Special Needs Learners

English Language Learners

It is very important that we keep English Language Learners in mind when we are differentiating our instruction.  A great way to help English Language Learners is putting labels on things around the classroom like the door, whiteboard, desk, cabinets, light switch, etc... This helps the student become from familiar with common every day things that they will definitely need to know.  For students who are just starting learning English, it is vital that you set them up for success to the best of your ability. This video talks about other strategies you can use to help English Language Learners in your classroom.  For example, assigning the student a buddy, writing clearly in print, and placing students in the front or towards the front of the classroom.  This video gives even more examples which can be very useful for teachers who have an English Language Learning student in their classroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkKa64rLC3o

by Vanessa Gripshover

English Language Learners

Often English Language Learners need more resources so they can see direct English instruction. They can learn a lot through immersion but more still when English meanings are made explicit. First,  English Teacher Websites is a collection of easy to search English resources. Here you can search for poetry, spelling assistance, specifically ESL tools, and more. Therefore, this site is great for teacher planning and finding accommodations along with English lessons to clarify parts of English grammar that the students may not gain naturally like native English speakers. Through this site I found a collection of ESL and EFL teachers' journals called The Internet TESL Journal: For Teachers of English as a Second Language. It is absolutely fantastic with hundreds of resources for teachers including research articles and lesson plans. Some specific resources included a reading comprehension and advancing vocabulary lessons along with a heritage language maintenance resource. It is more than likely that there will only be one ELL teacher at my future place of employment so it is invaluable to have a wide variety of resources directly from multiple ELL teachers.

English Teacher Websites. (N/A). "Home Page." Retrieved from englishteacherwebsites(2018, April 6th): http://www.englishteacherwebsites.com/resource-te.html

The Internet TESL Journal: For Teachers of English as a Second Language. (2014). "Home Page" Retrieved from ITESLJ (2018, April 6th): http://iteslj.org/

by Emily Stork

Gifted Learners

In the classroom many gifted learners are not getting what they need to thrive and learn. Many teachers have misconceptions about gifted students needing more work to get them occupied or telling them to work ahead in the lesson. These both are wrong strategies to approach gifted learners. In order for these students to grow in their area of specialty they don’t need more work, they need more challenging work. The key to accommodating gifted learners is by finding ways to make their work just more challenging than non gifted students. This way the students will stay just as busy as non gifted students, but they also will be growing just as much as them. I found a great article that lists the dos and don’ts of instruction for gifted students. This article Serving Gifted Students in General Ed Classrooms is found on Edutopia. Some of the don’ts include: expect the gifted students to be well behaved, give them more work, isolate them, and use them as assistance to other students. It’s important to use the student’s gift to their advantage not the advantage of you, the teacher. Some of the dos listed include: ensure rich content, figure out what areas they are gifted in, allow gifted students to work together, and implement research based units. Overall, gifted learners will be in almost every classroom and it’s our job as teachers to do whatever we can to ensure that those students are growing just as much as non gifted students.

Brown, E. F., Dr. (2015, July 14). Serving Gifted Students in General Ed Classrooms. Retrieved April 09, 2018, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/gifted-students-general-ed-classrooms-elissa-brown

By: Lexie Richardson

English Language Learners

As most of us know, it can be hard for an ELL in the classroom.  This is a group that we need to remember when we are differentiating in our classrooms.  one major way I have seen that helps ELL's in the classroom is to find out what they are best at, and work off that.  Once a student feels confident in one area, they might fee more apt to trying something they aren't as good at.  Another way is to find out what they like and connect the content to that.  These strategies for differentiation can work for any student, but they have proved helpful specifically for ELL's.

Link: https://www.amle.org/BrowsebyTopic/WhatsNew/WNDet/TabId/270/ArtMID/888/ArticleID/350/Differentiating-Instruction-for-ELLs.aspx

By: Megan Farley

Culturally Responsive Teaching & Differrentiation

   Differentiation

  Universal Design for Learning is a newer, researched teaching perspective that fits perfectly with differentiated instruction. Universal  Design for Learning  believes that every student learns differently and instruction needs to be adapted to fit those various learners. According to UDL three main avenues that need to be addressed in every instruction period is the what of learning, the why of learning, and the how of learning. While kinesthetic, visual, social, etc. are the types of learning so are goal-oriented (how), purpose-orientated (why), and content-oriented. The National Center for Universal Design for Learning is a website that lines out UDL and provides valuable resources for it. Here is the link to this resource: http://www.udlcenter.org/

National Center on Universal Design for Learning. (2013) "Home Page". Retrieved from udlcenter (2018, Feb 17): http://www.udlcenter.org/

By Emily Stork


Differentiation 

"Using Differentiated Instruction to Support All Learners" discusses the importance of Differentiated Instruction, including why we should differentiate, how we can, and gives examples of what differentiated instruction could look like.  Students learn in different ways and at different paces.  The key of differentiated instruction is to ensure that students are learning according to their interests, learning preferences, and learning needs.  Students are often broken up into groups based on these aspects and are ever-changing as it is important to make sure students are comfortable in the group they are in as well as challenging them to learn.  Overall, this video discusses how differentiated instructions allows the teacher to provide the best learning experiences for all students in the classroom.   Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOPe_cJ67No

I. (2015, January 30). Using Differentiated Instruction to Support All Learners. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOPe_cJ67No 

