Focus Areas

For many students with disabilities, the challenge in reading isn’t answering comprehension questions — it’s constructing meaning while reading. Too often, we assess comprehension (“Who was the main character?” “Where did the story take place?”) without explicitly teaching students how to build understanding in the first place. Visualization changes that. Visualization is the instructional process…

Has “root cause analysis” shown up on your bingo card lately? If you are engaged in school improvement planning, developing support plans, or guiding teams through data conversations, chances are you’ve been asked to dig deeper into differences in performance and outcomes for identified student groups. While root cause analysis is not a new concept,…

Making Mathematical Thinking Visible & Supporting Diverse Learners As educators strive to make mathematics more inclusive and accessible, two instructional strategies have gained traction for their potential to deepen students’ understanding and support learners who think and engage differently: journaling in math classrooms and accessible gamification design. Journaling: Making Thinking Visible What it is:Math journaling…

Two Infographics to Help you Utilize your TFI Data at the Division and School Levels What if the middle of the school year wasn’t just a checkpoint—but a strategic opportunity for strengthening your MTSS implementation and maximizing student success? Midyear is a great time to complete a fidelity check of your MTSS implementation, as it…

Implementing evidence-based literacy instruction is complex work. It requires not only adopting high-quality curricula but ensuring teachers understand why they’re using specific practices, how to deliver them with fidelity, and when to adjust based on student needs. For special educators supporting students with disabilities, this complexity intensifies because instruction must be both grounded in the…

Are you wondering how to improve your CLASS® scores? Coaching for early childhood educators is now available! By supporting teachers in strengthening interactions and improving instructional quality, our goal is to enhance outcomes for children with disabilities within Virginia’s Quality Birth to Five System (VQB5). How to Improve CLASS® Scores with VQB5 VQB5 is focused on…

Making impactful data-informed decisions requires more than data alone—it requires intentional systems and structures that support meaningful use. The infographic linked below, highlights key elements to consider within each of the 5 critical factors to have “right” when preparing to make data informed decisions: getting the “right people” the “right data” in the “right format”…

Have you ever encountered barriers in your efforts to support division or school teams in mapping their initiatives or resources? As division and/or school teams take stock of current efforts to support students and staff, this resource helps clarify how teams can engage in the mapping process to identify where time, people, and funding are…

The Virginia Essentialized Standards of Learning (VESOL) are the revised academic content standards for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who are enrolled in grades 3-8 and high school in Virginia. The VESOLs were last revised in 2021, and include the reading, mathematics, and science standards that we currently use in our classroom instruction.…