Continuity of Learning During COVID-19 Resource Database

NCSI presented a multi-part webinar series sharing best practices for state special education leaders to make the best use of available resources during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. NCSI and invited experts shared information to help state leadership teams make informed decisions amid current circumstances, ensuring leaders are poised to continue high-quality educational programming for students and families.

This lessons includes a tip sheet, slides with activities, and supplemental materials that are associated with finding the area of various polygons, the area of circles, and the relationship between the area formulas, as well as a final activity exploring the area of a parallelogram and the area of a circle. This unit was created by Robert Stroud from Westerly Public Schools in Rhode Island to support making the connections between various polygons and their areas rather than just providing formulas to compute.

Open Educational Resources (OER) support flexible instructional opportunities through the use of materials that can be reused and remixed to meet the needs and preferences of a wide range of learners. In this webinar, educators who are new to OER will learn how to create accessible OER using Open Author and how to evaluate existing OER in a variety of formats for accessibility.

This resource focuses on tools for making math notation more accessible to learners through the use of text-to-speech, handwriting recognition and other supports that can be installed on the devices families have at home to support continuity of learning.

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.

Social media can provide opportunities to clearly communicate policies and procedures to families during remote learning, and this resource provides tips on how to ensure all communication shared through social media follows accessibility best practices.

The use of video to support instruction is growing with remote and hybrid learning, and this resource focuses on the top tips and techniques for creating accessible video content that also engages learners and promotes understanding for everyone.

Many educational materials are not purchased, but created by educators and staff as they are needed. This resource focuses on five practices for getting started with the creation of accessible documents and slide decks that can be shared with families to support continuity of learning for all students, including those who use assistive technologies to interact with educational materials.

The shift to remote and hybrid learning have highlighted the importance of accessibility as a way to ensure educational equity for all learners. This resource focuses on concrete steps educators and administrators can take to ensure the technology they are purchasing meets accessibility requirements.

Find tip sheets and blog posts on how to use storybook conversations to engage in STEM learning with young children. The tip sheets include question prompts, related activities, and adaptations.

We have talked with many administrators, advocates and teachers and a pressing concern is “How do you collect data for students with significant cognitive disabilities when you are not in the same room?” This resource offers some suggestions.

This website provides strategies and resources to help students with autism, who can struggle both because of organizational deficits and motor or coordination difficulties, with written expression.

Tip Sheets for Families, Caregivers and Early Learning Educators: Made specifically for families, caregivers and early educators, these US Department of Education-created resources provide research-based tips for talking, reading, and singing with young children every day beginning from birth. All tip sheets are available in English and Spanish and can be downloaded for free.

This website streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Videos can include captions as desired.