Modifying Schoolwork

Teachers’ Guides to Inclusive Practices
Third Edition
by Rachel Janney, Ph.D.

Contents

• About the Authors
• About the Forms
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Inclusive Education: The Big Picture
  • Defining Characteristics of Inclusive Education
  • An Organizing Framework for Schoolwide Systems of Student Support
  • Improving Your School's Inclusive Practices
• 2 Curricular and Instructional Practices
  • Universal Design for Learning and Differentiated Instruction
  • Active Learning and Brain-Compatible Learning
  • Peer-Mediated Learning Structures
  • Learning Strategies
  • Graphic Organizers
  • Strategies to Increase Active Responding During Whole-Class Lessons
  • Collaborative Planning for Diverse Groups of Students
• 3 A Model for Creating Individualized Adaptations and Supports
  • What Is a Model, and Why Is It Necessary?
  • Creating Individualized Adaptations and Supports
• 4 Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating Individualized Adaptations and Supports
  • Step 1: Gather and Share Information About the Student and the Classroom
  • Step 2: Schedule Instruction and Supports Across the Day
  • Step 3: Plan and Implement Instruction, with Needed Adaptations and Supports
  • Step 4: Plan and Implement More Specialized Teaching Strategies
  • Step 5: Monitor and Evaluate
• 5 Including All Students in Instruction in Core Curriculum Areas
  • Two Reminders: Start with Effective Teaching and Keep All Students Goals in Mind
  • Reading and Written Language
  • Mathematics and Numeracy
  • Content Areas and Natural and Social Sciences
  • Tests and Testing Procedures
  • A Final Note: Do Not Reinvent the Wheel

Voices from the Classroom

A student with a disability who is going to be in your class? Amy responded, "Even before I start planning, I want to get to know the student. At first, it’s not so much about their current ability level and where they are, it’s more who they are. Where are they socially and emotionally? What are their likes and dislikes?"

Then I want to know their ability, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Because they need time improving weaknesses and time building on strengths. For example, a struggling reader shouldn’t have to struggle with reading all day; I want to build in success and spend some time working with that child's strengths.

Amy explained how she acquires this information about her students: "I talk with previous teachers; I read the students' files. I meet with the parents before school begins and meet the student ahead of time. I’ll do little criterion-referenced or curriculum-based assessments. We always get a Program-at-a-Glance for each student with an IEP [individualized education program], but again, I want to know who students are, and to start developing a relationship with them."

When it comes to inclusion, it all has to start with a shared experience. Everything we do in our class begins with those shared experiences.

According to Amy, including a student with extensive needs begins with making that student a member of the class. It’s not about planning one lesson or one unit. It’s about overall ways to approach inclusion and meeting the child’s learning needs. I start with the premise that the student is a member of the class—that’s the starting point. The child’s disability is not the starting point.

Organizational and Management Strategies

Amy Brehl and Kristyn McDaniel Cabler are third- and fourth-grade teachers, respectively, whose classes always include students with a wide range of abilities and disabilities. In addition to employing teaching methods that accommodate their diverse groups of students, these teachers use differentiated organizational and management strategies to help their students manage their time, materials, behavior, and learning.

• A morning message with the day's agenda is posted on the interactive whiteboard; some students are given a printed copy to keep at their desk.
• Students use color-coded folders or notebooks for each subject.
• Each student has a desk folder in which work in progress is kept until it is turned in to the finished work basket.
• All students are provided with a weekly planner in which they record homework assignments, due dates, special events, etc.

Class meetings are held to proactively discuss the way we want our class to be and also to do group problem solving about social and behavioral difficulties that arise.