Exposure to literacy for students eligible for the alternate assessment

All students with disabilities are required to access instruction related to the general curriculum; however, little is known about how this instruction actually occurs for students with significant intellectual disability, who would be eligible to participate in the alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards. In this study, we examined 112 literacy activities of eight students eligible for the alternate assessment across 48 hrs. of observation. Using a literacy observation instrument, we recorded 52 features of literacy instruction in relationship to three areas of focus: contextual features (i.e., location, instructional configuration, & others present), materials (i.e., media form, format, & genre), and content of instruction. Results indicate that the participants in this study were 10 times more likely to be exposed to academic literacy when peers without disabilities were present. In addition, instruction outside of special education settings was more likely to include a variety of literacy forms.