Strong collaborations are critical to successful youth transitions. Preparing students with disabilities for life after high school requires extensive partnerships within and beyond the school. However, transition educators often struggle to meaningfully engage the people and programs that exist within their local community. A community conversation event is a practical, fun, and effective way for districts to capture fresh perspectives and identify innovative, local solutions to persistent challenges in transition education. The purpose of this article is to highlight the key steps for planning for a community conversation, implementing the event, and using information gathered to inform improvements to transition programming. We draw from our work supporting 10 Tennessee school districts who hosted their own community conversations to reflect upon and improve their transition practices. We provide resources, materials, and tips for school districts to implement a successful event that leads to improvements in transition programming and student outcomes.
Strengthening Transition Partnerships Through Community Conversation Events
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Strengthening Transition Partnerships Through Community Conversation Events
The Strategic Instruction Model (SIM™) is a comprehensive, evidence-based framework designed to enhance teacher effectiveness and student success, focusing on empowering educators through research-backed Content Enhancement tools, and teaching students essential Learning Strategies to help them thrive in school and beyond.
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Popularly known as The Kansas Strategies, each has been shown in research studies to produce statistically significant and socially valid improvements in student's writing performance. This virtual course is separated into two self-paced courses and includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
Research has shown that students who master the Paragraph Writing Strategy consistently produce written pieces that contain topic, detail, and clincher sentences. Their sentences are written with a consistent point of view, tense is consistent, ideas are logically sequenced, and they include appropriate transitions between ideas. This self-paced virtual course includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
The Fundamentals of Paraphrasing and Summarizing Strategy helps older students acquire the fundamental skills they need to be able to identify and paraphrase main ideas and details. Lesson topics include paraphrasing words, phrases, and sentences; identifying details, topics, and main ideas; creating summaries; and more. These skills are foundational to being able to paraphrase and summarize information and are required when students write answers to questions or write reports in schools. This self-paced virtual course includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
The Inference Strategy helps older students make inferences about information they have read and answer inferential questions.
Possible Selves is designed to increase student motivation by having students examine their futures and think about goals that are important to them. Students think about and describe their hoped-for possible selves, expected possible selves, and feared possible selves. They set goals, create plans, and work toward their goals as part of this program. This self-paced Canvas course guides teachers through the program.
The writers of academic textbooks often use complex language structures that are very different from the everyday speech patterns that students actually use. Thus, many learners find academic text extremely difficult to understand. In order to improve their understanding, students must understand how words and phrases are arranged to create wellformed sentences. They must also understand the role that active and passive voice play in creating comprehension, how connectives are used to signal relationships between ideas, and the importance of pronouns. Built around the four-step TEXT Strategy, Understanding Academic Language provides a framework that teachers can use to convey this information. This self-paced virtual course includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
Do you want to feel confident that your daily instruction is truly evidence‑based, standards‑aligned, and designed to give every student access to high‑quality Tier 1 learning? Are you looking for practical ways to ensure students master grade‑level content and take more ownership of their learning in the process? Then you’re in exactly the right place. In this self-paced online course, you will learn 4 SIM Content Enhancement Routines with this new online class designed to strategically integrate CERs across an entire course to support the full learning journey. Includes follow-up coaching.
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The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KUCRL) has developed this crosswalk to assist educators in understanding the relationship between Structured Literacy and the elements and processes used when implementing the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM™). These comparisons demonstrate that some SIM instructional tools and interventions can be used to deliver structured literacy for adolescent learners. It is important to note that SIM was designed for adolescents who have gained reading proficiencies at the fourth-grade level yet still need to advance their reading skills to meet grade level content expectations.
The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KUCRL) has developed this crosswalk to assist educators in understanding the relationship between the High-Leverage Practices for Students with Disabilities (HLPs) and the elements and processes used when implementing the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM™). These comparisons demonstrate how SIM can empower all teachers with evidence-based instructional tools and interventions which embed HLPs shown by research to improve achievement for students with disabilities. Likewise, these comparisons demonstrate how fluency in the use of HLPs provides a solid foundation with which to implement evidence-based practices, such as SIM. High leverage practices and the instructional process built into SIM have complimentary and related research foundations showing effectiveness to improve outcomes for students.
Research conducted by KUCRL for more than four decades has shown students can be taught how to learn by teaching them learning strategies. Schumaker and Deshler (2006) define a learning strategy as “an individual’s approach to a task. It includes how a person thinks and acts when planning, executing, and evaluating performance on a task and its outcomes.” When implementing any learning strategy instruction, the overarching goal is to have students apply and generalize the strategy in all classes and settings at an automatic, internalized level. Learn some basics about all of the SIM Learning Strategies in this brochure.
SIM Content Enhancement Routines (CERs) are dynamic instructional tools that use powerful teaching devices and procedures to plan for and teach critical content in an understandable and easy-to-learn manner. Teachers engage students collaboratively to develop understanding in a way that maintains the integrity of the content while meeting both group and individual needs. Learn some basics about all of the SIM Content Enhancement Routines in this brochure.
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Information provided in the online directory on this website is intended to provide a guide to businesses, organizations, and resources that support the special education community. The Council for Exceptional Children or any of its employees neither endorse, warrant, nor guarantee the products or services advertised in the directory. The information provided in each listing on this website is published as obtained from external sources that provide the information.
Strengthening Transition Partnerships Through Community Conversation Events
88 S 900 E Ste 105
Salt Lake City, UT 84102
United States
ADAPTS (Portable Transfer Sling) is the first of its kind created for use on an airplane, but it can also be used in the event of any disaster evacuation from schools, arenas, high rises or office buildings, cruise ships and hotels, trains and planes…or anywhere a wheelchair can’t go.
- ADAPTS is made of the soft material used for airplane life-vests and is water-resistant and flame-retardant.
- ADAPTS weighs 1.15 pounds. It measures 11″ x 11″ x 2″ when folded into a tote.
- ADAPTS is industrial tested to hold at least 450 pounds! One size fits all from the small to the tall!
- Hand wash or wipe ADAPTS with a soapy sponge and air dry. The package comes with the ADAPTS bag tag and instruction card as shown.
- When unfolded ADAPTS fits the seat on an airplane or a chair and can attach at the top. There are six handles, two on each side, one at the top, and one at the bottom so that two or up to six rescuers can safely and swiftly move a person to first responders.
- ADAPTS comes with a 10-year manufacturer’s guarantee.
ADAPTS ensures those with mobility impairment are not waiting for rescue in a panic situation to escape down stairwells, narrow aisles or hallways, or from airplanes, around tight corners, into lifeboats, or during public transport or power shut downs. Used successfully by first responders and EMS when a stretcher can’t navigate narrow hallways.
We are pleased to offer bulk discounts to school districts. Please email Robin at [email protected] for a price quote.
Information provided in the online directory on this website is intended to provide a guide to businesses, organizations, and resources that support the special education community. The Council for Exceptional Children or any of its employees neither endorse, warrant, nor guarantee the products or services advertised in the directory. The information provided in each listing on this website is published as obtained from external sources that provide the information.
