What Parents Need to Know Regarding Inclusion

As a teacher of any classroom you must keep an open line of communication with parents. When beginning a new school year with a new group of students preparing to join your inclusive classroom, it can be a world of "unknowns".

To be sure your learning environment is most beneficial for all you must first get to know your new group of students. You can gets parents involved by asking them to work with their child to create hopes and dreams that the parent and child have for the school year. You can use their responses to create goals for your classroom. Create ways that their hopes and dreams can be achieved, and present these ideas to parents during open house or conferences.

Demonstrate to parents how you will promote the most positive and effective learning environment for all students in the classroom, whether they are students who have learning disabilities or not. "Many also pointed out the positive aspects of the arrangement, including being able to help their peers academically, receiving more help themselves and learning to socialize with others different from themselves." This study shows proof that all students benefit from an inclusive classroom regardless of ability.

Creating an Environment that Benefits All

Instead of saying, "this student can not learn in my classroom," teachers need to be saying, "how can I ensure that this student is able to learn in my classroom?"

Inclusion for children with cognitive delays in the general education classroom is more than just going through the motions of allowing the child to sit in a desk next to their typically developing peer.

We need to be sure they are taking something away from the instruction. For example, rather than reading through the chapters in a lesson and assuming students will soak up and comprehend the information- we need to provide meaningful activities for students to apply concepts they are learning. This approach is beneficial for all students, and not just those who have cognitive delays.

The teacher in the following video describes her experience with teaching literacy skills to a very diverse group of students. With the needs and interests of her students in mind, she was able to create an environment that worked for both students who had learning disabilities and ADHD, and students who were gifted and talented. Postive Inclusion Experience

What are some challenges that you have faced as an educator trying to meet the needs of several ability levels at once? How were you able to overcome these challenges?/What issues are you still facing?

Educating Everyone

The first thing that must be considered when planning a lesson is how each of your students learn best. A successful lesson allows each student to become engaged and express themselves using their individual strengths. When you are able to include activities that address all learning styles each student has a chance to display their potential.

The next thing that must be considered before planning the lesson is each students prior knowledge to the topic. Some students may need more explicit instruction that others. Some students may need additional support, while other students may require a more challenging task. Keeping the needs of individual students in mind a lesson can be created based on differentiated instruction.

The use of center based instruction allows students to explore different learning styles and learn at their own pace. Students can be grouped based on ability in order to provide the instruction at various cognitive abilities. In this setting all students in the classroom are working on the same curriculum, but the levels of difficulty for each task range from beginner to intermediate to advanced. The teacher should observe and intervene where necessary. For example, beginner groups may need teacher facilitated instruction. Assignments should vary from hands on activities, to listening activities, and visual activities to address they ways that each student prefers to learn.

I have included a link for you to visualize an example of how this type of instruction works within a classroom, published by Edutopia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg38A1ggYiE

Do you feel that this type of instruction would be beneficial to your classroom? What other strategies have worked in your classroom to differentiate instruction?

Inclusion in the General Education classroom

In the past it seemed as though students who had learning disabilities could not thrive in the General Education classroom. In schools today we see more and more children with Individualized Education Programs (IEP) learning alongside their peers in General Education classrooms. The reason for this is that students learn best in what is called the least restrictive environment. Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of human learning backs this idea. According to psychologynoteshq.com, Vygotsky believes that children learn through social interactions. There are far more opportunities for this to take place in the General Education classroom setting. Psychologynoteshq.com states, "According to Vygotsky's sociocultural theory any person who possesses a higher skill level than the learner with regard to a particular task or concept is called a more knowledgeable other or MKO. This person may be a teacher, parent, an older adult, a coach or even a peer" psychologynoteshq.com.  This idea shows that students can learn from a variety of sources, even the other students in their classroom. As teachers we need to provide students opportunities to express themselves through a variety of social interactions. Readingrockets.org shares several strategies to get students actively involved in learning. Student-centered activities are key to create an environment where meaningful learning takes place. I have shared the links to both articles referenced in this post below. I am open to your thoughts on strategies to be sure that all students are held to their highest level of success. How can we incorporate all styles of learning within the classroom? My next post will discuss this topic further. 

https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/vygotsky-theory/

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/inclusive-literacy-learning