One of the more challenging aspects of classroom management can stem from accommodating students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).

Making sure these students succeed while maintaining forward momentum in your classroom as a whole is the root of many questions we field at AES.

In this article, we’ll share seven common ways teachers like you can make accommodations within AES to help students with IEPs be successful:

Some options for managing students with IEPs are simple and already built into the system. Others are available with a few clicks and tricks.

We’ll talk about these options in order from the most simple to the most complex.

The number one question teachers ask regarding accommodating IEPs is: Can quiz and test questions be read aloud to students?

It also happens to be the most simple accommodation to make.

Not only is it possible, but it’s also built right into the system and is available for all students!

Quiz and test questions are displayed one at a time on screen. On each screen, there is a Read Question option that students can select to have the question read aloud to them.

Another simple option for accommodating some IEPs is to allow those students to use their completed worksheets during assessments.

If your students with IEPs used the paper worksheets to take notes, be sure they bring them along on the day of the assessment.

If you’ve enabled the electronic worksheets, you can choose one of the options below for allowing an open-book assessment for IEP students:

Depending on the unique needs of your students and how your class is structured, you may find one of these options works better than the others.

Another way to accommodate students with IEPs is to allow them additional time to complete assessments.

By default, assessments will be submitted and graded automatically if the student’s account is inactive for more than 60 minutes.

To allows students with IEPs more time to complete an assessment, you can either:

In addition to providing students with more time on assessments, some teachers allow students with IEPs more attempts to take assessments.

An easy solution is to adjust the class-wide setting to allow students multiple attempts on quizzes.

While that setting is the same for all students in a class, you can also reset quizzes and tests for individual students as often as needed.

This allows you to give students with IEPs more opportunities to take an assessment, without opening the assessment to all students.

Moving into slightly more complex options, using custom exams can be a great way to accommodate students with IEPs.

With the Create Exam feature, you can create assessments to meet many IEP requirements.

For example, if a student’s IEP requires three or fewer answer options to multiple-choice questions, you can create an assessment using the existing module questions as the base.

Then you can delete answer options for questions that have more than three choices to meet the requirements of that student’s plan.

You can also create an assessment that has fewer questions than our standard module tests.

Note: Using the Create Exam feature places the new assessment at the module level in the system. Therefore you will need to specifically direct your students to the proper location to take the assessment.

Additionally, the grades for these custom assessments will be displayed separately from the module grade in your AES gradebook.

Creating a class for students with IEPs can help ensure your students don’t accidentally complete the wrong assessments.

It’s also a great way to group students with similar IEPs together.

Creating a separate class is simple. However, it does require you to manage an additional class.

You can start by creating a class for students that do not have IEPs.

Once you have that set up the way you like it, create a copy of the class for your students with similar IEPs.

By creating a copy of the class for your students with IEPs, you’ll be able to take advantage of class-wide features and settings without impacting students without IEPs.

A few of these settings include pacing settings, due dates, and quiz attempts.

You can also pull only one module into the IEP class at a time to minimize the number of module options available to those students at one time.

If you decide to create a separate class for IEP students, make sure those students enroll in the correct class for their needs.

One last way you can help students with IEPs be successful using AES is to share your class with a special education teacher.

If your students with IEPs are working with a special education teacher, you can share access to your class, allowing that teacher to perform all the options described above for those students.

It will also provide the special education teacher with the ability to preview the curriculum and view the answer keys so they can better assist the students.

While we cannot automatically create a one size fits all solution with our curriculum, we have provided several ways to adapt the system to help students with IEPs be successful with AES.

For more ideas, you can ask other teachers in the AES Educator Community.

Of course, please also get in touch if you need help implementing any of the ideas described above. Jump into a live chat, give us a call, or send an email.

We can talk through what your needs are and help you figure out the best way to use the system to accommodate your students. We’re here to help!