Alternate Assessment Ideas

So here are some ideas for alternate assessment for students who are on the moderate to severe spectrum.  My state requires I provide work samples demonstrating student learning.  Most of my students are able to do this grade level work through "typical" work samples such as worksheets or projects....those who cannot read/write/hold a pencil need a different approach.  These are just some ideas, I use these little games to work on skills, then document this in the student's assessment folder. 

For this one the student has to know about Greek Mythology and apply the myth to common terms/vocabulary, a very hard task to teach to a student with a severe disability.  We used this to work on the idea that Herculean meant strong, the pieces are velecroed on and you pull them off or match them on, we supplemented with videos and music.

This one helped to teach about the Muses in Greek Mythology, and my wonderful speech pathologist suggested it and let me barrow it.  You press a picture of the muses and it makes either a flute sound or a harp sound.  My kids loved it.

 

Just your standard life cycle chart, colored to help students pay better attention, again the student worked on matching picture to picture and if they master that part they can assemble the pictures on their own.

Again more Greek Mythology, the snakes can be put on or taken off of Medusa's head, while the student does this task you can explain who Medusa was--supplement with videos/music or books

Standard simple food chain matching task, again: simple and bright colors

Simple life cycle matching game, colored brightly, supplement with videos

Producers and consumers, a file folder matching task where you read the definition and have the student work on pulling off the correct animal/plant or put on the correct animal/plant

Another simple food chain, this time a bit more complex as it has a few more animals than the other one, again the student can match them or assemble them on their own

Teaching concepts of whole units that can be broken into smaller units, the "feet" come off of the folder, the student can count the inches or place objects on each "inch" square--supplement with hands on activities using unit cubes to "build" 1 foot or whatever

Another simple life cycle file folder activity, supplement with videos or hands on activities (looking at frogs or having frogs in the classroom)

This was my moderate to intensive version of the KY Writing Standard for alternate assessment where students have to organize writing around a topic.  For a child who cannot read/write this can be near impossible.  We did our writing with pictures, and why not?  The student would look at these Valentines Day pictures to develop a sense of a "topic".  Then we'd discuss that we were going to write about Valentines Day and have the student choose between Valentines Day pictures or Halloween pictures.  This activity satisfied the Alternate Assessment standards as well as built on other important skills for the student.

Another writing task was using editing skills so we used this game to promote the understanding of capitalization and punctuation.

This was a task designed to teach a student about perimeter and what it means, the unit cubes velcro on around the big foam blocks, this task utilizes some tactile features to help engage the student, you can supplement with all sorts of other fun tasks and activities.

These two activities go together.  The student had to sort shapes by attributes (polygons, rhombus etc.) so we began by matching like shapes to like shapes, then moved on to differentiating the shapes. I used the big foam blocks and velcroed them onto foam trays.

Teaching concepts of multiplication, the little buttons are velcroed on and off and can be counted, you could make a million of these with any objects.

This was to teach the student about patterns, we used this all year long and we used very different objects as to keep the student engaged and interested.