- [Narrator] Guide to making an adjustment, a worked example, brought to you by the New South Wales Department of Education. All New South Wales Department of Education schools must make sure that students with disability are able to fully participate throughout their educational journey. For this to occur, adjustments are likely to be needed. Adjustments are any changes teachers make that improve a student's access to the learning material. This video will show you an example of how a teacher made adjustments for a student during a mathematics lesson. The focus of adjustments for the student are on supporting their attention and memory. Through this example, you will learn how to consider the strengths and abilities of a student when planning adjustments for a lesson, how to use a range of adjustments to support a student when teaching and giving instructions, how to modify a learning activity for a student to increase their engagement and participation, and how you can plan group work and multimodal learning opportunities to create inclusive learning experiences that support the participation of all students. When viewing the video, see if you can identify ways in which specific curriculum, instructional, and environmental adjustments made by the teacher may be relevant for students you teach. Tessa is an outgoing and confident 12-year-old student. She loves working with others and enjoys hands-on learning. Tessa loves to be the leader in a group and enjoys feeling responsible. She is often the first to volunteer to help. Tessa is a confident communicator and comes up with creative ideas when engaged and motivated in a learning activity. Tessa has a short attention span and also experiences some challenges with holding information in her head while working. Her teacher has noticed that after 5 to 10 minutes of focused work on an individual learning task, Tessa can become distracted. If no adjustments or prompts are provided at this point, she, at times, engages in behaviors of concern, such as interfering with the work of her classmates or wandering around the classroom. If the teacher or SLSO present a lot of verbal instruction or teaching, Tessa tends to miss some of what was presented. She finds it challenging to stay focused when there's lots of background noise and she becomes tired and overwhelmed quickly if there's a lot of reading or written content in a lesson. Tessa has a personalized learning and support plan that documents Tessa's strengths, abilities, and specific adjustments that may support her learning. The teacher refers to Tessa's personalized learning and support plan when planning the mathematics lesson and specific adjustments. At the beginning of the lesson, Tessa's teacher displays two to three short, clear and concrete learning intentions. This is so that all students know what they're going to be learning. Tessa's teacher will provide 10 minutes of teaching on angles, which is the current curriculum focus. Tessa's teacher knows that during this time, adjustments will help Tessa to stay focused. Adjustments will also help manage extra demands or distractions. To maintain Tessa's attention, Tessa is seated towards the front. This is so her teacher can use hand signals to prompt her to listen. She's also seated next to a friend who's an attentive listener and will not distract her. Her teacher prepares a presentation for the interactive whiteboard. The presentation only includes two to three short points on each slide with a visual where relevant. Some of the visuals include angles. Students are given opportunities to volunteer to circle specific types of angles, measure them using a protractor and label them. The teacher also holds up a number of items that have different angles and uses these as talking points. The teaching and instruction time is limited to 10 minutes so that Tessa and other students who also experience challenges with attention or listening can stay focused. Following the teaching and instruction time, the teacher asks students to work independently for 10 minutes on a worksheet. Tessa's worksheet is challenging, but achievable for her. The worksheet uses short and clear instructions about the task and a visual schedule. The visual schedule breaks down which steps to follow and how long to spend on each step. Her teacher provides a short and clear verbal reminder to the class about expectations during independent work. Tessa's worksheet has fewer written instructions and fewer written questions. Instead, more visuals are included for Tessa to solve. This means the focus of learning is on Tessa's ability to solve the problems rather than reading and interpreting written problems. All students are encouraged to access headphones if they find that helps them focus. Since the focus of the lesson is not on the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, the teacher encourages Tessa to use a calculator for those steps of the learning task. This reduces how much information she needs to hold in her head while working on the learning task. The teacher and SLSO check in on Tessa and other students at regular intervals to assess understanding and keep them on task. Once Tessa has completed 10 minutes of independent learning, her teacher allows students to have a drink of water and a brief break. For Tessa, this is a quick movement break, a walk up and down the hallway outside the classroom. For the remainder of the lesson, students work in small groups. The small group learning activity involves a range of hands-on activities where students can measure and label angles. Students take it in turns to lead parts of the learning activity in their small group. Verbal instructions and written instructions with visuals are provided to students. The teacher and SLSO rotate between small groups to keep students engaged and challenged. During this time, the teacher and SLSO ask questions to help students reflect on their learning. The teacher and SLSO also reinforce learning intentions during this time. Tessa learns well when lots of opportunities to practice and apply her learning are offered. Tessa's teacher has planned for repetition and opportunities to practice beyond today's lesson. Tessa will continue to practice her work on angles with different materials during mathematics classes. Her teacher has also shared the learning goals for this topic with other teachers and Tessa's family. This means Tessa will be given opportunities to identify and discuss angles in other subjects and at home with her family. Tessa's teacher will also make sure that the adjustments used during class time are included during assessments. Tessa will be given an opportunity to demonstrate her learning, using hands-on activities. She will be provided with verbal and visual instructions, and her assessments will be kept short and engaging. So, to recap. Adjustments provide students with disability and additional learning and support needs access to syllabus outcomes and content on the same basis as their peers. Adjustments can be curriculum, instructional, and environmental adjustments. This may include changes to the way teaching or instruction is provided, or how learning activities are developed. This can often involve providing multimodal learning experiences and opportunities to work with peers. Thank you for learning about making adjustments today. Please keep exploring the inclusive practice hub for more guides and resources to enrich your inclusive practices.