and show students how to use it.

Prepare Students for Learning

● Review prerequisite skills.

● Pre teach key concepts and vocabulary.

● Make explicit what students will learn and how they will know they
have learned it.

● Make explicit connections to prior knowledge.

● Provide a reason for learning this content.

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Designing
Explicit
Instruction
Lessons
Module 1.1
Lesson Opening and
Models

Parts of an Explicit Lesson

1. Opening
Attention
Goal
Relevance
Review/Verify Pre-skills
2. Body
Model – Instruction
Prompts – Guided Practice
Checks – Explicit Feedback and Individualization
3. Closing
Review
Preview
Independent Work

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Explicit Lesson Types

1. Skill Lesson
Series of Steps

2. Rule Lesson
Rule Statement
Critical Attributes
Apply to examples and non-examples

3. Vocabulary/Concept Lesson
Definition
Critical Attributes
Refine the definition using examples and non-examples

Designing an Explicit Lesson

● THE OPENING
○ A. Gain students’ attention
■ Why?
■ How?
● General Verbal Prompt with response
● Zero Noise Level and Eye Contact (indicators of engagement)

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Designing an Explicit Lesson

● THE OPENING

○ B. State the goal and discuss the relevance

■ Why?

■ How?

● Explicitly state an observable, measurable learning goal

● Have students repeat or rephrase the goal

● Refer to and/or repeat throughout the lesson

Designing an Explicit Lesson

● THE OPENING

○ C. Review prerequisite skills

■ Why?

■ How?

● Use unison responding so you can assess all students’ readiness for
learning

● Check their understanding (don’t model or prompt!)

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Reviewing Related/Prerequisite Skills

Read VCe Words Read VC Words

Identify Long and Short Vowel Sounds

End sentence with a ? Identify questions and statements

Punctuate statement sentences

Tell time to hour, ½ hour, and ¼ hour.

Tell time to 5 minutes.
Count by 5s.

Lesson Objective

Given handwriting paper and a pencil, students will correctly form a

lower-case z in cursive in 3 of 4 attempts.
● Condition
● Learner(s)
● Behavior
● Criterion

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Pre-Skills

● Identify top, middle, and bottom lines on handwriting paper.

● Correctly form a lower-case cursive n.
● Correctly form a lower-case cursive j.

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The Opening

● A Brief Demonstration: Writing the lowercase

letter z in cursive.

Attention

Goal

Relevance

Review/Verify Pre-Skills

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Class Activity 1: Script skill lesson opening

and models
● 1. Select a simple academic skill to teach explicitly.

○ Pick a skill that can be completed in at least 2 steps

○ List the steps.

● 2. Identify 2-3 important prerequisites for learning the skill.

○ List these prerequisites in observable terms.

○ Identify what kind of task you would have your students do to review ONE of the
prerequisite skills.

Class Activity 1: Script skill lesson opening

and models
● 3. Write a gain attention statement that indicates students need to be ready
for instruction.

● 4. Write the goal and relevance for the lesson as you would say it to
students.

○ What will the students learn to do?

○ Why is learning this skill important?

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The Model

● A Brief Demonstration: Writing the lowercase letter z in cursive.

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The Model

● A Brief Demonstration: Writing the lowercase letter z in cursive.

T: “The lower-case z starts like the lower-case n. Watch me.

I start on the line with the over stroke and form the first part of z
like I am making an n with one bump. See, it stays between the
bottom and middle lines.
Then, I make a small bump and go below the line to end the z with
an under-the-line stroke.”
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The Model

● A Brief Demonstration: Writing the lowercase letter z in cursive.

T: “The lower-case z starts like the lower-case n. Watch me.

I start on the line with the over stroke and form the first part of z
like I am making an n with one big bump. See, it stays between the
bottom and middle lines.
Then, I make a small bump and go below the line to end the z with an
under-the-line stroke.”
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Class Activity 1: Script Lesson Opening and

Models
● 4. Write exactly what you would say and do as you model the skill for
students. Include three models:
○ two where you perform the skill by yourself (i.e., teacher only) and
○ one where you involve the students in the model by asking questions.

● Be sure to use clear, consistent, and concise language across all models.

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For next week…

● Read Burchard, 2011 for next week.

● Submit Class Activity 1 for feedback .

○ Use lesson template – focus only on blue sections for 1.

○ Include names of partners if you are working in a group.

○ Each group member needs to upload a copy of the assignment.

● Be prepared to share your activity in class.
● Next week will work on the rest of the skill lesson plan script.

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