Middle Web has a blog section on co-teaching and it is a useful model of co-teaching for college prep courses. In a recent post the co-teaching authors shared a unit of instruction and they illustrated the UDL components of the lesson. Naturally Embedded UDL- http://www.middleweb.com/7694/finding-time-for-udl/ Within that blog post there are other awesome links: This one goes to a list of teaching practices and protocols which can also be “formative assessment” techniques. Although is says ELA 3-5, many can be used in any content area. http://www.engageny.org/resource/grades-3-5-ela-curriculum-appendix-1-teaching-practices-and-protocols
Also in the blog is a link to: Common Core Shifts in ELA/Literacy and Mathematics: http://www.engageny.org/sites/default/files/resource/attachments/common-core-shifts.pdf
This is nice one page summary of the pedagogical shifts in the Common Core, the kind you post in your office next to Bloom’s taxonomy: teacher reference tools.
UDL, Formative Assessment and Common Core Shifts
Collaboration and Co-Teaching
In teacher training programs colleges prepare teacher candidates to work collaboratively and co-teach to facilitate the inclusion of students with diverse learning needs in the general education classroom and curriculum. Teacher candidates are mapping units of instruction and designing adaptive lessons plans to enable their students to access the general education curriculum. In theory they are doing this in collaborative and co-teaching relationships within the school they are doing their clinical teaching. The truth is, they are all too often doing this on their own, as some schools do not have teams of educators working collaboratively.
Collaboration is more than a current trend in education. Businesses have embraced team work and collaboration because they know it increase productivity and creativity and there is a synergistic effect when people pool their talents and ideas. Collaboration in education will force teachers to grow with their colleagues and this will result in better learning outcomes for students.
Paula Kluth (consultant, author, advocate) and Patrick Schwarz write about Collaboration & Teaming in the Inclusive Classroom in one of a series of booklets from Heinemann. They talk about how the typical classroom roles can change. “In inclusive classrooms, the adults shift and share roles and responsibilities in order to give the students a wider range of supports, expand their own skills, and further their own knowledge.” “ In other words, general educators are no longer the only ones delivering lessons, special educators are not the only ones supporting individual students, and paraprofessioans and therapists are no longer available only to a few. All the adults take on different responsibilities and learn from one another.” (Schwarz & Kluth, 2007).
Check out: We Team Teach: http://www.weteamteach.org/
Assistive Technology in the Classroom and Life
This list is to help college students in teacher preparation programs see what is available in the area of assistive technology for students with more complex needs that they may not typically see in their field based experiences.
What is Assistive Technology? (the guy in this video talks really fast, but the examples are good and the photos of people using a variety of AT are very good).
Understanding Assistive Technology
This video on Assistive Technology for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder shows a sampling of some basic low and high tech tools.
Assistive Technology , Enabling Dreams- features students K-12 with physical disabilities and shows the types of AT they use in school.
Assistive Technology in the Classroom- Watch this video created by a classroom teacher. She does demonstrating a variety of assistive technology devices, both high and low tech that she uses with her students daily.
Smart Devices for Special Education – enhancing motivation, communication, and independence in the classroom
iPad Apps for Autistic and Nonverbal Children – Using iPad apps as communication and learning tools for autistic and nonverbal children. Mobile platform games and education applications and accessories are highlighted. This is a lengthy video- one hour. Well worth your time! The presenter shows specific iPad apps and how they can be used in the classroom, with who, when, and why.
Assistive Technology for AAC- this video shows the use of assistive technology for communication. The AT user is a young man with complex physical disabilities.
