FAIR IS NOT ALWAYS EQUAL

Last fall, we created a little poster that took

off in a big way. Maybe you’ve seen it on social media:

We watched in amazement as the poster caught fire—by November, it

had racked up nearly 30,000 Facebook shares. Teachers shared it with teachers

who co-signed the “fair is not always equal” philosophy. Educators working

hard to make this principle a reality chimed in with inspiring comments.

And some teachers asked the tough question this poster prompts:

Realistically, how do we tailor our teaching for 30 different students in the course of one school day?

. . . NOW WHAT?

For busy teachers, meeting the diverse learning needs of all their

students is a tall order.

Classrooms are crowded, time is short, and standardized-testing pressures are high. With so many responsibilities clamoring for attention, how can you ensure that all students are getting the supports they need? How can you use the most effective approaches to teach and reach all kids and make your job easier?

We can’t offer you magic formulas—but over the past few months, we’ve focused on bringing you practical blog posts with advice from some of today’s most passionate and respected advocates of inclusive education. Real-life educators weighed in on how to differentiate instruction, implement universal design for learning, and make inclusion work. Our expert authors contributed tips, teaching strategies, and answers to pressing questions about UDL, co-teaching, peer supports, and more.

This toolkit is your handy guide to the strategies and success stories we’ve posted on the Brookes Inclusion Lab since January 2016.

universal design for learning (UDL)

Helpful tips to get you started!

Q&A

EXCERPT!

“Start Small”

Expert Advice from Loui Lord Nelson

The author of the bestselling UDL primer

Design and Deliver shared these real-world

tips for getting started with UDL.

Say a busy teacher loves the idea of UDL but is intimidated

by the time investment involved in changing the way she

teaches. What advice would you give to that teacher so

she can support every learner without burning out?

We all love saving time. Using past lesson plans. Sharing resources. Leaving a professional development with ideas or tools we can use the next day. We each have our own ways of saving time. My way is to start small. Focus on one guideline or checkpoint and use that to make a change to your learning environment that you can sustain. That way, there’s no extreme investment of mental-energy or physical time.

LOW-TECH EXAMPLE: Your school doesn’t have a lot of technology. You use your overhead projector each day to provide your students with their lecture notes. You normally write with a black marker. Today, you decide to use different colors to emphasize different points and you provide your students with colored pencils so they can do the same on their papers. Some of your students seem to miss the key concepts and vocabulary words when you give notes even through you talk about them. You decide to write those words with bigger letters. You even circle them while you’re talking about them. It’s a simple change that feels comfortable and you can begin to use in a variety of your lessons. Students have the option of using the colored pencils, but you encourage each of them to individualize their notes to emphasize the key points.

HIGH-TECH EXAMPLE: Your school has an interactive white board in each classroom. Every day, you project information on it and you’ve recently become more comfortable in using the pens to underline information that’s projected. Now, you’ve decided to dig into the resources that come with the software. With the help of a teacher partner, you learn about the wide collection of images and realize that there are plenty of examples you can use for your lesson. You can choose to have the name of an object show up below the picture or have the students move the word so it’s under the correct object. Instead of looking at a list of words, your students can see the words and associated pictures. You begin to brainstorm other ways you can use those still pictures and realize there are plenty of concrete and abstract concepts you can demonstrate with them.

Loui answered more UDL questions! Read the whole Q&A at http://bit.ly/QANelson

6 Steps to Planning UDL Lessons

Define flexible, clear SMART goals

• Ask yourself, “What is the goal of this lesson?” (The CCSS or your state standards will often serve as the base for your goal.) • Learning goals focus on what students need to understand (knowledge), what they need to be able to do (skills), or their attitudes and beliefs (perceptions). • Effective learning goals are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, and time bound. • Share the learning goal with your students and give them multiple ways to accomplish it.

Consider learner variability

• Assess the readiness levels, skills, and needs of your learners and the challenges of the learning environment. • Anticipate learning gaps and barriers that may distract, frustrate, or confuse learners. • Apply UDL guidelines to plan for learner variability and determine what scaffolds are needed.

