Hurdles and Huddles: The Inclusive Classroom

As mentioned in my last post, there are three things that must be effective in order to adequately support students with exceptionalities in today's education world; a strong inclusive classroom, parental involvement, and community support. Below are a few strategies that are sure to strengthen the three and increase the success of a student with disabilities in todays inclusive education environment.

1. Communication must be strong between parents, the general education teacher, and the special education teacher. At least once per week, the special education teacher and general education teacher must discuss the progress of the student and plan lessons or strategies for the upcoming week. This can be done quickly in the hallway between classes, or formally at a scheduled time each week. Shared planning makes this much easier. However, this is not the case with most special education inclusion teachers as they serve multiple grade levels of students. Communication to parents is equally as important as communication between teachers. Research has proven that strong parental support is strongly correlated with educational outcomes for all students! BOTH THE GENERAL EDUCATION TEACHER AND THE SPECIAL EDUCATION HAVE A DUTY TO KEEP PARENTS INFORMED CONCERNING PROGRESS. Special education teachers must go the extra mile to give parents opportunities to attend meetings, inform them of their rights, and make educational decisions regarding their child. It is also important to make sure that parents are receiving both positive and negative communication from the school. A quick note or phone call about how well their child has done can go a long way to improving the relationship with a parent and the educational system!

2. One thing that is often overlooked when discussing student success is the importance of community involvement. Parents should be well aware of resources within their community that can assist in supporting them raise a child with special needs. Do your students' parents know about local counseling agencies, support groups, therapy programs or services, etc? Does your school system partner with such agencies? What if, once per year, the school system hosted a parent outreach night? Parents of students with disabilities come together one night per year to attend short sessions (taught by LEA special education teachers or personnel) on things such as home behavior support, increasing literacy skills, or how to advocate for their child. They could sign up for parent support groups and meet system special education personnel. Community agencies can set up booths that detail their services so that parents are well aware of the opportunities for support locally. Such nights do three things; increase parent involvement, increase community support, and increase the potential for success for a student with a disability!
Here is one of my most favorite websites for parents of a student with special needs; www.understood.org. This website gives information regarding advocacy, school system support, and articles with information on various topics concerning students with disabilities.

3. Inclusion support in the general education classroom must be taken seriously, and regarded as a top priority for school administration and personnel. Unfortunately, special education services can sometimes can take a back burner to other happenings within a school. However, it is imperative that this student support service is provided and regarded with equal or greater care than even the regular education classroom. A strong special education program is essential for both students with disabilities and for typical students. It fosters a climate of both student equality and diversity; both of which are imperative lessons to students entering today's society. I have only one suggestion (outside of strong communication that has already been mentioned) for special education teachers that will help make the inclusion setting a successful environment for all involved.
Be an ACTIVE participate in the planning of inclusion lessons AND the teaching of inclusion lessons. Gone are the days of the "glorified assistant" that wanders around the room while the general education teacher provides the brunt of the teaching. There are many ways to coteach lessons with a general education teacher. You can read more about those here. Below is an easy diagram to also help understand the various types of coteaching. My personal favorite is to divide students into homogeneous groups (grouped by ability). The special education teacher teaches one group, the general education teacher teaches another, and other groups are located in independent centers. Lessons are differentiated as students rotate every so often between centers and teachers. This type allows for small group teaching, which can be the most effective for students with exceptionalities, and it allows both teachers to be ACTIVE participants in the lessons. Creating a coteaching structure that works for both the teachers and the needs of the students can sometimes take time, but the potential outcomes far outweigh the heavy lifting on the front end!

As you can tell, it takes a lot to make sure that educational outcomes are high for students with disabilities in any setting, especially in the inclusive environment. However, as educators, we must make sure that we are ensuring the success of ALL students, no matter what it takes! Please feel free to comment below how your school or system provides inclusion services. I would love to hear what works or doesn't work for others! The best way we can learn is from one another!

Hurdles and Huddles: Students with Disabilities

I still hear stories from veteran teachers that talk about the methods of teaching students with exceptionalities "back in the day". Students with special needs went from no education, to a limited education separated from their peers, to the modern movement of an all inclusive general education environment. While there are still some students whose least restrictive environment is located in a separate classroom, most students in public education have been mainstreamed in order to receive an appropriate public education experience.

While all the talk of inclusive classrooms create images of rainbows, sunshine, and unity; the education world still has leaps yet to conquer in order to secure the highest degree of education for all. 

