For students with intellectual disabilities and extensive support needs, being present during instruction isn’t the same as being actively involved in learning.
Consider a read-aloud. One student may listen to the text. Another may watch as the teacher points to pictures. A third may observe classmates answering questions. All three students are participating in some sense—but how often does each student have an opportunity to actually respond, make a choice, communicate an idea, demonstrate understanding, or interact with the content?
That distinction matters.
High-Leverage Practice (HLP) 16: Use Explicit Instruction emphasizes carefully sequenced instruction, modeling, supported practice, frequent opportunities to respond, and ongoing monitoring of student performance. For students with extensive support needs, those opportunities may look different from student to student—but every learner needs meaningful ways to participate.
The goal isn’t simply to keep students busy. It’s to give them something meaningful to do with the learning.
Start With One Question: How Will My Students Respond?
One of the simplest ways to increase active participation is to plan the student response at the same time you plan the instruction.
Suppose you’re reading a story and want students to identify how a character feels.
Instead of asking the question and waiting for someone to answer verbally, consider the different ways students could demonstrate their understanding:
- Choose it: Select between two or more emotion pictures or symbols.
- Point to it: Point or eye gaze toward the character’s emotion.
- Show it: Hold up a response card or object representing the answer.
- Act it out: Make the facial expression or use a gesture associated with the emotion.
- Say it: Respond verbally or through AAC.
- Draw or write it: Sketch the emotion, write a word, or complete a sentence starter.
The learning target remains the same. The pathway for demonstrating learning becomes more accessible.
And there’s another important shift: rather than one student answering while everyone else watches, every student can respond.
Three Small Shifts You Can Try Tomorrow
1. Make abstract ideas concrete.
Whenever possible, pair words with something students can see, hear, touch, manipulate, or experience. Before reading about weather, for example, students might feel a fan blowing to represent wind, listen to a thunderstorm, examine weather photographs, or sort objects associated with hot and cold weather. Multisensory experiences can help build the background knowledge students need to make sense of new information.
2. Replace “Who knows?” with “Everyone shows.”
Look for questions that allow the entire group to respond simultaneously. Students might hold up a picture, point to an answer, choose between two objects, use AAC, write on a whiteboard, gesture, or indicate yes/no. These whole-group opportunities to respond increase participation while also giving the teacher immediate information about who understands and who needs additional support.
3. Connect new learning to something familiar.
Students with extensive support needs may need explicit help making connections that other learners make more independently. Before introducing something new, connect it to a familiar person, place, object, experience, or previously learned concept. Don’t assume students will recognize the connection—make the connection visible and teach it explicitly.
Participation Doesn’t Have to Look the Same
For students with extensive support needs, equitable participation doesn’t mean every student responds in exactly the same way.
One student might speak. Another might point. Another might use eye gaze or AAC. A student working at an emerging symbolic level might select between objects or photographs.
The important question isn’t:
“Did everyone complete the same task?”
A better question is:
“Did every student have a meaningful opportunity to think, communicate, respond, and demonstrate learning?”
This is where explicit instruction, active student engagement, multisensory learning, assistive technology, and Universal Design for Learning can work together to create instruction that is both rigorous and accessible.
Keep Building Your Toolbox
T-TAC ODU has four upcoming professional learning opportunities specifically relevant to educators supporting students with intellectual disabilities and extensive support needs.
Learning in Action: Using UDL to Improve Instruction & Increase Engagement — October 19 will provide strategies for recruiting and maintaining engagement, incorporating flexibility and student choice, creating whole-group opportunities to respond, using multi-sensory instruction, and gathering formative assessment information. Participants will experience more than 20 active-engagement strategies they can take back to their classrooms.
Access the full-size registration flyer!
The Comprehension Connection — October 26 focuses specifically on helping students with extensive support needs make meaning from text. Educators will explore building background knowledge, helping students make connections, multisensory instruction, and asking powerful questions.
Access the full-size registration flyer!
Working with Words is designed for educators supporting students with complex reading needs. This professional learning opportunity goes beyond the VESOLs to explore explicit, systematic instruction in working with words, helping learners build stronger foundational literacy skills. Participants will explore approaches for providing the intentional, structured instruction students need to develop greater skill and independence as readers.
Access the full-size registration flyer!
Teaching the Write Way — December 7 focuses on high-quality writing instruction for students who access the curriculum through the Virginia Essentialized Standards of Learning (VESOL). Topics include developmental stages of writing, assistive technology, writing across content areas, and engaging lessons and writing prompts for learners of all ages.
Access the full-size registration flyer!
Across reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies, and daily classroom routines, the idea is the same: students learn by doing.
As you plan your next lesson, consider one question:
What will every student get to do with the learning today?