Students with disabilities in self-contained classrooms have a right to have access to the general-education curriculum. But how? An 8th-grade student who is learning to decode words and skip-count by 2s could not possibly perform at the level of those in general-education classrooms!

The keyword here is access. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) guarantees students access to the general-education curriculum, but access doesn’t mean sameness. Access means connecting every learner to the conceptual intent of a standard or lesson, even if the path looks different.

What SDI Gen-Ed. Curriculum “Access” Means

  • 1. Identifying the intent of the standard: An 8th-grade literacy standard includes students understanding what a text says explicitly and implicitly. The curriculum may indicate a particular passage or novel to be read, but some students cannot read and understand that passage. Remember, the passage is not the curriculum! The intent of that standard is understanding the difference between something clearly stated, right in front of you (explicit), and something you decide might be true or is happening (implicit).
  • 2. Deliberately building executive function skills: the building blocks of all learning
  • 3. Using executive function as the bridge to the intent of the standard

Using Executive Function to Position Students for Access

In my book Building Executive Function: The Missing Link to Student Achievement, I share a strategy called “Now You See It; Now You Don’t” (p. 30).

The intent is to build the executive function skills of:

  • – attending to an activity
  • – focusing
  • – concentrating
  • – storing and manipulating visual information
  • – remembering details

Essentially, you have students look at a picture for a period of time. Then you remove the picture and have them describe it to you. As students engage in this activity, they build the executive function skills mentioned above. You might have them try this with a few pictures in a row, depending on their attention span. Return to it several times throughout the day. Upon introducing it, you might return to it every half-hour with a different set of pictures. If you are talking about the weather, you might show them a picture or have them look out the window and then turn around and describe what they saw in the sky. The more you work this part of the brain, the more it grows in ability.

Complete the Bridge to the Curriculum Through Your Questions

Look closely at this picture and try to remember as many details as you can. Then cover the picture and see what you remember. (This builds executive function.)

At this point, you might show the picture again, having students point out the details they remembered and those they didn’t. Then continue with more questions to create the bridge to the general education curriculum, in this example, explicit and implicit messaging:

  • How many puppies did you see? How do you know? (Explicit message) A student might say you can count them or you can see them.
  • Are the puppies running, sitting, lying down, or walking? (Explicit message) How do you know? A student might again say you can see them lying down.
  • Do you think the puppies are warm? (Implicit message) Yes, they are under a blanket and lying next to each other. A student might say they are cold and are lying under the blanket. You can then talk about verb tense. . . . Do you think they were cold so they went together under the blanket and now they are warm?
  • Do you think the puppies are tired? (Implicit message) Yes, they’re just lying down. Puppies usually have a lot of energy and would be running around, but they’re not, so they might be tired.

And so on. You might take this picture and write a few-sentence story about it. Discuss again what is told to you and what you decide might be true based on what you read. You don’t have to read The Outsiders to understand explicit and implicit meaning. You don’t even need to name them as explicit and implicit. But you need to build the concept of what you can see in front of you vs. what you must decide is true based on that. That’s a life skill! And it’s access to the general-education curriculum.

I could use this one picture across the grade levels to discuss so many general-education curriculum standards: main idea and supporting details, character traits, setting, perspectives, and on and on.

The Executive Function – Access Connection

When you teach skills alone, such as decoding c-v-c words and skip-counting by 2s, the student may or may not be able to master the content and/or remember it later.

When you teach executive function skills alone, such as cause-and-effect, same-and-different, or catching and correcting errors, the student has no place to apply them.

When you teach executive function skills in the context of the concepts presented in the general-education curriculum, which may lead you back to your skills focus, POW!!!! You’ve created an impact that will serve your students’ brains and learning forever.

Using this image, you are asking students to build executive function (attend, focus, concentrate, remember details, etc.). Through your further questioning, you are asking them to relate this to the intent of the general-education curriculum lesson/standards, thus creating “access.”

Here is a downloadable version of this activity with a collection of pictures you can use at any grade level. Use executive function strengthening techniques to provide students with disabilities with access to the general education curriculum!

Image by ChatGPT and Gemini; content by me!

IDE Corp. can support your efforts in making the general education curriculum accessible to your students with special needs:

  • – To share your situation and goals in order to brainstorm possible consulting/professional learning services with us, contact solutions@idecorp.com.
  • – Enroll your school or district’s teachers and leaders in an online, on-demand professional learning experience with downloadable resources, examples, and learning on building executive function. Create a culture of professional learning around executive function!
  • – Enroll individuals in our online, consultant-facilitated Virtual Learning Communities (five-week courses) in executive function.