According to Hall, Strongman, & Meyer (2003), differentiated instruction allows all students to access the same classroom (curriculum) by providing entry points, learning tasks, and outcomes that are tailored to students’ needs. Teachers and administrators find an assistant in MY Access!, the award-winning literacy solution from Vantage Learning that addresses issues particular to special education instruction.
1. MY Access! addresses various learning styles:
Visual Learners-Students who think in terms of pictures.
- MY Access! provides picture and art prompts that encourage visual interpretation and analysis.
- Scores can be displayed graphically at the student level.
- All of our instructional materials can be printed by the student or teacher. There are many prewriting tools to help students develop and display their ideas visually.
- MY Tutor feedback incorporates color coding to engage student thinking.
Auditory Learners — Students who learn and understand by hearing or reciting material.
- A variety of multimedia resources from iSEEK can supplement instruction.
Kinesthetic learners — Students who learn by touch and experience.
- MY Access! allows students to type their responses and activate feedback within the program with just one click.
- MY Access! instructional handouts can be used for tactile lessons. For example, students can cut up the handout, fill it in, and build and deconstruct their ideas by moving the pieces until the ideas make sense.
2. MY Access! Supports differentiated instruction through instructional tools and features:
- Immediate, scaffolded diagnostic MY Tutor and MY Editor feedback is available at several levels (proficient, developing, and auto-readability) at the assignment level.
- Instructional tools like the spell-checker can be turned on to provide extra help.
- Teachers or administrators can create subgroups to assign the most appropriate tasks in small group instruction.
- iSEEK resources and MY Access! Writing Support Series assessments are available to help teachers provide remediation or enrichment activities.
- Comprehensive peer review comment banks that apply to all genres of writing can be printed and used for small group work.
- For each submission, teachers can make general or embedded comments that can be printed and saved. Comments on student work can be compiled for the whole year through the student portfolio.
- Parents can access any student work at any time using their student’s account information. Letters to a parent can be generated for any student submission.
- The program can be used for cross-curricular instruction in ELA, science, history, and math.
3. Extensive reporting capabilities of MY Access! support efforts to keep accurate and timely reports. To develop goals and strategies for each student, teachers and administrators can:
- Monitor weaknesses and pinpoint strengths of each student from the teacher, school, and district levels.
- Populate data for required forms such as IEPs (Individualized Education Programs).
- Compile and analyze data external to MY Access!, such as scores on standardized assessments with the additional help of iSEEK Supercruncher.
Reference
Hall, T., Strongman, N., & Meyer, A. (2003). Differentiated instruction and implications for UDL implementation. National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum.
