Designing instruction that prioritizes access to foundational skills and standards, requires teachers to have a deep understanding of student strengths and barriers. All students have their own sets of both, and it is critically important to be aware of the barriers associated with specific disabilities.

A stammering statistic shows us that for every 5,000 students in general education classrooms, we only find 1 student with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. That is not to say that inclusion, in general, is the least restrictive environment. However, we believe that if everyone on the IEP team has the same understanding of the impact of a student’s disabilities, then that team can create the appropriate natural opportunities to help them thrive in inclusion settings.

The team at Goalbook is comprised of former teachers and we make it a point to visit classrooms regularly so that we can design content that is as dynamic as the teachers and students we serve. The new content we are highlighting this month truly reflects that. Highly detailed impact statements give teachers and teams a shared understanding of how to strategically plan for specific challenges. The comprehensive quarterly assessments attached to foundational anchor pages, give teachers multiple access points and opportunities to assess student understanding.

Goalbook Toolkit Updates

Present Levels Wizard: Impact of Disability Statements

Our content design team is adamant about ensuring that the new impact of disability statements in the Present Levels Wizard are informed by the most up-to-date research. Our hope is that these statements will help educators be strategic in their selection of supports as they plan instruction for their students.

This feature currently allows you to generate impact statements in the subject areas of reading, writing, and math for the seven disability areas listed below.

Use Present Levels Wizard

  • Specific Learning Disability
  • Speech & Language Impairment
  • Autism
  • Emotional Disturbance
  • Other Health Impairment
  • Intellectual Disability
  • Low Incidence Disabilities
  • Blindness, Deafness, Hearing Impairment, Visual Impairment, Orthopedic Impairment, Multiple Disabilities, Traumatic Brain Injury

Anchor Pages with Comprehensive Quarterly Assessments

Anchor Pages have proven to be a critical tool for many of the teachers who use Goalbook Toolkit. They help teachers design instruction for foundational and transferable skills across all content areas and we’ve recently enhanced some of them. After looking at how teachers were applying Anchor Pages to instructional design, we saw that some standards would benefit if they had comprehensive quarterly assessments attached to them. Below are examples of key standards with quarterly assessments that prioritize scaffolding DOK levels.

Math Anchor Pages with comprehensive quarterly assessments:

ELA Anchor Pages with comprehensive quarterly assessments: