How do you include all students?

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Permalink Reply by Amy Broomfield on October 31, 2010 at 10:14pm

One way to include all students is participation grades which forces students to be involved in order to earn a good grade. Also aybe incorporated a "student of the week" theme requiring a different student every week to present something relevant to subject being taught that day. Mainly teachers need to make sure they do not focus all their attention on the trouble makers and try their best to spread their attention all around.

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Permalink Reply by Kaitlin Nugarus on April 12, 2012 at 3:19pm

To include all students you should always differentiate your instruction to meet the needs of all learning styles in your classroom. A wide variety of teaching teqniques should be used, keeping in mind blooms taxonomy. Including a special ed in your mainstream classroom doesnt always mean that the student is doing exactly what the other students are doing, if your student with special needs is in a biology class and is good at cleaning or organzing, instead of always participating in the lab, their responsibilty could be to clean up or organize before or after the lab and turn that into a learning opportunity as well. Always keeping an open mind and expanding your knowledge will help as well.

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Permalink Reply by Wesley Emlet on April 15, 2012 at 6:01am

Do you have a set of Smart Responses? This is an easy way to use technology and receive instant feedback from all students.  If you don't, some recommendations would be to play 4 corners. It gets students out of their seats and also encourages participation.  Pose a question and tell students four answer choices (one at each corner of the room) and then students go to the corner they believe is the correct answer.  At this point I make my students collaborate and explain why they believe their answer is correct.  Another idea is to put students in groups of 3-4 and give each student a specific job for different assignments.  (Presenter, writer, reader...) This makes students accountable and gives them a sense of worth.  Hope these ideas help!  Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Kate Miller on April 15, 2012 at 7:26pm

We use communicators (which are essentially sheet protectors with paper inside) and dry erase markers for every pupil response in my classroom instead of plastic paddles.  For a few dollars you can make your own with sheet protectors, white or light colored card stock to help stabilize them).  I use kids socks as erasers for the dry erase markers.  These are nice because you can ask them to hold up their responses in whole group or small group and easily scan for student understanding.  You can also use templates inside- like of clocks, place value charts, etc. depending on what you are teaching.

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Permalink Reply by Kate Mason on April 16, 2012 at 7:23pm

Hi Melissa.  I have my students turn and talk so they all get to share their answer, also each student has a small white board to show their answers.  You can get the boards or I made my own just laminating construction paper.  You could also use pinch cards.

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