Access Points for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities

What are access points?
As part of the revision to the Florida Standards, access points for students with significant cognitive disabilities have been developed. These access points are expectations written for students with significant cognitive disabilities to access the general education curriculum. Embedded in the Florida Standards, access points reflect the core intent of the Standards with reduced levels of complexity. 

What are essential understandings?
Essential understandings are scaffolds that disaggregate the access points to assist in the teaching and learning of the Standards. They help guide teachers in where to begin instruction, allowing all students to interact with grade-level content. 

They provide benchmarks along a continuum of complexity to ensure progress toward the access points. These benchmarks are meant to help teachers conceptualize what those levels of complexity may look like for individual students they are not a checklist. 

Both levels of complexity and essential understandings, help teachers disaggregate the standards into a variety of levels that may be taught in their classrooms. Regardless of the subject in which teachers are working, students have flexible access to the Florida Standards. 

Which subject areas will include Access Points?
Access points are being developed for core academic areas: Reading and Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Health and Physical Education. Other subject areas may be added. You can download copies from the access points section or the export and print documents section of this website.

Click here to search and browse the Access Points