The biggest hurdle; figuring out how to increase communication and effectiveness of all stakeholders involved in a Student with Disability's (SWD) education. Who are the stakeholders that impact a child's education? To name a few: the child, parents, teachers, school leaders, support personnel, student peers, community members and businesses. While we are discussing rainbows, sunshine, and unity, imagine this: all stakeholders huddled up in a circle, arms around each other's shoulders (much like a team huddle before a big game). The child is also in the huddle leading the others surrounding in a chant that inspires and motivates all. Now cut back to reality. The reality is that not all parents come to scheduled meetings. The reality is that not all teachers have the knowledge or the drive to create an inclusive classroom. The reality is that not all community businesses wish to support their local education agencies. The reality is that not all SWD are willing to put forth the effort to succeed. How can we do better? How can we huddle up in order to move forward? My next blog post will be focused on increasing the effectiveness of three things; an inclusive classroom, parental involvement, and community support. 

If you are a stakeholder in a SWD's education, please complete this survey to help me with my next post on the inclusion classroom. 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LWH7KQV

Pom-Poms for Cheerleaders: Classroom Management

 

Behavior Management may be one of the single most important pieces to building a successful classroom environment. Being an inclusion teacher for many years provided me with a first hand view of various behavior support strategies; from clip charts to classic token economies. Honestly, there are many effective ways to support good behavior within the classroom! My favorite behavior systems, including my own, incorporate both immediate reward and immediate consequence. 

Introducing the "Pom Pom" reward system! 

Kids recieve a pom-pom for positive behavior and choices. They lose pom-poms for poor choices. Kids place their pom-pom balls in a clear cup. When the cup is filled, they recieve an award! 

You can see our cup chart to left. It's a shoe organizer from Walmart with clear plastic cups in each pocket! 

Reasons I love my behavior system:

1. Emphasis on the positive. I reward children ten times more than I take away. With a simple clip chart or color card system, you can only award so many times before they have reached their max. Kids in my room can fill their cups over and over throughout the day to recieve their reward (treasure box). 

2. The pom-pom bucket (pictured above) can be carried around the room, down the halls, assemblies, etc. This allows me to continuously monitor and award great choices. Kids simply put the pom-pom in their pocket until we get back to the room! 

3. You can throw them at children without any danger of injury. Haha! I love to pepper children with review questions during transitions or a quick five minutes, quickly tossing them a pom-pom for paying attention or participation! 

4. Research shows that immediate reward or consequence is one of the best ways to manage classroom behavior. Student are tangibly receiving something or tangibly taking something away. 

5. I love to give pom-poms to cheerleaders! To foster an energic and encouraging classroom environment, I love to heavily reward kiddos for cheering one another on! (Read my other post about Awesome Losers). 

The shoe organizer is from Walmart and the pom-poms were bought at Hobby Lobby; easy, cheap, EFFECTIVE! 

May I take your order?

Before entering into the realms of third grade general education, I was a special education inclusion teacher for grades K-5. While I participated in many different models of co-teaching, the main part of my day was spent teaching a small group in various general education classrooms. Most teachers would have 3-5 centers in their room running; one center would have the regular education teacher working on a standard and the other would have me working on something different (skills or spiral reteaching). Students would rotate at specific intervals through each center.

One question that I have heard posed on various occasions is this; "How can I effectively run centers without additional adults in the room to help?"

Ironically, the third grade classroom that I am now teaching is not the inclusion classroom, even though our students are heterogeneously mixed between homerooms. This means that I still have low students (Tier 3 RTI students) that need small group attention and remediation, but without the inclusion support of special education personnel. 

How do I address the need for small group attention without the convenience of additional help?

I use Menu Boards! 

Below are the top five reasons to use Menus for small group work, especially when there is not additional help for center time. 

1. Student Choice  You can read more about the impact of student choice on motivation here. Learning Menus allow students to choose from a list of pre-selected, pre-taught choices in order to accomplish a set learning goal. 

2. Accountability Most of my Menu options have an accountability piece (something written down or turned in). I do not grade Menu work. However, I do check it occasionally and reward students that follow directions and work hard! This helps me to make sure that students are not simply hanging out, drawing pictures, or writing random information; they are actually learning!

3. Independent Center Menu boards allow teachers to have an additional center where students are learning without the help of an additional person.

4. Planning Once Menus are set up and students are trained on how to use them; there is very minimal prep work! At my Word Work Menu, I change spelling words once per week. At my Vocabulary center, I change academic vocabulary once per week. Lastly, I give one multiplication test per week so that students can move to the next level of times tables for my Multiplication Menu (from 2s to 3s, etc).

I will emphasize that students must be explicitly taught how to perform each task on the Menu correctly. I have seen first hand teachers that quickly throw a new center activity at students, only creating more chaos and confusion than learning experiences! 

5. Routine I feel that routine is highly important to effective learning centers. Having the same expectations for center work each day minimizes confusion and time lost teaching new expectations or procedures. My students would know without me in the room how to do Menu work, because it is a consistent routine! They sit down, choose a Menu option, and do that option the entire length of the 15 minute center rotation. A SUB COULD RUN GROUPS IN MY ROOM BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS CONSISTENT! 

