The first time in a classroom where I had to modify was when I was teaching grade 2 and I had two students that had a chronic health designation that affected their success in academics. I had the class in different reading groups, but for Math and Writing I was teaching out a lesson and managing different abilities. However, these two students struggled to follow what the group was learning. For example, for a while in Math I had these two work learning numbers 1-10 and what those numbers “look like” with objects. In their writing they responded by taking pictures with an iPad of moments in the day to remember and respond to by drawing a picture and sometimes spelling out words or short sentences.
One of my first caseloads had a student with ASD in Grade 5. During the first part of COVID when we were doing on-line learning I worked closely with the EA and classroom teacher to find alternatives to what the class was doing. The teacher was doing novel studies that this student could not read or comprehend. This student ended up reading aloud a book at her level and creating a puppet show to show an alternative ending to the story.
This year I have a student on my caseload with ASD, non-verbal, and also has a physical disability. Her day is all modified and most of it relates to her IEP goals: toiletry, catching balls, communicating with her device, etc.
Through the years as an LST the tool that students use most has been Google Read and Write. In my district all students have access to this Google Read and Write as part of their district account. With the grade 4 students I usually do a presentation showing off this tool. Many students with learning disabilities in reading and writing have found this tool helpful, but I have gotten comments from other students who have shared how they have used it too. Earlier as an LST I would show Google Read and Write to just students that I thought “needed it”. I quickly learned how isolating this was and that they weren’t going to use the tool if nobody else was. This is why I started to teach Google Read and Write to classes to “normalize the tool” and it has helped.