By: Vanessa Gripshover

Culturally Responsive Teaching

In the article “15 Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies” Marcus Guido outlines several useful tips and strategies for teaching to use in the classroom to help them become more culturally responsive.  Some of the tips that stood out to me the most are: Call on each student, use take home letters to parents, and deliver content through stations. I never recognized some of the things in this article to effect being culturally responsive, however in a classroom it’s the little things that help your diverse students and you as a teacher relate better to all. Making sure to call on each student will ensure that you as the teacher aren’t putting off some type of cultural bias. This also gives every student the chance to share what they may be learning. Having a take home letter to parent’s aids in culturally responsive teaching by allowing a good flow of communication. Also parents do a good job putting information into their child’s cultural context which can help them learn further. Lastly, using stations helps the students learn something in a different way by teaching them a different method or concept to learn something by. I could see my self using these strategies in my future classroom. I think they are all helpful tips and can benefit the students, teachers, and parents in several ways. This resource provides so many valuable strategies that all teachers should use.

Guido, M. 15 Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies (2017, September 14). Retrieved February 20 from https://www.prodigygame.com/blog/culturally-responsive-teaching/

By: Lexie Richardson

Differentiation 

According to readingrockets.org, "at its most basic level, differentiation consists of the efforts of teachers to respond to variance among learners in the classroom."  There are four main ways that teachers can differentiate, through content, process, products, or learning environment.  differentiation is all about accommodating for individual students so they can excel in the classroom. Some examples of differentiation in the classroom include: using reading materials at varying levels, providing assignments based of interests, and giving students a choice on their projects and assignments.

Link: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-differentiated-instruction

By: Megan Farley

Professional Learning Communities

Co-teaching

In an article titled "Eight Tips for Making the Most of Co-teaching," Ariel Sacks, an eighth grade teacher from New York, talks about what co-teaching is, and some strategies that she has found to work best in her own classroom while co-teaching.  Sacks says that "co-taught classes—collaborations between general education and special education teachers—have become fairly common." The tips she gives also go along with the team teaching strategy that we talked about in class, and  I think would be very helpful for all teachers who plan on using this model in their classroom.  Her article includes helpful tips for time management, planning. creating a good flow, communication, and some awesome ways to make sure the students get the most out of the experience.  After reading about how well it worked for her, I would love to be able to use these tips for my own classroom in the future.  I think students could benefit from this so much and I wish more schools could do this.

Sacks, A. (2016, April 29). Eight Tips For Making the Most of Co-Teaching.  https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/15/ctq_sacks_coteaching.html

By: Megan Farley



Professional Learning Communities

In the video "Creating a Professional Learning Community at Work: Foundational Concepts and Practices," Richard DuFour discusses the importance and effectiveness of Professional Learning Communities.  A PLC is a group of people (teachers, counselors, administration, resource teacher, etc.) who are working together to ensure that the students are learning as much as possible and that educators are teaching in a way that benefits each student the most.  DuFour points out that when schools were first introduced, they were one room school houses with one teacher responsible for all of the student's learning.  While we are no longer is one room school houses, we do often still see one teacher being isolated and responsible for all of their student's learning, leading to students not getting the most effective education possible.  Professional Learning Communities can solve this problem as it allows for teachers to work together collaboratively in order to work together to meet the demands that are being placed on schools today.  I had not thought of this reference to past schools before, but it is a very valid point in favor of PLC's.  Our schools are growing, so why shouldn't the amount of professionals working to help students grow, too?

“Creating a Professional Learning Community at Work: Foundational Concepts and Practices.” YouTube, 4 Jan. 2013, youtu.be/FLGHY9-sibA.

By: Vanessa Gripshover

 The listed resource below is a program called Learning Forward. This website has resources and
services for professional development but also has standards for professional development.
All good teachers know the value of high expectations and standards. Therefore, teachers should
include include professional standards for their learning communities. There are also events which
teachers can commit to attending and learning together. PLCs cannot do everything on their own. Not
every situation or issue can be fixed with just simple steps or a good story, even though those are
great places to start. Therefore, a resource with varied supports, widely collected data, and ongoing
development is highly valuable to PLCs. These large educational communities are a great way to
learn what characteristics are important for a local PLC.

Learning Forward.org (2018) “Home Page”. Retrieved (2018, Feb 16) from:  
https://learningforward.org/

By Emily Stork



Co-Teaching

In the article “Successful Co-Teaching”, Wendy Murawski outlines how to be a successful co- teacher along with how to get started with co-teaching in your classroom. One of Murawski’s main points for successful co-teaching revokes around laying the groundwork for co-teaching. “They are putting two teachers in the room in an “arranged” marriage, with no time for teachers to get to know one another, to learn how to co-teach, and to establish norms, goals, and expectations that both can embrace”, Murawski says this is why laying the groundwork is so important. If you haven’t formed some type of relationship with your partner, then there’s no way both partners with be on the same page when teaching in the classroom. She lists several things administrators can do to help form the bonds of teachers so co-teaching will run smoother in the classroom for example: provide professional development for faculty or scheduling common planning times fro teachers to collaborate. Along with this she explains how may teachers and schools don’t know how to get started co-teaching. She lists different steps to take to get started with co-teaching in school’s form planning to collaborating. After reading this article my outlook on co-teaching has grown because I now know how to start co-teaching in my own classroom. I think more schools and teachers should read this resource because it gives them insight on successful co-teaching.

Murawski, W. “Successful Co-Teaching” Retrieved (2018 Feb. 16) from https://www.cec.sped.org/News/Special-Education-Today/Need-to-Know/Need-to-Know-CoTeaching

By: Lexie Richardson