6. Multiple Intelligences I tried to make sure that each Menu covers two or more of the Multiple Intelligences. Using multiple intelligences to plan lessons or do center work increases the chances of my students being bought into their learning, and therefore, the chances of them learning the material! 

Below are pictures of my Menus and the Menu centers. Menu work can be adapted according to the age of your students and with your end learning goal in mind! For early elementary students, it may be a good idea to pair each Menu option with a picture of the expectation. Older students can handle more Menu options and higher expectations for Menu work. 

Groups vs Teams

Most of my education experience comes from teaching special education inclusion in an elementary setting. During this time, I grew to understand the importance of student grouping within the classroom and how it can help boost students to their next level of learning! 
I am going to describe to you the two types of groups/teams that I run in my classroom and explain why this method of student grouping works great for my kiddos. 

TYPE 1: Groups
I know what you are thinking... Duh!! Let me explain. I run groups twice per day, each time for one hour. We run groups in the morning for reading and again in the afternoon for math. Each group goes to four different centers (I will explain these on a later post.). 
My groups are set up homogeneously, also known as ability grouping. I use data from a variety of sources to create my groups; skills-based data from RTI screening and both formative/summative classroom assessments based on standards. I know its not technically data based, but I have also been known to move a kid or two up or down a group because of personality mixtures (Can't have two crazies in one group!). Below are some photos of my group work in action!

TYPE 2: Teams
Teams are seriously one of my most favorite things that we do in our classroom! Teams are heterogeneously mixed. I use the same data from our groups and spread kids from each level of ability into seperate teams. We use teams for projects, competitions, etc. When I first introduced my class to groups and teams, I explained to them that groups are for independent work, just at different stations around the room. Teams are for TEAMWORK (mind blown, right?). I explicitly taught students how to work as a team, and have created various team jobs that are changed every so often. The kids absolutely love working with their teams! Teams are awarded for winning, being Awesome Losers, and for teamwork! So, one team may win all three awards or it could be spread between teams, depending on performance.
Another side note, I heavily trained my students on the differences between the two types of groups (without telling them they are based on kid data). They know automatically what team they are in or which group to go to, and the different expectations for each! 

What do Alabama football, Minions, the Odd Squad, and a guy named Kevin have in common? They're our team names! Each team got to create their own! 😂

How do you use grouping or teams in your classroom? 

Some photos of teamwork:

     

Awesome Losers

Ok. How many of you like to lose? Anyone? That's what I thought. Losing is not ever fun, but especially if you love your team and you worked hard to win!
A little insight into my teacher brain, I LOVE to play games to teach. I feel that using games or competitions in children's learning creates an incredible classroom atmosphere! The only downside that I have discovered is that when students engage in competition, there is always a team that DOESN'T WIN.
<<<INSERT MAD FACES, STOMPING FEET, AND HATEFUL WORDS>>>
I have a simple, yet interestingly effective, remedy; teach your kids how to be "Awesome Losers". How do we lose awesomely?
I teach this strategy at the beginning of the year when we are learning new routines and procedures. I start by explaining the difference between losing bad and losing awesome. Bad losers (sore losers) stomp their feet, use hateful words, pout, cheat, argue, etc.
AWESOME LOSERS, however, congratulate the team that wins! Mind blown, right? It is something oh so simple! Nevertheless, if you neglect to explicitly teach it to your students, you will end up stopping games altogether due to students being horrible at losing.
I should also note that I like to heavily reward my students for being awesome losers. Sometimes really great losers receive more of a reward than the winning team!
Ever heard of teaching the WHOLE child? My kids now know how to congratulate others, lose with grace, and keep playing the game! Win, win. I mean lose, win. Or lose, lose? hmm..

Abracadabra: I Made Our ___ Disappear!

Here is my first REAL classroom centered blogpost! I am a little nervous to start sharing the inside of my teaching brain with you all.. feels a little like sharing my toothbrush..

My first adventure into the realms of teaching third grade was to make our DESKS disappear! All of the great educational bloggers that have went forth before me have done a "Classroom Reveal", so here is mine!

Below is a video with more details! 

http://youtu.be/exRnBvLgW48

Most of our day will be spent in centers during instructional time. However, when we do whole group instruction or independant work, students will use bath mats and clip boards to do their assignments! The bath mats can be spread around the room for testing, placed into clusters for small groups, or put together in the front of the room for lectures or videos! 

Can't wait to see the faces of my students when they come back after break to see their desks have disappeared! I anticipate that I will have to heavily focus on teaching them the new routine of a new style of classroom! I'll keep you posted!