UDL Week: Day 2 - Other Health Impairments
Welcome back to UDL Week. Today, we’re looking at supporting students with an Other Health Impairment (OHI) eligibility for special educations services in a fast-paced geometry class that features productive struggle.
About OHI
First off, here’s brief overview of the OHI eligibility category for special education services:
OHI is a broad eligibility category that includes various medical conditions that adversely impact educational performance.
Some common examples of qualifying conditions include ADHD, epilepsy, diabetes, asthma, cancer, Tourette's syndrome, dyslexia, and other chronic illnesses.
To qualify under OHI, a student's condition must cause limited strength, vitality, or alertness that negatively affects learning.
The OHI must be chronic or acute health problem that requires special education support for a student to access and make progress in the general education curriculum.
Students with OHI often benefit from accommodations like extended time, medication administration, breaks, assistive technology etc. as outlined in an Individualized Education Program (IEP).
Other common supports include behaviour intervention plans, emergency care plans, health plans, and special transportation services.
The OHI category ensures students with health conditions receive the services and accommodations needed to equitably access their education despite their disability and challenges.
As with all special education eligibilities, multidisciplinary assessment and parent consent are required to qualify a student under the OHI designation and provide them with an IEP.
In summary, OHI covers a diverse range of medical conditions that impact learning and make special education services necessary for academic achievement. The supports students receive are highly individualized based on their needs.
Supporting students (OHI) in our geometry class.
Remember from yesterday that our class class features Productive Struggle. Productive struggle can present unique challenges for students with attention deficits, learning disabilities, or other health impairments. However, the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provide a framework for more equitable access to Productive Struggle opportunities. UDL recommends multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. For example, to aid engagement, teachers could provide ADHD students with fidget tools, sensory objects, or opportunities for movement breaks to sustain focus as they productively grapple. To support representation, learning disabilities could be provided graphic organizers, manipulatives, or other multimodal content presentations during struggle sessions. To assist action and expression, students with motor impairments might verbalize understandings into a recorder rather than writing after productive struggle lessons. The key is flexibility in the struggle medium while maintaining high challenge. With strategic UDL supports, students with diverse needs can persist through difficulty, foster independence, and reach rigorous standards-based learning goals. Careful UDL implementation allows appropriate struggle for all learners.
Students with OHI may struggle with this lesson in the following ways:
The lesson moves at a brisk pace, with multiple activities in a short time. Students with attention difficulties may have trouble staying focused.
The ramp design requires visual-spatial skills that students with visual processing challenges may find difficult.
The small group and whole class discussions require strong executive functioning skills that some students with OHIs lack.
The cool-down relies on strong independent work skills which can be hard for those with executive functioning deficits.
Mathematical reasoning and problem solving are involved throughout, which could be challenging for students with cognitive impairments.
The hands-on activity and group work may cause sensory or social-emotional overwhelm for some students.
Here’s a list of suggested supports:
Providing students with ADHD extended time, movement breaks, fidget tools, and an alternate quiet workspace as needed.
Allowing students to use assistive technology tools and manipulatives for visual/spatial tasks.
Providing checklists, graphic organizers, and templates to help students stay on track.
Partnering students with peer buddies or paraprofessionals during group work.
Allowing alternate ways to demonstrate understanding like oral responses or visual models.
Modifying instructions and math problems to be more concrete and scaffolded.
Building in more individual work time and independent learning strategies.
Offering sensory tools and calm down spaces for students who become overwhelmed.
The needs of students with OHIs vary greatly, so implementing their IEP accommodations and regularly checking in is key. But overall providing support with executive functioning, sensory regulation, and scaffolding complex tasks can help.
Conclusion
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s article. Here’s a link back to day 1. There, you find the links to all of the articles in this series. Tomorrow, we move on to supporting our autistic (ASD) students.