Inclusion and Teaching in Chicago

For Unique Week, we also created activities for each classroom. Below is a run down of what we did.  Primary: Students read It's Okay To Be Different by Todd Parr. After the read aloud, students completed an activity that can be found here or here. Below is a picture from one second grade teacher's bulletin board.   Intermediate: Students read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud. After the read aloud, students completed an activity that can be found here or here. Below are some pictures from the AMAZING co-taught lesson in fourth grade. You can see that one teacher is reading while the other asked discussion questions while sitting with the student's on the rug. The teachers referred to one another often and the students were so excited and engaged. It was a great lesson to watch! Middle School: Students watched this video from Kid President. It's called "20 Things You Should Say More Often" and it...

Monday was our first day of Unique Week! Unique Week is where we take a whole week to celebrate our community and everyone in it. Below is a break down of what went on! Slogan: The week before Unique Week started, I started a contest in middle school. I asked students to come up with the best slogan using our Unique Week theme: community. Our winner was a seventh grade girl that came up with the snappy but elegant slogan of UNITED BUT DIFFERENT. Nice. Posters: Two weeks before Unique Week started, a wonderful parent took the time out of her day to come to our school and take pictures of students playing and laughing together in groups. She took pictures of students during lunch and recess. The amazing art teacher created posters using these pictures and we displayed the pictures around the school. These posters will stay up all year. Teacher Lunch: We had a teacher appreciation lunch on Wednesday. Not only did we want to work on the classroom community, but we al...

One of the first things we hear and talk about in the inclusive classroom is supporting students by using fidgets. Fidgets are those items that allow restless (fidgety??) students to move and get their sensory needs met without distracting their peers or becoming completely distracted themselves by needing to move. To get more information about figets: Read this excerpt about fidget bags from Paula Kluth and Sheila Danaher's book.   Watch Paula's amazing video about fidgets. Read this article on fidgets and ADD. In middle school and the upper grades, I am all about introducing the fidget individually, slowly, and academically. 1. First, broach the subject of fidgets individually. I had one student in mind who mentioned that she felt the most calm when she was able to squeeze and run her fingers through something. We went online and she choose this one.     2. When it arrived, I showed her one on one how to use the fidget. 3. I gave her 30 minutes to practi...

Thank you so much to all of the teachers that woke up early on their Saturday morning to spend some time with Sheila and me. We really enjoyed talking about inclusive supports and strategies! Attached is the pdf version of our presentation. Feel free to send us any questions! Click here for the presentation!

I spent my first four or five years of co-teaching and supporting students in the inclusive classroom by reading grade level nonfiction texts and then slowly rewriting the texts at a lower level. I have entire social studies and science books modified to meet the different needs of students. It was nuts! During my fifth or sixth year, I discovered online reading passages and I've never looked back! Here are my top five favorites. 5. The website: www.manythings.org/voa/history/     The pros: It's free, free, free!  There is an audio for everything! The audio is done by people and not robots and some of them are GREAT! There are so many nonfiction resources and topics The American History for English Learners is perfect for social studies      The Cons: The text is not differentiated so the audio component is important There are no comprehension questions built in but the texts are so rich that it makes it easy to come up with your own I...

People First Language matters so much to me both as a teacher and as a person. This way of talking and thinking is so important to me that sometimes I have a difficult time speaking about it eloquently or meaningfully. This blog is my best shot of doing just that. People First Language is important because it puts the person BEFORE the disability. In an article about People First Language, Kathy Snow writes, "A disability is, first and foremost, a medical diagnosis,  and when we define people by their diagnoses, we devalue and disrespect them as individuals ( www.disabilityisnatural.com/ )." One of the best (and easiest) ways to combat prejudice surrounding disabilities and people with disabilities is to focus on the language that we use. When we put the person before the disability, we are describing what the person  has  and not what the person  is . From a teaching standpoint, this is important because the way we talk about students ends up...

