Comprehensive Individualized Curriculum and Instructional Design

of these studies is available from Kennedy, Kellems, Thomas, and Newton (2015). A free resource for teachers wishing to see sample CAPs or use them in teaching or learning is available at www.SPEDIntro.com . Embedding Evidence-Based Practices within CAPs While Mayer’s model provides the roadmap for considering and designing the looks and sounds of instruction, it offers no guidance in terms of the substance of the content to be delivered. Therefore, CAPs must draw from a menu of EBPs for vocabulary instruction depending on the term or concept being taught. A menu containing EBPs that make particular sense for inclusion within the CAP model for vocabulary instruction is presented in Figure 3. It is important to note that more is not necessarily better when it comes to including EBPs within CAPs. Instead, logical choices supported by the term/concept, the meaning, and how much information students need to know should drive decision-making. To illustrate, it might make sense when teaching the term biodegradable to explicitly teach students about the prefix bio-, the root word degrade, the suffix -able, to give an example and non- example of the term, and to define the term using a student-friendly definition attached to an anchor image. In addition, it would make sense to create CAPs for other terms being taught in this unit such as biodiversity, recycling, and conservation. 124