Instructional Strategies and Interventions for Students with Disabilities
This domain tests your ability to choose and justify evidence-based instruction, not just name strategies. Questions often describe a learner profile and ask which approach fits, or ask how to intensify an intervention that is not working.
Core instructional architecture
- Explicit instruction: clear objective, modeling, guided practice with feedback, independent practice, cumulative review. Use I do, we do, you do with high response rates and frequent checks.
- Specially designed instruction changes content, methodology, or delivery-not the standard.
- Scaffolding and task analysis break skills into teachable steps; fading is planned from the start.
- UDL: multiple means of representation, engagement, and action/expression.
Strategy families
- Reading: repeated reading, echo reading, peer-assisted learning (PALS), mnemonic strategies, graphic organizers, reciprocal teaching.
- Writing: SRSD, POW + TREE, sentence combining, self-editing checklists (COPS).
- Math: CRA (concrete to representational to abstract), schema-based word-problem instruction, worked examples, error analysis.
- Behavior and executive function: self-monitoring, checklists, goal setting, video modeling.
- Assistive technology: consider the full continuum-low-tech (grips, highlighters, picture symbols) to high-tech (text-to-speech, word prediction, AAC). AT must be considered for every IEP and documented when needed.
Tiers of support
RTI/MTSS: Tier 1 core for all, Tier 2 targeted small-group intervention, Tier 3 intensive individualized intervention. Movement between tiers is data-driven, using progress monitoring every few weeks.
Accommodations vs. modifications
Accommodations change access (extended time, preferential seating, read-aloud of directions); modifications change expectations (shorter assignment, below-grade text, reduced test items). A calculator on a computation test modifies the construct; a calculator on a word-problem application test may be an accommodation.
Worked example
A fourth grader with SLD reverses the order of operations in multi-step problems. The teacher begins with base-ten materials and place-value mats (concrete), moves to drawings and number lines (representational), then to the algorithm (abstract), using a mnemonic and worked examples, with weekly CBM probes. Reasoning: the error is conceptual, so more practice on the algorithm alone would reinforce the error.
Traps
Calling a modification an accommodation; choosing a strategy because it is engaging rather than evidence-based; using grade-level progress-monitoring passages with a student far below grade level; failing to fade prompts; and forgetting that AT consideration is an IEP requirement, not an afterthought.