The IM curriculum empowers all students, with activities that capitalize on their existing strengths and abilities, to ensure that all learners participate meaningfully in rigorous mathematical content. Lessons support a flexible approach to instruction and provide options for additional support to address the needs of a diverse group of students, positioning all learners as competent, valued contributors.

When planning to support access, consider the strengths and the needs of students. The following areas of cognitive functioning are integral to learning mathematics (Brodesky et al., 2002).

• Conceptual Processing includes perceptual reasoning, problem solving, and metacognition.
• Language includes auditory and visual processing and expression of language.
• Visual-Spatial Processing includes processing visual information and understanding relation in space of visual mathematical representations and geometric concepts.
• Organization includes organizational skills, attention, and focus.
• Memory includes working memory and short-term memory.
• Attention includes paying attention to details, maintaining focus, and filtering out extraneous information.
• Social-Emotional Functioning includes interpersonal skills and the cognitive comfort and safety required in order to take risks and make mistakes.
• Fine-Motor Skills include tasks that require small-muscle movement and coordination, such as manipulating objects (graphing, cutting with scissors, writing).

Access for Students with Disabilities

Supplemental instructional strategies, included in Access for Students with Disabilities of each lesson, increase access, reduce barriers and maximize learning. Each support is aligned to the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines (udlguidelines.cast.org), and based on one of the three principles of UDL, providing alternative means of engagement, representation, or action and expression. These supports offer additional ways to adjust the learning environment so that students can access activities, engage in content, and communicate their understanding. Supports are tagged, with the areas of cognitive functioning they are designed to address, to help identify and select appropriate supports for students. Designed to facilitate access to Tier 1 instruction by capitalizing on students’ strengths to address obstacles related to cognitive functions or challenges, these strategies and supports are appropriate for any student who needs additional support to access rigorous, grade-level content. Use these lesson-specific supports, as needed, to help students succeed with a specific activity, without reducing the mathematical demands of the task. Phase them out as students gain understanding and fluency.

Use a UDL approach and students’ IEPs, their strengths, and their challenges to ensure access. When students may benefit from alternative means of access or support, draw on ideas from the tables below or visit udlguidelines.cast.org for more information.
 

UDL Strategies to Enhance Access

The tables below include select examples of the types of supports found in these materials. Each UDL principle includes varied levels, with suggestions that support ways to increase access to the learning goal, ways to develop or build understanding, and ways to empower learners to internalize learning and executive function.

Engagement

Students’ attitudes, interests, and values help to determine the ways in which they are most engaged and motivated to learn. Supports that provide multiple means of engagement include suggestions for motivating students to engage with content, develop effort and persistence, and internalize self-regulation.

Provide Access by Recruiting Interest	Offer choice. Invite students to select a subset of problems to complete, and decide which problem to start, which strategy to use, and the order in which to complete the task. Provide access to a variety of tools or materials. Leverage curiosity and students’ existing interests. Invite students to name connections to their own lived experiences. Use visible timers and alerts to prepare for transitions.
Develop Effort and Persistence	Chunk this task into more manageable parts. Check in with students to offer feedback and encouragement after each chunk. Differentiate the degree of difficulty or complexity by starting with accessible values. Periodically revisit math-community norms, and provide group feedback that encourages collaboration and community.
Internalize Self Regulation	Offer on-going feedback that helps students maintain sustained effort and persistence during a task. Encourage self-reflection and identification of personal goals. Provide access to tools and strategies designed to help students self motivate and become more independent.

Representation

Reduce barriers and leverage students’ individual strengths by inviting students to engage with the same content in different ways. Supports that provide multiple means of representation include suggestions for offering alternatives to the ways information is presented or displayed, developing students’ understanding and use of mathematical language and symbols, and describing organizational methods and approaches designed to help students internalize learning.

Provide Access  for Perception	Present content, using multiple modalities: act it out, think aloud, use gestures, use a picture, show a video, demonstrate with objects or manipulatives. Annotate displays, with specific language, different colors, shading, arrows, labels, notes, diagrams, or drawings. Provide appropriate reading accommodations.
Develop Language and Symbols	Support use of vocabulary, mathematical notation, and symbols, with charts, pictures, diagrams, and tables. Highlight connections between representations to make patterns and properties explicit. Present problems or contexts in multiple ways, with diagrams, drawings, pictures, media, tables, graphs, or other mathematical representations. Use translations, descriptions, movements, and images to support unfamiliar words or phrases.
Internalize Comprehension	Activate or supply background knowledge to build connections to prior understandings and experiences. Provide access to blank or partially completed outlines, graphic organizers, or representations, to emphasize key ideas and relationships. Maximize transfer and generalization by naming connections to previous examples and inviting students to identify important details or features to remember.

Action and Expression

Throughout the curriculum, invite students to share both their understanding and their reasoning about mathematical ideas with others. Supports that provide multiple means of action and expression include suggestions for empowering students with: access to appropriate tools, templates, and assistive technologies, options for the ways they communicate their learning, and resources that facilitate executive functioning.

Provide Access for Physical Action	Provide independent think time before students engage with others or responses are discussed. Ensure students have enough time to complete tasks. Offer extra time if needed. Provide access to pre-cut materials, assistive tools, devices, or software.
Develop Expression and Communication	Offer flexibility and choice with the ways students demonstrate and communicate their understanding. Invite students to explain their thinking, verbally or nonverbally, with manipulatives, drawings, and diagrams. Support fluency with graduated levels of support or practice. Apply and gradually release scaffolds to support independent learning. Support discourse with sentence frames or visible language displays.
Internalize Executive Functions	Support the development of organizational skills in problem solving, with access to templates, rubrics, and checklists. Post visible goals, objectives, and schedules. Offer opportunities for self-assessment. Enable students to monitor their own progress.

For additional information about the Universal Design for Learning framework, or to learn more about supporting students with cognitive challenges, visit the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) at udlguidelines.cast.org. 

Accessibility for Students with Visual Impairments

For students with visual impairments, accessibility features are built into the materials:

1. A palette of colors distinguishable to people with the most common types of color blindness.
2. Tasks and problems are designed so that success does not depend on the ability to distinguish between colors.
3. Mathematical diagrams, presented in scalable vector graphic (SVG) format, can be magnified, without loss of resolution, and rendered in Braille.
4. Where possible, text associated with images is not part of the image file, but rather included as an image caption accessible to screen readers.
5. Alt text on all images makes interpretation easier for users accessing the materials, with a screen reader.

All images in the curriculum have alt text: a very short indication of the image’s contents, so that the screen reader doesn’t skip over as if nothing is there.

• Some images have a longer description to help students’ with visual impairments recreate the image in their mind.

Understand that students with visual impairments likely will need help accessing images in lesson activities and assessments. Prepare appropriate accommodations.

Accessibility experts, who reviewed this curriculum, recommended that eligible students have access to a Braille version of the curriculum materials, because a verbal description of many of the complex mathematical diagrams is inadequate to support their learning.