The Journey Towards Creating Effective Schools for All Learners

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Inclusive Academic Instruction Part I - Plan Inclusive Lessons and Units

InclusiveNet. Links to relevant internet resources.

Learning tools. Tools for analysis, discussion, and planning you may use in class, professional development, and in your own practice as a teacher.

• What Helps Students Learn and What Teachers Do. Have participants review the statements made by students in this survey and consider implications for inclusive teaching using Activity Tool 11-2.
• What to look for in a classroom.Based on Alfie Kohn's article by this title, respondents identify good signs and possible reasons for concern in a classroom they have observed and discuss implications for students with special needs using Activity Tool 11-3.
• Teaching approaches. Respondents are asked to use Activity Tool 11-4, a listing of teaching practices, to move away from (left column) and to move towards (right column) to evaluate their own teaching practice and consider how the might move towards more effective teaching.
• A place for John in a best practice class. Using Activity Tool 11-5, request that participants read this story about John and respond to and discuss the questions at the bottom of the Tool.
• Approaches for dealing with ability differences in schools and classrooms. Activity Tool 11-6 describes the range of strategies that schools and teachers use to deal with students with differing abilities. Respondents may describe how these are used in schools and classes that they know.
• Principles of Authentic, Multi-level Instruction. Participants can use Activity Tool 11-7 to record their reflections and implications of these principles. They can use Activity Tool 11-8 to rate their own teaching or that of another teacher on each of these principles and discuss strategies by which a teacher might improve on use of these principles.

  Planning authentic, multi-level instruction. The following tools are intended to be a series of activities by which participants may learn a sysstematic process for planning and implementing authentic, multi-level instruction.

• Authentic, multi-level instruction: Overview and lesson design form. Use Activity Tool 11-9 to introduce and the lesson plan format using a multi-level design.
• Multi-level learning goals and assessment. Use Activity Tool 11-11 to have participants discuss and record open-ended assignments that use higher levels of thinking on Bloom's taxonomy (Activity Tool 11-10). Use Activity Tool 11-12 and ask students to (1) state an overall learning goal (from the previous worksheet); (2) expectations at three different levels of ability (high functioning students; average; and lower functioning students); and (3) identify ways they will assess learning.
• Multi-level learning activities. Have participants use Activity Tool 11-13 to design multi-level learning activities and then analyze each activity related to its use of multiple intelligences.
• How learning activities are multi-level. Use Activity Tool 11-14 and ask pasrticipants to analyze, discuss, and document how each of the learning activities is multi-level. You may want to facilitate sharing across groups and discussion.
• Including these students. Participiants can review the case studies in Activity Tool 11-16 and record strategies using Activity Tool 11-15 regarding how specific students with special needs may valuably participate in each learning activity.
• Roles of support staff in multi-level learning activities. Use Activity Tool 11-17 and have participants indicate roles for support staff, such as a special education teacher or speech therapist, in implementing each of the learning activities.

Artwork reprinted by permission of
Martha Perske from PERSKE:
PENCIL PORTRAITS 1971-1990
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998.