Most students have writing goals, and most state testing portfolios require them… but what do you do if you have a student who can’t do the typical writing goals? How do you adapt and support them to reach goals? With core communication boards!
Topic Boards are a great tool to use with students who do not write with paper and pencil, and need choices for their writing. Having a topic board to help the student build a sentence works just like a core board or communication board.
The student will look at the topic board and point to build a sentence. The smaller pieces of each word will be cut out for students to build the sentence on the blank sentence sheet or a teacher can build it as they point.
Using these topic boards to create sentences allows the student a lot more freedom than fill in the blanks (which actually do not count for writing on state testing portfolios, especially access goals for MCAS ALT)
Why did I create this resource? I was a first year teacher who had to complete SEVEN MCAS-ALT portfolios, all of them required a writing goal. My students could not write by hand, and fill in the blanks did not count for the MCAS. It had to be their OWN ideas fully. I made these topic boards as a large scale word bank and worked with my students on building sentences…. even if they weren’t full sentences, they counted! I had this activity approved by the MCAS ALT team in 2013 and all of my students passed with flying colors!
This resource gave my students a structured support for discussing a topic! and guess what? They all got 4’s on writing on the MCAS ALT that year! I loved watching their independence with it and seeing their success! It’s perfect for your writing goals this year!
You can download the Topic Boards here.