Assistive Technology for Writing- low tech solutions
Assistive Technology for Writing
K-12 AT Support for Reading
K-12 AT for Math and Science
Algebra Touch for the iPad
View this videos for ideas on how AT can help students access education
Access to Science- vision impairment
A few good other links on assistive technology
http://www.fctd.info/assets/newsletters/pdfs/264/FCTD_News_Oct2009.pdf?1257145200
http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/ATBasics/Populations/LowTech/reading.php
Differentiated Instruction and Special Education
Differentiated Instruction should be part of all lessons to meet the needs of diverse learners. However, differentiated instruction is a Response to Intervention –RTI, TIER 1 best practice. If your students are TIER 2 or 3, you need to address specific evidenced based strategies as their learning interventions. Differentiating alone is not enough. You need to collect data on the interventions you are using at the tier 2 and 3 level, carefully monitor progress and make changes to the interventions if students are not making progress. Data should be collected at a minimum: weekly for tier 3 students and bi-weekly for tier 2 students.
Rick Wormeli has a SlideShare on Differentiated Instruction and within that Slideshare I pulled out a very nice outline of before, during and after lesson planning checklist:
Differentiated Lesson Planning Sequence- from Rick Wormeli http://www.slideshare.net/guest4c52cc4/wormeli-differentiated-instructionmay2009colorversion
Steps to take before designing the learning experiences:
1. Identify your essential understandings, questions, benchmarks, objectives, skills, standards, and/or learner outcomes.
2. Identify your students with unique needs, and get an early look at what they will need in order to learn and achieve.
3. Design your formative and summative assessments.
4. Design and deliver your pre-assessments based on the summative assessments and identified objectives.
5. Adjust assessments or objectives based on your further thinking discovered while designing the assessments.
Steps to take while designing the learning experiences:
1. Design the learning experiences for students based on pre-assessments, your knowledge of your students, and your expertise with the curriculum, cognitive theory, and students at this stage of human development.
2. Run a mental tape of each step in the lesson sequence to make sure things make sense for your diverse group of students and that the lesson will run smoothly.
3. Review your plans with a colleague.
4. Obtain/Create materials needed for the lesson.
5. Conduct the lesson.
6. Adjust formative and summative assessments and objectives as necessary based on observations and data collected while teaching.
Steps to take after providing the learning experiences:
1. Evaluate the lesson’s success with students. What evidence do you have that the lesson was successful? What worked and what didn’t, and why?
2. Record advice on lesson changes for yourself for when you do this lesson in future years.
Noah’s Ark
I got this Noah’s Ark advice from a friend today via email. I don’t know it’s origin to provide a link or citation but it touched my heart which like most of us New Englanders has been badly shaken this week with the bombings at the Boston Marathon. My family was in harm’s way and by the grace of God they were spared physical injury.
Noah’s Ark : Everything I need to know, I learned from Noah’s Ark.
ONE: Don’t miss the boat.
TWO: Remember that we are all in the same boat!
THREE: Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark .
FOUR: Stay fit. When you’re 60 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.
FIVE: Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.
SIX: Build your future on high ground.
SEVEN: For safety’s sake, travel in pairs.
EIGHT: Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.
NINE: When you’re stressed, float awhile.
TEN: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
ELEVEN: No matter the storm, when you are with God, there’s always a rainbow waiting.
Please pass this on to people you want to be blessed.
Give it! Don’t just get it!
Most people walk in and out of your life,
but FRIENDS leave footprints in your heart.
The Teaching Channel
The Teaching Channel is a great K-12 resource of videos of teachers teaching, students included. It is difficult to find high quality video of classrooms in action, but the Teaching Channel has hundreds of videos on a variety of topics. I have used video examples of formative assessment, common core state standards, strategy instruction and ELL instruction in elementary and special education online courses. They also have blogs and Learning Channel TV episodes that you can use for professional development. This is a wonderful resource for teachers and students in teacher preparation programs.
Learning Styles Don’t Exist!
Did that get your attention? It certainly got mine when I first heard this statement this past summer at an Embedded Formative Assessment Workshop presented Dylan Wiliam. Being a big fan of Howard Gardner, this was hard to accept. I have read and embraced learning styles theory for decades and now I have to think outside of my comfort zone and digest what Professor Daniel Willingham, cognitive psychologist/neuroscientist at the University of Virginia has to say about learning styles. It’s not that they don’t exist. It’s more that they aren’t as critical to learning as we may have thought according to Dr. Willingham’s research. Good strategy instruction has a more significant effect on learning.
