A personal reflection 175coming out the other end in a thin, concise stream, then the process made much
more sense. Overall the instructor was good at what she did. However, I needed to
develop a graphical representation of the concept in order to bridge the gap in my
understanding.
Output
Adapt how the student can respond to instruction.
Output is just the flip side of the processing coin of input. The number of
ways a student can demonstrate mastery of a subject is only limited by the
imagination of the instructor and student combined. Some examples include
responses that are typed, spoken, or pointed at using an assistive communica-
tion device, or even drawing mind maps. The following discussion illustrates an
example of a student who advocated for himself and even suggested a reasonable
accommodation.
The assignment was to make an annotated list of the components of the
electronic music lab including their functions and interconnectivity. The student
waited until the others left and straightforwardly disclosed his ADHD, which
greatly slowed his penmanship and made it all but illegible. He then stated that he
should accept a failing grade now due to those challenges ... or ... might he have
permission to draw a map of the electronic music studio to depict the functions of
the components.
Suppose I took the stance that the student should know how to write simple
paragraphs at this time. And if he could not do so, than perhaps he should drop
the course in favor of him taking a developmental writing class and return next
year when he was ready. However, something told me to let him draw a map
of the studio as he suggested. It was clear that he knew his way around the
equipment.
Being that it was the middle of the semester I knew this student had greater
mastery of the electronic music lab than all the other students, and in some ways
was more advanced than I. Clarity in the goal of assessment is vital here. If the goal
is to measure content then it is the responsibility of the instructor to remove undue
barriers to that student’s success. Not doing so would have caused a student having
the greatest amount of mastery of this subject to potentially receive the lowest
grade in the class – which would be invalid. On the other hand, if I wanted to eval-
uate his writing than it would have been incumbent on me to remove the physical
barrier of writing such as allowing him to use a scribe or speech-to-text software,
provide the answers orally, or use other means.
Difficulty
Match the skill level of the child to the challenge of the work.
There are situations where no matter how many curriculum modifications are
made and how much support is provided, a student may not be able to achieve