School Accommodations: 3 Types and Examples to Improve Learning Outcomes

School accommodations adjust the environment to help students with reading disabilities, impaired vision or hearing, autism, or ADHD access the content of a test.

With a few small changes, you can open the world to students who learn differently and ensure they can flourish with everyone else, no matter their disability. However, you need to take the time to determine each student's issues and the best solution for them. These accommodations are meant to help every student reach their full potential.

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What Are School Accommodations?

School accommodations are put into place to reduce or eliminate barriers to learning. Some common barriers include how the information in lessons is presented, how the student is expected to respond, the setting they’re in, and scheduling. For example, some students are more alert in the morning. A child with ADHD may have more focus early in the day, as they've taken their medication in the morning.

Each of these issues can prevent students from learning at their full potential. Essentially, accommodations level the playing field for students without giving them a pass to skip learning.

Adapting the learning environment to the student is not a new idea, but it's more common now to provide accommodations. School administrators now realize how much some students with disabilities struggle. Teachers and school administrators can work with students to adapt their environment and teaching practices so everyone can learn.

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Instructional Accommodations

Not everyone can understand and absorb information easily when it's spoken. For example, a child with audio processing disorder (APD) or someone with autism may not truly understand a standard school lecture. Others find it difficult to understand and process written information. These are issues that can easily be fixed without altering what the student needs to learn. It simply changes how they learn. For a student who has difficulty understanding written information, providing an audio option makes that same information accessible to them.

Testing Accommodations

If a student with dyslexia or autism can't understand writing, they may fail a written test because they can’t comprehend the written questions. However, if someone sits beside them and reads the questions aloud, this removes that barrier and gives them the opportunity to show what they know. You may even allow the student to respond orally if necessary.

Classroom Accommodations

The classroom itself may be a barrier to learning, and it's easy to adjust in many cases. Depending on student needs, you may wish to minimize distractions by keeping displays and posters to a minimum. You should also provide clear rules and routines so every student can feel secure and know what's coming next. Many students find it difficult to transition between activities, particularly if they have autism. Simply establishing a routine can create a more comfortable learning environment for everyone.

In addition, regular breaks can help students improve their focus, particularly for students with ADHD. Students who are easily distracted can become disruptive in class, making it difficult for the student to complete their own work. Teachers may provide breaks, a quiet area for study, or fidget toys to help these students stay on task. These accommodations help them stay focused on their work and learn the same information as other students. The difference is how they learn it.

As you can see, there are many options for school accommodations. These changes may seem simple, but they drastically alter the outcome for students previously considered problematic.

Students with disabilities deserve a chance to learn like their peers, so making that possible is what you’re trying to accomplish in your school. Everyone gets an equal opportunity to learn, which can help them have a brighter future.

Other Common Accommodations

Depending on the disabilities or special needs you’re facing with your students, there are many ways to help them. For example:

• Computers: Using digital devices can improve focus and concentration, which can help students stay on task and engage more with the information presented.
• Movement: ADHD students often find it difficult to stay still for learning, so allowing some movement in the classroom can help.
• Fidgets: Providing students with fidgets — small objects with moving parts to click or flip — can help them stay on task. They don’t need to move as much because they’re busy with their fingers, which often allows them to listen better.
• Organizational tools: Options for staying organized can help students who struggle to keep up in class. They may use notes, color-coded folders, and tabs in their books.
• Check-ins: Teachers check with students to ensure they understand what's expected of them. Some teachers find it useful to have students repeat instructions they're given, to be sure they understand.
• Tests: Providing a smaller setting can help easily distracted students succeed.

How You Can Stay On Top of Special Accommodations

At Education Advanced, we offer solutions for schools trying to stay on top of their students’ needs. With TestHound, you can ensure every student has their needed accommodations. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your students do their best and equalize testing.

If your school is interested in new ways to improve the learning experience for children, you may also be interested in automating tasks and streamlining processes so your teachers have more time to teach. Education Advanced offers a large suite of tools that may be able to help:

• Cardonex, our master schedule software helps schools save time on building master schedules. Many schools used to spend weeks using whiteboards to organize the right students, teachers, and classrooms into the right order so that students could graduate on time and get their preferred classes. However, Cardonex can now be used to automate this task and within a couple of days deliver 90% of student's first choice classes.
• Embarc, our curriculum mapping software, helps teachers quickly analyze whether or not their curriculum is aligned with state and national standards as well as share best practice curriculum plans with other teachers to reduce duplication and with parents to keep everyone up to date.
• Evaluation allows school administrators to efficiently document every step of the staff evaluation process, including walk-throughs, self-evaluations, supporting evidence, reporting and performance analytics.
• Testhound, our test coordination software, helps schools coordinate thousands of students across all state and local K-12 school assessments while reflecting dozens of accommodations (reading disabilities, physical disabilities, translations, etc.) for students.
• Pathways is a graduation tracking tool that allows administrators and counselors to create, track and analyze student graduation pathways to ensure secondary students are on track to graduate and build an educated, talented workforce for the future.