Accommodation Vs. Modifications

Accommodations: 

The act of accommodating or the state of being accommodated; adjustment.

Modification:

The act of modifying or the condition of being modified.

In the classroom it is SO important to be able to accommodate for students as well as know the difference between the two terms. This is something i do on a daily basis in my classroom. 

In Special Education terms, or teacher terms accommodations means you are keeping the same target skill or learning target. The student is doing the same amount of work but in possibly a different form. For example having a test read out loud to a student. The test is still the same with the same amount of work but, given in a different way. For modifications this is changing the work load. Giving a student a test but, telling them to do only the even problems. Sometimes students assignments or projects may be a little different and may need to only include 2 examples of something while the class does 4-5 examples. 

I personally do many modifications in my classroom for one particular student. This student has been moved around from school to school and is at a 2nd grade reading level. For example when we do our warm up and many of the problems are geared towards 4th and 5th graders it sometimes is too great of a challenge (many times I do have this student challenge himself to try the math problems or correct some of the sentences but, sometimes they are too difficult for him to understand.) So I will make up a whole new warm up for him to do. I will do similar problems and similar language arts work but, again something that will challenge him with in reason :) 

 

                                                   











Here is an example of making accommodations for one of my students during the warm up activity (on the left). I wrote out the work for them and then had them make the corrections directly on the sentence. The warm up (on the right) I made modifications and gave the student different math problems that he was able to do. 

As teachers it is so important to know the difference between the two and know how to make accommodations and modifications for our students so they can reach their true learning potential :) 

* Thank you Dr. Casey and Dr. Hagaman for drilling this stuff into my head. I use these ideas EVERY day in my classroom! :)