Specially Designed Instruction (SDI) Field User Guides

 

SDI is changes to the content, methodology, or delivery of instruction students receive when they are eligible for special education support services. The SDI is tailored specifically to address the impact the disability has on a student’s learning. It is designed to ensure access of the child to the general curriculum and to enable the child to meet Individualized Education Program (IEP) annual goals.

 

Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD) committees consider data on the impact of a student’s disability, their strengths, and their needs.  The ARD committee then develops SDI for each student.

 

While each need is different, some instructional strategies and practices can be leveraged more frequently and in more ways than others. These Field User Guides are created for each of the instructional materials provided through Texas Home Learning created by the Texas Education Agency.  The Field User Guides incorporate both specially designed instruction and the embedded tools and strategies contained in each high quality  instructional resource.

 

The SDI Field User Guides are intended to be a bridge between existing student support plans and the instructional content available within the high quality instructional materials. Each section of the document provides ways to connect high quality instructional materials to student plans and leverage the tools found in the high quality instructional resource. This document provides multiple ways to approach and plan for the provision of SDI and presents multiple lenses through which readers can examine the connections between the tools and content in high quality instructional resources and the components of SDI.

 

These Field User Guides provide examples of how to support students in content areas, sample students, prerequisite teaching strategies, and more. The guides also include examples of collaboration between professionals to support student growth and provide connections to the core content in order to provide the most robust instruction using each resource.

 

The SDI Field User Guides are quick reference documents that can be used by both general and special educators to identify some of the support options within each content platform. While a few of the more utilized supports are outlined, they are not representative of all supports that are available.

 

An additional intended impact these documents have is to provide educators the tangible examples and connections that  can be accessed, implemented, or personalized depending on the specific high quality instructional content platform. This will allow for improved instruction and specialization and for learning experiences to be as unique as the student.