Integrating ABLEWA into Teaching and Learning Support Materials

Features

The ABLEWA materials can be incorporated into the Teaching and Learning cycle to provide teachers with advice and strategies to inform their classroom practice.

The ABLES assessment tool supports a teacher to:

• assess a student’s readiness to learn
• develop an appropriate individual education plan that can be linked to proven teaching and learning strategies
• develop appropriate learning goals for various learning areas in collaboration with a student support group
• monitor the student’s learning progress and provide new information to parents on their child’s learning and development
• identify the resources that are known to improve learning, which can be adjusted as the learning needs of students change over time.

Assess

The teacher can apply the ABLES assessment tool to identify their students’ readiness to learn across the learning domains.

Data

The assessment tool produces four reports:

Learning Readiness Report – summarises the skills and abilities the student is currently developing and those that the student might learn next, which can be linked to relevant curriculums and a set of recommended teaching strategies.

Profile Report – maps a student’s level of learning and progress across consecutive assessments, and in all three learning domains as appropriate for the student.

Class Report – provides an opportunity to reflect on the learning of groups of students who are working at the same or adjacent levels.

School Report – maps individual student’s growth in learning at two points in time, two years apart (where data is available).

By reviewing these reports, a teacher can identify where a student is working within the Western Australian curriculum.  This means that the teacher can use the curriculum to provide a teaching and learning program that is appropriate to the student’s current achievement.

Plan

While many students with a disability and/or additional learning needs can engage with the Western Australian P-10 curriculum provided reasonable adjustments are made, additional curriculum materials may be required for students with a significant intellectual disability.   The ABLEWA Stages A to D curriculum materials provide this group of students with access to content that supports their progress towards the learning described at Pre-primary level.

Teach

The ABLES Learning Readiness Report provides strategies that experienced teachers draw upon to support the learning of their students.  Most importantly, these strategies have been shown to work and link with existing curriculum levels used within a school.

Teachers are able to monitor and make adjustments to the content, pedagogy, strategies and resources based on the learning of their students.