• ARE ADAPTED STORIES CONNECTED/ALIGNED WITH THE GENERAL EDUCATION CURRICULUM 

    Adapted Stories are the CORE CURRICULUM for Low Incidence Programs and designed specifically to enhance the performance of students who will be taking the PASA.

     

    Definition of Core Curriculum:
    A core curriculum in literacy gives students the opportunities to learn and practice listening, speaking, reading and writing skills that are either on the student’s grade level or modified to meet the student’s chronological level.   

     

    A curriculum has 3 major components – what students will:  KNOW, UNDERSTAND and DO after instruction.

    • We use the Curriculum Framework from the PA Voluntary Model Curriculum to help define the skills that are chronologically expected and also to understand the sequence of developmental milestones in the organization of expectations from the PA Standards.  The curriculum framework describes what the students should KNOW.
    • We use the Big Ideas from the PA Voluntary Model Curriculum to define the deeper UNDERSTANDINGS of the curriculum.  The Big Ideas are enduring understandings that are general and can even help us prioritize what we should modify in terms of the skills.  Big Ideas are the same from kindergarten through 12th grade.  They are able to be used to help define and integrate subject level understanding (e.g. social studies or science) with literacy understanding.  
    • The activities that we use, including the questions, the projects, the follow up for each story that is created are what we expect the students to DO once we have provided instruction.  Sometimes the activities will be assessment (e.g. Adapted Stories progress monitoring sheets) and sometimes the activities will be fun art activities, integrated math activities, environmental experience activities that relate in some way to the topic or the skills that were emphasized in the adapted story.

    So, when an adapted story is created and linked to a Thematic Unit and a Big Idea, we have created an alignment to the general education curriculum.  Sometimes the reference will be a far link due to the skill level of the student (e.g. a student on Level A PASA & Adapted Stories Checklist will work on the same Big Ideas, but the skills expected to be done will be modified from a student who may be on a Level B or C.) The core vocabulary alignment allows us to differentiate and provide access to the same general education curriculum that we are modifying so that all students can improve their literacy skills using multiple ways to engage and communicate.

    The 4 step model used for Low Incidence connection to the general education curriculum works with adapted stories.  See sample connection below:

    4 Step Model Components  

    1. IDENTIFY THE STANDARD (S) THE INSTRUCTIONAL UNIT WILL ADDRESS
      Samples of Current Adapted Stories Practices:
      Using the Curriculum Framework in Literacy, we see the standards listed on the sides of the page.  Example: We organize by Word Study / Comprehension in reading.  We can also use the Standards Aligned System to identify the standards you wish to use, just like we have when identifying standards when writing IEP goals in the past.

    2. DEFINE THE OUTCOME (S) OF THE INSTRUCTION FROM THE INSTRUCTIONAL UNIT
      Samples of Current Adapted Stories Practices:
      We use the Curriculum Framework to identify skills in the Student Literacy plan to understand what skills are important instructionally for the student in the general education curriculum.  This informs us in the outcomes for instruction when we work with the student.

      We use the Big Ideas and Thematic alignment to the adapted story to be sure we are defining the outcomes in our lessons plans that are aligned with the general education curriculum.

      We align our vocabulary with Brigance assessments and identify discipline vocabulary from each adapted story in order to define the outcomes of instruction for each adapted story in the area of Vocabulary from the Curriculum framework. 

    3. IDENTIFY THE INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES TO BE USED IN THE UNIT.
      Samples of Current Adapted Stories Practices:
      We create activities that accompany each adapted story. It is very important that we become more explicit when creating an adapted story to fully explain the activities that could be used with the materials and to create robust follow up activities that increases the rigor of the identified subject level in the adapted story.

      We align Core vocabulary with the story in order to provide instruction in new vocabulary/review of vocabulary for the student to engage with the texts

    4. TARGET SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES FROM THE IEP TO ADDRESS DURING THE UNIT. 
      Samples of Current Adapted Stories Practices:
      We use the information from the Student Literacy Plan and /or the IEP to determine when and where instruction of the IEP goal will fit most appropriately with the instructional activity.  We realize that our core curriculum is NOT just focused on the IEP goals.

      We recognize that the core curriculum is inclusive of many more skills and experiences and IEP goals are the prioritized skills that we have chosen as a team to measure progress.   We use the skills in the curriculum framework where the student is developmentally performing to help us identify logical skills to target in an IEP goal.  We know that when we do consult the curriculum framework to prioritize skills we are aligning to  literacy expectations in the general education curriculum.