Kemp's Hierarchy of Apparent Student Functional Ability

Scroll down this page to read about my AFFECT basis for determining a student's functional abilities for cases when data is missing.

Welcome to Pops Spedster's Place, where special education teachers, parents and students will find instructional supports and accommodations for people with intellectual disabilities resulting from low incidence and acquired impairments. At Pops Spedster's Place, we use Developmentally Appropriate Instruction (DAI) to teach academic and functional skills related to developmental assessments and Common Core State Standards.

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Kemp's Hierarchy

As Special Educators, we often have students entering our classrooms from other districts, either in the same state or from different states. The degree to which each state complies with the IDEA statute and the way in which each state interprets the IDEA statute vary greatly.

Often, the documentation that accompanies a student with low incidence disabilities is either incomplete, inconsistent as to standards, late arriving or non-existant. In such cases, Special Educators are called upon to develop IEP goals immediately to avoid a disruption in the delivery of services.

The DAI Assessment found on this website can be broken down into various domains and the probes published on this website can be used to inform team decisions about instructional design.

Kemp's Hierarchy suggests a basic standard for assessing the basic needs of such students. It uses an acronym to inform the most basic of teacher observations and probes.

The acronym is AFFECT. A-F-F-E-C-T.

The following list explains the meaning of each assessment standard.

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Kemp’s Hierarchy of Developmental Levels in Students with Low Incidence Disabilities

“AFFECT” (A-F-F-E-C-T)

A – Attention. Is it possible to get the attention of the student?

F – Focus. Can the student focus on a task-related stimulus long enough to respond to the stimulus?

F – Fundamental Skills. Does the student have the most basic developmental skill set needed to complete a task?

E – Expression. Does the student have any observable mode for expressing appropriate responses to stimuli?

C – Cognitive. At what cognitive level is the student functioning; does the student have any ability to self-direct?

T – Trainable. Does the student show the ability to retain knowledge of the tasks being taught after multiple exposures to the stimuli?

Teacher-directed Probes

What needs to be done to gain the student’s attention? Incentives?
What characteristics of the learning environment need to be adjusted in order to increase the length of time the student is able to focus on a stimulus?
What probes need to be done to determine if the student possesses any basic communication skills?
What probes need to be done to determine the student’s most effective mode of expressive communication?
What probes need to be done to determine the student’s level of cognitive functioning?
What probes need to be done to determine whether or not the student can produce a consistent response to a stimulus after many presentations of it?