Determine appropriate assessments

• Choose assessments that provide meaningful information, are flexible, and assess individual student growth. • Find out what assessment accommodations are listed in students’ IEP or 504 plans and provide these during instruction. • Assessments aligned with UDL help you answer critical questions: Am I teaching too fast or too slow? Is the information clear? Are students “getting it”?

Select methods, materials, and media

• Consider the types of assistance you need to include in order to address learner variability: scaffolds? Supports? Accommodations and modifications? • Ask yourself, “Am I providing appropriate experiences to build understanding and make learning memorable? Are my materials and media distracting or assisting learners?” • Choose methods, materials, and media that offer flexibility and relevance and balance assistance with challenge.

Teach and assess learning

• Put it all together and deliver your UDL lesson • Assess student learning with flexible, informative assessments matched to your learning goal.

Refine educator learning through self-reflection

• Review the data you collected through your assessments • Think about your observations. What worked well? What will you do differently next time? Did your students achieve the learning goal? What’s next?

See how 3 educators implemented these steps in their lesson planning! Read the full post at http://bit.ly/6StepsUDL

differentiated instruction

How-tos for helping all kids learn!

Differentiated Instruction

4 Key Principles and How-Tos

1. Create a “working-with” learning environment in which teachers and students share decisions and students take an active role in their own learning.

   • Example: An eighth-grade teacher frames the targeted learning outcomes for an upcoming unit and asks her students to work in small groups to brainstorm instructional activities that would assist the students in reaching their benchmarks.

2. Expand your instructional repertoire and create multiple pathways for learning in order to meet the diverse needs of students.

   • Example: A learning outcome in language arts might involve knowing specific literary elements, such as the element of setting. Using her knowledge of her students, the teacher creates multiple instructional options.

3. Assess throughout your instruction—be creative, think inclusively, and ask students how they can best demonstrate what they’ve learned.

   • Example: A first-grade teacher checks in with her students throughout instruction using the colors of a stop light. A sixth-grade teacher helps her students self-assess their progress on a four-week project by creating a “benchmark timeline” of weekly tasks.

4. Be engaging and use technology when appropriate.

   • Example: Use Google Earth to enhance lessons. Incorporate visual aids and interactive components into the learning experience.

5 Practical Tips for Differentiation

1. Attach a Google image to every new vocabulary word.
2. Use color to help students see first, second, third in multi-step directions.
3. Create activities that are “low floor/high ceiling.”
4. Engaging and use technology when appropriate.
5. Frontload information for students with disabilities.

co-teaching

Great teacher teamwork is a win for everyone!

Q&A

Our Classroom, Our Students

An Expert Q&A with Elizabeth Potts and Lori Howard, co-authors of How to Co-Teach.

Q: What are the benefits of co-teaching?

A: Co-teaching gives teachers a colleague in the classroom, allowing two brains to work together to solve the complex puzzle of teaching children, each bringing specific expertise. It also lowers the student-to-teacher ratio, allowing for more individualized attention.

Q: What are the challenges of co-teaching?

A: General educators must share their classroom and adapt their perspective to foster collaboration, while special educators must learn content delivery for a full class setting.

Q: What are the 5 essential principles of effective co-teaching?

A: Respect perspectives, focus on classroom teaching, build student success, improve/reflect on relationships.

accommodations & modifications

Simple changes to help meet the needs of all kids!

ACCOMMODATIONS & MODIFICATIONS

Some tips from Nicole Eredics:

• Greet students at the class door every morning and welcome them in.
• Assign hooks to minimize distractions during busy times.
• Use a “Sponge Activity” at the start of the day to engage students.
• Offer access to fidgets during group activities.
• Use timed transitions to help students adjust.

peer supports

How classmates can help each other learn!

5 Peer Support Approaches

1. Peer modeling
2. Peer buddy systems
3. Friendship groups
4. Cooperative learning
5. Peer tutoring

VISIT THE BROOKES INCLUSION LAB FOR MORE!

www.brookesinclusionlab.com

Since the blog launched in May of 2015, we’ve been bringing you practical posts on inclusion, UDL, co-teaching, differentiated instruction, and more.