Inclusion and Teaching in Chicago

Unique Week is five full days of celebrating every student in our school's community. Students, teachers, and families take time to discuss what makes us one of a kind! Ultimately, this brings us closer together! This year's Unique Week was even bigger, better, and smoother run than last year thanks to our committee that included a primary (Ivette), intermediate (Mahli), and middle school (Jenn) teacher.  If you want to check out what Unique Week looked like last year, click here  and also click here !   Having a committee was incredible. The three teachers really ran the week and all of the major decisions and suggestions were from them. I just took (some of) the pictures. They did ALL of the heavy lifting and I couldn't have been happier or prouder! Monday: We started Unique Week off with a book with a message connecting to celebrating uniqueness. Primary teachers did a read aloud of David McKee's Elmer. Intermediate students read Wendy Ewald'...

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...