This presentation will inform participants of the results from a year-long randomized control trial study targeting a comprehensive approach to teach grade aligned ELA via an App for middle school students with significant disabilities. Participants will learn about the embedded evidence based practices that led to significant outcomes. By the end of this session, participants will be able to: a) identify instructional strategies that lead to increases in grade aligned ELA skills. b) discuss ways to provide meaningful grade aligned access to ELA skills for students with significant disabilities from diverse backgrounds c) incorporate technology (ipad) and grade aligned adapted fictional and nonfiction novels that address complex and diverse themes into ELA instruction as a means for increasing engagement and access for students with significant disabilities.

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English/language arts (ELA) is one of the core content areas of the general curriculum. Through ELA instruction, students gain a means for accessing and understanding the various forms of text they encounter in daily life as well as skills in research and communication. The overarching goals of ELA focus on effective communication, including comprehension: a goal critical to students with significant disabilities. Typical ELA curriculum creates opportunities for students to communicate in different contexts, for different purposes through exposure to culturally diverse text (Browder & Spooner, 2014). The challenge in developing language-arts instruction for students with significant disabilities, however, is that they may have few skills to engage with text (Mims et al., 2012). Recent research has helped to bridge the gap between the incoming skill set of individuals with a significant disability and the gains in effective literacy skills, communication, writing and comprehension skills. This presentation will highlight some of the most recent research that features strategies for providing meaningful-access, grade-aligned fiction and nonfiction text depicting diverse cultural and socioeconomic themes, but adapted for greater student access. Highlighted strategies will include a discussion of how grade-aligned adapted books and systematic instruction such as response-prompting strategies, error correction, positive reinforcement, data collection and graphic organisers can promote student gains in literacy, communication, writing, student-led research and comprehension across Bloom’s Taxonomy. In addition, this presentation will discuss ways to meaningfully adapt grade-appropriate text for students who have limited-to-no reading ability, as well as provide resources for fiction and nonfiction texts that have already been adapted. Finally, this presentation will provide participants with strategies to promote personalised learning in concert with maintaining a high level of rigour for students with intellectual disability and autism. - See more at: http://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/professional_learning/teachers/2016/major-events/successful-learning-conference.shtml#sthash.hTRDzYbP.dpuf

Research shows use of data based decisions for students with severe disabilities is highly beneficial, yet few teachers implement them in the classroom. This session will present the results of a study on the effects of DBD training on teacher/student outcomes. Also, participants will learn about the five most common DBDs. Learner outcomes: Provide participants with procedures and outcomes from a study conducted on training teachers of students with significant disabilities and autism from diverse backgrounds to make informed data-based decisions; and Participants will be provided a handout with a data based decision-making guide as well access to the online modules used in the study.

The purpose of the study was to question rural general education teachers’ perceptions and attitudes on the inclusion of students with significant disabilities. The investigator surveyed rural general education teachers on their perceptions of what should be occurring in terms of inclusion and on what they saw as occurring in terms of inclusion of students with significant disabilities. The results yielded mixed perceptions and were generally positive in terms of the inclusion occurring within that school district.

We share the results from a year-long randomized control trial study targeting a comprehensive approach to teach grade aligned ELA via an App for middle school students with significant disabilities. Participants will learn about the embedded evidence-based practices that led to significant outcomes.