Considerations for Teaching Prerequisite Skills for Students with Complex Access Needs

- So let's talk about prerequisite skills. That's when we take a challenging concept or idea and look for the underlying skills that support it. An example of this might be freshman algebra. In a freshman algebra class, you might be working on a prerequisite skill like one-to-one correspondence or computation, but you're still in freshman algebra and getting exposed to algebraic ideas. It's important for you as a teacher to use those prerequisite skills to build better lessons and support your students' goals. You also want to add accommodations in a meaningful way for your students with Down syndrome that support their academic goals and IEP objectives. Knowing what the prerequisite skills are for a specific class will help you take a student from where they are and move them forward but still align with the curriculum and standards. But please remember this one thing. Just because a student is working on prerequisite skills doesn't mean that they should be excluded from the concepts and ideas from the curriculum at their enrolled grade level. Just because a student with a disability can't count doesn't mean that they should be excluded from larger algebraic ideas, because ready means never. So what's "ready means never?" It means a student that spends all their time working on counting coins and never gets to counting bills doesn't get exposed to more complicated concepts, and because they're never ready, they never get to learn more. So we need to make sure that we're including students in more challenging concepts, because we're making the least dangerous assumption. So remember, as you're crafting your lesson, you want to make sure that students who are working on prerequisite skills are still included. They shouldn't be removed because they can't. It means providing good accommodations and supports so a student can be included in the activities.