Continuity of Learning During COVID-19 Resource Database

The Unified Young readers Club is a great inclusive activity for a younger audience and accompanies Special Olympics Young Athletes play with books and study guides that support teachers as they address such topics as inclusion, awareness, friendship, bullying, and acceptance to audiences of both students with and without intellectual disabilities. Each book has a theme that relates to multiple state academic standards, and aligns with the precepts of positive school climate initiatives.

To successfully launch the 2020-2021 school year for students with disabilities, state education agencies (SEAs) have an essential leadership role to play in supporting local school systems to plan for multiple scenarios, including services delivered in-person, through distance learning, and via blended approaches.

In the time of widespread virtual and distance learning models, leadership and training opportunities for students may look different, but it is essential that inclusive youth leadership remains a priority among schools, educators, and students. To provide an easily accessible opportunity to build upon this key component, the Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® team is offering four FREE Digital Inclusive Youth Summits for high school and college-aged students during the 2020-2021 school year

This lesson, featuring Karen McWilliams, a 504 Coordinator and Dyslexia Teacher in Rochelle ISD in Texas, supports educators in using technology to teach foundational reading skills to students in elementary grades using a variety of facilitated activities to support phonemic awareness, phoneme–grapheme correspondence, irregular and high-frequency words, writing, and connected text. The collection, adapted from content developed by the University of Florida Literacy Institute, includes a tip sheet, a video examples, and slides illustrating the lesson.

These videos illustrate how parents and grandparents can implement the NCII reading and mathematics sample lessons to provide additional practice opportunities. In addition to the video examples, a tip sheet is available to help parents implement the lessons.

This video and tip sheets provide an example and strategies for how educators can implement the NCII reading and mathematics sample lessons through virtual learning. The video illustrates a sample lesson using explicit instruction principles being delivered by an educator virtually and the tip sheets provide considerations for educators delivering instruction and how they can collaborate with families to provide additional practice opportunities using the sample lessons.

This resource was developed by a coalition of projects that are funded by the Office of Special Education Programs in response to requests from state and local educational agencies and parents about how to hold and participate in virtual individualized education program (IEP) meetings. While intended to meet a need during the COVID-19 pandemic, the content is designed to have broader applications.

This Voices From the Field piece includes a discussion with Laura Hamby and Ann Jolly from the Exceptional Children department in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools about how they have addressed teaching and learning challenges related to COVID-19 restrictions. They shared some of the strategies they implemented during Spring 2020 to support special educators in their districts to meet the needs of students with disabilities and their families.

This resource focuses on the accessibility supports already available on the devices many families may already have in their homes to support continuity of learning with accessible educational materials.

This lesson, featuring Karen McWilliams, a 504 Coordinator and Dyslexia Teacher in Rochelle ISD in Texas, supports educators in using technology to teach foundational reading skills to students in elementary grades using a variety of facilitated activities to support phonemic awareness, phoneme–grapheme correspondence, irregular and high-frequency words, writing, and connected text. The collection, adapted from content developed by the University of Florida Literacy Institute, includes a tip sheet, a video examples, and slides illustrating the lesson.

Families can use this resource to make a family schedule, choose family expectations, and make a plan to teach, remind, reward, and respond to behavior at home.

School and District leadership teams can download and use this resource to develop their own plan for welcoming staff back to school in Fall 2020 and providing 2 days of professional development.

Need key strategies on educational and transition planning for deaf students? A flexible, positive approach along with resources, tip sheets, and toolkits can support for Fall 2020 and beyond.

This one stop shop for all resources to support deaf students during COVID pulls together NDC technical assistance and dissemination activities on issues related to accommodations, communication, face masks, online learning, transition, and coordination of services. This web portal is updated weekly with new products and critical information to address ongoing concerns and needs in the field, with resources offered in English, Spanish, and ASL.

A series of webinars, from July through December 2020, on instructional strategies for children and youth who are deaf-blind (e.g., academic standards, literacy and numeracy, accessing the grade level general education curriculum). These will be recorded and made publicly available.