Making Learning Accessible: Research-Driven Practices for Math and Literacy Success

This session highlights practical, research-based strategies for supporting students with disabilities and learning difficulties. Presentations cover teaching fraction magnitude, addressing common misconceptions in fractions, effective spelling instruction, and innovative phonemic awareness practices. Together, these approaches equip educators with evidence-based tools to enhance literacy and mathematics instruction across grade levels. Participants will be able to: 1. Identify common fraction misconceptions in grades 3–5, plan instruction to target them, and apply effective strategies such as explicit instruction, multiple representations, scaffolding, and flexible questioning. 2. Compare methods for promoting rich mathematical discussions among sixth graders with disabilities, learn the steps for implementing a small-group intervention to build fraction magnitude knowledge, and discuss the challenges students face when sorting fractions across different visual representations. 3. Identify several spelling interventions that can improve achievement among elementary and middle school students at risk or with literacy disabilities; explain the steps for at least two easy-to-implement spelling strategies for struggling spellers; and describe a range of spelling assessments that can be used to monitor growth or diagnose students’ spelling strengths and weaknesses. 4. Equips participants with research-based tools to teach phonemic awareness through a 3D, hands-on approach. Using phonemic objects, participants will practice teaching new sounds, isolating initial sounds (e.g., /p/ in pig), and connecting concrete sound patterns to the abstract process of reading—bridging phonemic awareness to literacy before printed letters are introduced.