This is really a dream come true! Sandy and Jenn- two middle school co-teachers- agreed to give math centers a try for their 6/7 grade math class. I became obsessed! I trolled the internet for good explanations and organization around math rotations or math centers. I found the perfect resource at one of my all time favorite sites  right here.  Stephanie from Teaching in Room 6 does a great job of breaking down how to set up math rotations. I used her blog and worksheets as a guideline to make this work for the 6th/7th grade split. So, here's how I broke it down: 1. Structure: The 6th/7th split has two co-teachers and 16 students. There are also two different tutors that come in once a week each. This means that on 2 out of every 5 days there are three adults to every 16 students. A dream scenario for small group instruction. We have 60 minutes of math class time. Math time looks like: 9:05- 9:10     Do Now (entrance slip) 9:10- 9:30     Rotatio...

Yesterday after school I met with the middle school team in the school library. It was a Thursday- the day the general education lesson plans are due- and everybody was busy. Even so, everyone made the time and commitment to spend what ended up being around an hour of time to talk about the nitty gritty day to day expectations and procedures of co-teaching. We are five weeks into this school year. We had already had a co-teaching PD. Schedules were made for both the general education teachers and learning specialists. Small group instruction, team teaching, and alternative teaching had already started to take place. Now was time to reflect on those last five weeks and put some true norms in place. Attached is the chart we made as well as the typed up version given to every middle school teacher. I came up with the norms surrounding IEPs but the team came up with the rest. Honestly, some of these norms are different than what I have done in the past. But that's kind of the...

The inclusive environment is new to Jahn this year. This means that students are used to seeing their peers leave the classroom for chunks of a time. Some use words like resource, pull out, and special education. Some don't. All know that some students need more help and they get pulled out. Now all of a sudden students who disappeared during math or reading time are back in the room! Now there's a second teacher who teaches lessons! Now work is differentiated! These changes are wonderful BUT we have to keep in mind that this change can be confusing or uncomfortable for students. Without getting into specifics, teachers have been telling me about language and complaints that they have overheard. Generally, the students are not meaning to be well... mean. They're confused by this new environment and don't have the language or background knowledge to understand the change. Below is a list of my favorite ways to do this: 1. The Bandaid Activity.  I got this f...

My official job here at Jahn is the Inclusion Facilitator. My role is to support the middle school specifically and the school in general in the switch from what you might call a resource room model to a more inclusive, co-taught, heterogeneous one. This year is much more about supporting and coaching staff. I don't have a case load and I don't have a co-teacher. But I LOVE co-teaching. I absolutely love it! I have been providing supports in Ms. Shultz's social studies class and it's just been the most fun! We co-taught the other day and although it wasn't a particularly fancy or frilly lesson- it was affective. Below is my step by step process for how to think about co-teaching a lesson. Beware- it's pretty gushy! Step for Co-Teaching According to Julia Snider: 1. Each co-teacher comes to the table with a particular expertise. Ms. Shultz sent me this video  to introduce her early explorers unit. Ms. Shultz came to the table with resources and content know...

Clean your tables. Dust your libraries. Put together a powerpoint. It's back to school night! This is my first year at Jahn supporting inclusive classrooms and schooling. Since we've only been here at school for a week and a half, a few of the Learning Specialists mentioned that we should talk about inclusion. They are so right! A huge part of creating a fully inclusive school that celebrates all forms of diversity and unity is to talk about it! Families make up an important part of the inclusive schooling. Inclusion is all about community building and families have so much to do with it. Our principal, Mr. Herring mentioned inclusion and supporting diverse learners in the classroom during his opening remarks to Jahn families. I created (with the suggestion of my awesome colleagues) a flyer explaining what inclusion is. I emailed every general education teacher and learning specialist that is co-teaching this year and asked them if they wanted a copy. Teachers handed this o...

Tip of the week: Make a time to plan face to face with your co-teacher at least once a week every week! This is hard and takes a lot of time at the beginning, but will help you build your professional relationship. You can also use this time to bounce ideas off of one another and make solid lesson plans even better, more creative, and student focused! Here is a link (and some screen shots) to my Prezi on co-teaching in the inclusive school!