Three Ways To Make Your Classroom More Accessible
Creating an accessible classroom involves ensuring all students are recognized and have a pathway to learn and communicate their understanding. Accessibility remains essential for learners of all ages to participate effectively and achieve success. These three strategies can help you to create an accessible classroom environment for every student.
1. Provide Student Choice
Choice honors student agency and when introduced strategically with opportunities for reflection, it empowers students, enhances their participation, and makes them feel in charge of their learning process. Choices should be meaningful and relevant to student needs, interests and support their means of engaging with future learning opportunities. Here are some ideas of how you can incorporate choice into your learning space:
Material Choice: Providing options of different materials with varying design or supports can aid students in making a choice that best meets their needs. With writing, students might select the kind of paper or writing format that they would like to use. Some options include: lined, blank, half/half, or digital. This little flexibility helps students to feel comfortable and confident in their written work while still meeting the learning goal.
Independent vs. Partnered vs. With an Adult: Co-creating clear and consistent guidelines with students helps them to select whether they would like to work on a task alone, in pairs, or with the help of an adult. This flexibility enables students to work in a way that supports them as a learner at the moment. The choice that is most supportive may differ from day to day depending on the task, content area or even the energy level of the student. Examples of guidelines are:
for independent work, involve students in identifying strategies for staying focused and knowing when to ask for help.
for partner work, collaboratively establish expectations for working with a partner—such as sharing responsibilities, active listening, and resolving disagreements.
for working with an adult, make it clear how to ask for that support and what they can expect when doing so.
Co-creation allows students to take ownership of the process and work strategically towards making thoughtful choices and reflect on those choices with a higher level of independence .
Topic of Interest: When possible, allow students to pick what they wish to learn about within the particular subject area. For example, in a history class if the goal is to do research and share learning on a particular time period, students could decide to focus on a historical personality, investigate a particular event, or write a story that could have happened during that era. In math class, making applications to real-life situations that interest them, like sports statistics, or even coming up with a budget for a dream project maximizes learning, removing the barrier of a context that is unfamiliar and applying the concept to an area of interest.
Verbal vs. Written Expression: Allow students to present their knowledge in different ways. If the learning goal is not connected to a specific form of output, consider choices that consider the strengths and comfort level of students and center multiple modes of communication. As students consider their needs and those of their audience, it is purposeful to provide choices for expression such as:
written essays,
audio recordings,
presentations,
storyboards,
video submissions.
This flexibility removes unnecessary barriers. For example, a student can be passionate about science and can clearly and concisely explain concepts talked about in class in a conversation but may have barriers to generating an essay. If the only option they are given is to submit a written report, then they will not be able to demonstrate all they have learned. By allowing students to present their findings in different forms, they are able to convey what they have learned without being limited. When students can choose how they learn, they tend to feel more appreciated, engaged, and empowered.
2. Design and Plan for Flexible Seating Arrangements
Flexible seating design is a way of making the learning environment more pleasant and easily accessible to everyone by catering to different needs, styles, and comfort. Some students like to work while sitting on a desk, others may want to stand, sit on a cushion, or even work in a different area of the classroom. Letting students reflect on their needs and choose for themselves what is most effective for their learning and focus helps them to better understand and communicate their learning needs. Time and energy that may be spent managing their physical bodies can then be redirected to their learning.
Examples of Flexible Seating
Standing desks for students who need to be more active or need movement.
Bean bags or cushions to sit for a more relaxed atmosphere.
Tables for small group work or working in pairs or teams.
Individual desks or small groups of students in quiet areas for independent work.
Wobble stools or floor seating for students who can benefit from low-level movement.
Flexible seating helps students to be independent, engaged, and included. If budget is a concern you can check within your community for gently used donations, or utilize things around your home that you no longer need. Bringing in community support can help build a flexible learning space with minimal budget.
3. Provide Space for Reflection and Feedback
A reflective and responsive classroom helps teachers to be able to modify the lessons to the student’s needs often.
Reflection Activities Ideas
Ask learners to write down or give them an exit ticket to see what supported them as learners and what, if anything, felt hard in class.
Use group discussions to invite them to express their views on what is supporting their learning and what is not, as well as gain ideas on new accommodations to try.
Provide ways for learners to give feedback anonymously so that they can express themselves freely.
Create space for regular student/teacher conferences.
To ensure that students know that their opinion is valued, it is helpful to explain the reasons behind certain approaches, how feedback informs decisions and what can or cannot be modified. Sensing that their voice and perspective matters, students are more likely to participate in the learning process.
Choice, flexible design and seating, and space for regular reflection create more access and support deeper student engagement. To find out more about how to make your classroom more accessible for all learners, connect with us here!