See what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk
Social Emotional Learning
In my winter methods, strategies and technologies teacher prep course students wrote lesson plans to teach social-emotional-behaviors skills. I want to share some of my comments to the class.
In last week’s Social Behavior Lesson Plans many people did not list a CCSS on their lesson plans???? There aren’t CCSS for every content area individually, but nearly everything we do in school involves, reading, writing, listening and speaking = English Language Arts-ELA. When in doubt, think about what you are asking the students to do (ex. last week’s social- behavior lesson plans) and find a CCSS-ELA that addresses that skill area. An excerpt from the CCSS website: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy
The Standards set requirements not only for English language arts (ELA) but also for literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Just as students must learn to read, write, speak, listen, and use language effectively in a variety of content areas …. In short, students who meet the Standards develop the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.
ex. 6th grade ELA (each grade level has a similar standard)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.6.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 6 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
I read some excellent social-behavior lesson plans yesterday and today and I want to share with you some of the high quality resource gems that students used in their lesson plans. In addition to these strategies many of you used modeling and realistic scenarios to illustrate problem situations or situations where students needed to demonstrate the appropriate social skills. 
From SG: Social Behavior Mapping by Michelle Garcia Winner,
This is a 29 page resource including a workshop PPT slides, and lots of information on social behavior mapping which is kind of a cross between a social story and 5 point scale. The 5 point scale is included. This is a must see for those working with students with ASD and other behavior issues, social skills deficits…
JH’s – distraction blaster lesson plans came with Power Point (link) that she used as an introduction to lessons focused on helping students identify internal and external distractions and how do deal with them. Very nice “advance organizer” http://jillkuzma.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ignorning-ppt-for-kids.pdf and more info from http://jillkuzma.wordpress.com/ Ideas for Educators Supporting Social Emotional Language Skills.
DA. used a YouTube video on cooperative behavior. Videos like these are good teaching tools for students with ASD as research continues to demonstrate the positive effects of video modeling.
Students need proper behavior modeled for them. This video covers six key behaviors and or attitudes that are conducive for cooperative learning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYu6L72mycI&feature=player_embedded
Teach to Their Strengths
I want to share an article I read this week that was written by Temple Grandin. Temple talks about the importance of teaching to the strengths of students on the autism spectrum. This is true for all students and she shares her personal experience on the topic in the article. She cautions teachers to stay away the deficit model and instead to identify and teach to the students strengths.
Temple Grandin Reveals Her Advice for Educating Autistic Kids
Universal Design for Learning and Inclusion in the 70’s
I don’t remember there being any alternative assignments when I was in school, at least not in grades 1-8. I do remember a few creative teachers in high school who gave us some choices in projects. My best learning experience was in high school, senior year, when I was able to take one morning a week off and volunteer at the RI School for the Blind’s preschool. We (a few students in a “career program”) also met one night a week and had people from a variety of professions talk with us about their jobs. These kinds of alternatives are especially important for students who don’t do well in the traditional classroom environments and at the high school level where they need to be getting real life experiences. Back then you had to be on the college track to get into them, when in reality it was the struggling students who needed those alternatives more so. When I think back, the high school I went to in the 70′s was fairly progressive. Inclusive…Not. The typical thing to do back then was to send the special needs students to the regional vocational high schools. If a student had a physical disability they would typically be sent to a school for students with physical disabilities, like the Meeting Street School in Providence RI. RI also has a school for the deaf. As you can see students were often shipped off to schools based on their disabilities. Thus they were totally excluded from public education (most restrictive environments). If a student had severe/profound disability they got sent to “institutions”. I didn’t even know these institutions existed until I was in a Rehabilitation course in college and we visited several of these in MA. It was shocking.
