Part of being a good, effective teacher is making sure that all your students feel included and are learning in a way that fits their learning needs. I had the opportunity to work with a very diverse class in my 491 practicum – 4 IEPs, ASD, high anxiety, other learning difficulties, broad range of learner ability. This opportunity has definitely been beneficial in that it gave me ample opportunities to practice and better myself at being able to diversify my lessons and my teaching style in order to meet all these different learning needs.
Knowing and connecting with my students is essential to beginning the process of diversifying my teaching in order to be inclusive of all students needs. If I don’t know what those needs are, how would I be able to make sure my teaching will reach those needs? Learning these needs and what works and doesn’t work for my students is something that I have done at the beginning of each of my practicums. I do this by talking with my students, assigning activities that let me get to know them, and by making sure to do pre-assessment to gauge students’ levels of understanding going in whenever I start a new concept.
It is also a great inclusivity practice to base learning on things that students are interested in. This could be as simple as giving them free choice in, say, what animal they choose for an animal research project, or could be more in depth by having students cocreate criteria or choose what form they want to present their learning as. Giving students options and allowing them to learn about their interests is a great way to increase student buy-in and learning retention.
Something I did a lot of differentiation and inclusion in is math. I was in a 3/4 split class for my final practicum, and I had a very broad range of math ability and ways that my students best learned. During most math lessons, we began by having a discussion about a topic and we’d work through practice problems together as a class. We would also have a period of the lesson where students practiced problems on their own on white boards or worksheets, and where I was available to help or they could ask their neighbours. This period of learning really allowed me to gauge who was understanding the concept and who needed more help. I also introduced a lot of math games where students could practice the new concepts in an environment where they were having fun and playing games with a peer. They also always had access to manipulatives and I had different strategies posted in the room for them to refer to.
Making sure that all your students are having opportunities to learn that work for them is so important, and I’ve learned so many strategies for creating a learning environment that is inclusive to all my students’ needs over the course of this program.
A few links to start with or refer to:
What is Inclusive Education? – from Inclusive Education Canada
https://inclusiveeducation.ca/about/what-is-ie/
What is Inclusive Education? – From Inclusion BC
https://inclusionbc.org/our-resources/what-is-inclusive-education/
Inclusive Education Resources – BC Ministry of Education
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/teaching-tools/inclusive-education
Special Education Policy Manual PDF – BC Ministry of Education
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/teaching-tools/inclusive-education
Teachers of Inclusive Education (TIE) – British Columbia
http://www.tiebc.com/
SOGI 123 – British Columbia
https://bc.sogieducation.org/