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Specially designed instruction (SDI) must be provided to directly address a Standards Based Individual Education Program (SBIEP) annual goal. When providing this instruction to the student, the skill to be acquired or mastered must be addressed using explicit instruction designed to close a skill-gap and be educationally meaningful (CEC High Leverage Practices - #16; Lee, n.d.; Virginia Literacy Partnership Infographic; Yell et al., 2021). The provider of SDI must consider the language used in providing this instruction. Bridges must be built between where the student is currently in skill development and where the student needs to be (grade level standard) to build something useful (Beninghof, 2022). Further, the SBIEP goals should not be written in a manner that continues to widen the skill gap.
Scenario:
Ms. Rumpulkin provides specially designed instruction to the students in her small group around high frequency words within the general education classroom. She is using a technique for the students to automatically recall the target high frequency word. She refers to portions of the words that contain patterns with which the students are unfamiliar and asks students to assign a heart to a word or a portion of the word that is not decodable or is irregular, and this portion must be taught explicitly and ‘remembered by heart’. The high frequency list being used with this Grade 3 group is a first-grade level list, two grade levels below for students in this group according to their SBIEPs. The students also receive instruction using an intensive intervention in word recognition skills at a separate time during the day. The words examined on this day are look, said, came; two words that are temporarily irregular (the student has not yet learned that syllabication pattern) and one that is irregular.
Does the instruction being provided build a bridge between where the student is and where they need to be? Does the instruction close a gap in skill? Does the instructional language being used by the teacher build a bridge or create a situation where the content being taught must be untaught at a later date and retaught? Will the student need to unlearn a concept and relearn the appropriate concept? Does the SBIEP goal widen the skill gap? These are some considerations we will unpack in this edition’s lesson.
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Ms. Rumpulkin is providing explicit instruction to students that follows understandings aligned with the Science of Reading (SOR) and evidence-based practices (EBP), the Heart Word Strategy, for teaching look, said, and came. This strategy, while successful in assisting students with automatic recognition of the target word, may not be sufficient for the student who struggles with decoding. The students in this group will, during their intensive intervention instruction, encounter the pattern of two of the words, look and came, and said will remain an irregular pattern phonologically. This group also receives SDI during a period of time within the general education classroom. Their SDI addresses SBIEP annual goals around learning strategies to identify unfamiliar words and high frequency words.
Students who struggle to acquire appropriate grade level reading skills must be instructed in a manner that will build bridges and close skill gaps. Instructional roadblocks and unnecessary barriers must be removed, thus unlearning one taught concept and replacing it with another will need to be minimized. Unteaching is hard work, but unlearning is even more challenging (Newton, 2018).
When teaching the words, look and came as examples, Ms. Rumpulkin must use language that builds a bridge to content that is to be learned for ease of acquisition. Teaching in this manner will not require Ms. Rumpulkin to unteach and reteach, and the students to unlearn and newly learn. During the instructional process, Ms. Rumpulkin might say,
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A similar process will be followed for the word, came. Although, with this word the pattern is a Vowel-Consonant-e syllable type. | |
Said was included in Ms. Rumpulkin’s instruction as well. This word is considered phonologically irregular, meaning that a portion of the word is not decodable according to the phonetic principle of <ai> in the middle says long /a/. Ms. Rumpulkin may use the Heart Word Strategy here and describe the phonological discrepancy. Are there additional strategies that might support students struggling in acquiring decoding skills with this particular word? Yes. Ms. Rumpkin might explain that although said is phonologically irregular, it is spelled as other words that act as past tense verbs in this family (i.e., say to said, pay to paid, and lay to laid; Stone, 2023). Explaining the concept of present to past tense and the orthographic regularity (inflectional suffix addition regularity) will further support the students’ learning, using morphology to support the teaching process. As Hegland (2021) shared, “suffixing conventions [suffix addition rules] are structural” (p. 91) and not only will support word recognition but meaning or reading comprehension. Ehri (2023) suggested teaching words as a group according to their similar irregularity (e.g., should, could, and would). Another great tool for teaching phonologically irregular and partially decodable words is the use of acrostic mnemonics, like the example Nessie shared in this YouTube video. | At the high school level, students continue to explore and analyze words as noted within the English Standards of Learning (2017 and 2024 proposed). Students who struggle with decoding multisyllabic words within elementary through high school may have SBIEP annual goals that address word analysis. The SDI provided will address this need, keeping in mind that language during the delivery of SDI should build bridges between where the students are and where they need to be. If the teacher focuses solely on syllabication to decode and pronounce the unfamiliar word, the gap widens. If the teacher focuses not only on syllabication but on the morphemes within the word, the gap closes. Research tells us that older students who struggle with decoding are supported in their learning through understanding not only phonics principles but morphology (Bowers, 2023). Consider the word, conspicuous. The multisyllabic word may simply be divided into syllables, con spic u ous, but it might also be divided by the morphemes - con spic u ous (<con> - with, <spic> from spect - see, <u> - as a connector, <ous> - full of or having) - and then the students may approximate the meaning of easily seen. To further solidify learning, the students may be asked to use the target word in writing. SDI provided in this manner will close the gap in skills and bring the student more in line with the standards at their grade level, as well as addressing the SBIEP goal. | |
To the point, instructional strategies used for SDI must be explicit but must also build bridges to accelerate learning where skill gaps exist. Further, the goal for which the SDI is being provided should be written in a manner that does not widen the skill gap for the student but is designed to close the existing gap. | |
 | When constructing an annual goal within a SBIEP, the language used must support skill gap closing (Lee, n.d.) and be educationally meaningful (Yell et al., 2021). As an example, when writing an annual goal related to reading skills for a student in third grade, it would be inappropriate to mention word level recognition skills at first, second, or any grade level. If a goal is written for a student in third grade where a first-grade list of words is to be learned, a skill gap of two years or more has been created. The gap widens! When considering the SBIEP annual goal and the SDI related to that goal, the IEP team must consider closing the skill gap and utilizing language that will support that. It will be important to consider the grade level standard for the area identified for the annual goal, and then consider where the student’s skills lie in relationship to that standard. The language that the SDI provider uses will be critical for creating a bridge between where the student is to where they need to be. | |
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Beninghof, A. M. (2022). Specially designed instruction: Increasing success for students with disabilities. Routledge.
Bowers, P. (2023). Structured word inquiry: The joy of understanding spelling [Symposium session]. Lexia 2023 Literacy Symposium, Online.
Ehri, L. (2023, April 13). Learning to read and spell words: Orthographic mapping and phases of development [Symposium session]. Lexia 2023 Literacy Symposium, Online.
Hegland, S. S. (2021). Beneath the surface of words: What English spelling reveals & why it matters. Learning About Spelling.
Lee, A. J. I. (n.d.) Endrew F. case decided: Supreme court rules on how much benefit IEPs must provide. Understood. https://www.understood.org/articles/endrew-f-case-decided-supreme-court-rules-on-how-much-benefit-ieps-must-provide
Newton, J. (2018, November 15.). Unteaching and unlearning is intellectual! University of Kansas. https://hawkhopesblog.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/unteaching-and-unlearning-is-intellectual/
Stone, L. (2023). Word study that sticks. Lifelong Literacy. https://lifelongliteracy.com/speech-to-print-solutions-said-and-there-and-robert-frost/
Yell, M. L., Bateman, D. F., & Shriner, J. G. (2021). Developing educationally meaningful and legally sound IEPs. Rowman & Littlefield.
*Co-Author:
Mallory Grant is a Virginia Special Educator supporting students at the elementary level. Mallory generously agreed to share her time and expertise with the TTAC at W & M. We thank her for the information that she contributed to this article.
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