Creating Opportunity for Connections

Thinking about inclusive education, my first practicum class was a very good place to start. I say this because I had a variety of learners that responded to different activities. I also had the pleasure of working with two students that are on the ASD spectrum. One of the biggest things I did struggle with and will continue to work on is things to challenge those learners we need to extend a little bit. I definitely felt that I was catering to the mid-level of students at first when I needed to find ways to create points of access for everyone. I started to do this in little ways such as creating different worksheets and writing plans to really add options for students based on where they were at. I also found that having learning activities that included group and or partner work really helped in this respect because you could give each group member specialized jobs such as scribe and timer and so on to help each learner feel they had a purpose and direction. I also really like using group work in this respect because if one learner has not completely understood the learning goal yet other learners can be challenged to lead and help them along. I also really tried not to section off my two students on the ASD spectrum and tried to include them in groups with strong student leaders to help them along. I did this because yes, it would be easy just to have the two of them work separately with an EA, which in some cases I did when the specific task needed it for individual work but for group work I wanted them to be part of the group learning experience as much as possible.

Where I want to focus on moving forward is how to make sure no one falls behind during a lesson. I found that especially during math lessons some students would fall off the wagon early and not be able to catch up while the rest of the group moved on. Luckily in my practicum class, we had the opportunity to have an EA in the room that would go around and assist those that needed help but I know this is not always the case. I believe that in these situations it may be useful to employ that group work aspect just to give those students that have not got it yet to work with another student to give them that extra time to process. For example, you could do a short partner talk to get the students to work through a problem together and then discuss afterwards how they came to a solution as a class. Why I think this would be a good strategy to try out is because even though sometimes pushing through and showing more examples might work but in some cases, once a student is lost they could find it difficult to find their way back even if you are leading them. This could be especially true if their lack of understanding makes them frustrated or discouraged. Overall, I feel that I have set up a good understanding of where I am going from my first practicum experience in regard to inclusive education and have a lot of work to do along the way!

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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/