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How I Accommodate Students During Tests and Quizzes
In my position, I provide inclusion support to special education students. This involves a lot of co-teaching, modifying assessments on the go, providing accommodations, and sometimes it feels like I’m constantly juggling. Many of my students struggle with showing what they know during a test, and I juggle with the balance between helping them show what they know and providing them too much help that it is not a proper assessment. Here are some of the things that I do when my students are taking tests. Separate Setting Many of my students benefit from taking their tests and quizzes in a separate setting, more specifically in my classroom with me…
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High-Stakes Testing
Like most states, my students have to participate annually in high-stakes testing. My eighth graders are responsible for taking two days of ELA testing, two days of Math testing and two days of Science testing. It is spread out to three weeks, two days per week, and it’s going to be a long few weeks! Preparation How do you prepare your students for high-stakes testing? My students are in middle school, so this is their sixth year doing testing like this. They seem to go on autopilot; they just want to get through the test and on to whatever is happening later in the day. With math, we work really hard to…
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Special Education Pacing: Do We Rush or Not?
Special education pacing can be challenging when you are trying to find the right balance. One of the decisions I struggle with the most is whether to focus on understanding or getting through the curriculum. This is a struggle I have mainly with math. I work with students who often require extra practice and more taught lessons to understand something. But, when you slow down to be able to do this, you are risking running out of time to finish the whole curriculum by the end of the year. Sub-separate Teaching – Special Education Pacing Last year I taught a sub-separate math class that had less than ten students. It…
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Great Middle School Bulletin Boards
Selecting a great bulletin board for my classroom is something I struggle with yearly. I teach eighth-grade inclusion and because of that, I am often working with students on all five of their subjects, not one in particular. This makes selecting a content area bulletin board difficult because how do I choose between the different content areas? Because of this, I decided that it would be most beneficial for me to use bulletin boards that promote kindness, growth mindset, or something else that will encourage them to be better students and people. One of the first bulletin boards that I really liked was this one: I liked this…
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Special Education Organization Essentials
Organization is one of my biggest challenges as a special education teacher. Between work samples, reports, IEPs, modifying their work, study guides, graphic organizers, and checklists; I feel like I am constantly drowning in paperwork! Every year I find a new way to organize myself that I think is going to be the trick to keeping myself organized. But, every year something does not work the way I expect it to, or there is something that I just do not keep up with. After a lot of trial and error, here are the best products I have found for organizing my classroom. Bankers Box Eight Compartment Literature Sorter I love these…
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Leveled Novels on the Holocaust for Middle School Students
Each year, the ELA teacher that I co-teach with and I teach a unit on the Holocaust. This is an amazing unit that she developed long before working with me and I am just fortunate to be a part of it. This unit includes teaching them background knowledge. They explore situations where they have to decide what they would do. And, they read a book on the Holocaust and participate in book club discussions. One of the many reasons that I love this unit is because of the multitude of books there are to choose from. We can carefully select groups of students and assign them to a book that…
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The Pros & Cons of Teacher Proximity
Using your presence can be a powerful tool in the classroom. It makes you more accessible, helps with classroom management, and it can be subtle. But, is teacher proximity always a good thing? Teacher Proximity: What is it? One popular technique for classroom management is using your person to influence what is happening in the classroom, or teacher proximity. Standing close to students or standing strategically in a certain area of the classroom can affect the students and the mood of the classroom in different ways. Pro: Chatty Students If you have a group of students that is always chatty when they think you are not looking, this is a…
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The Beginners Guide to Inclusion
I recently took a course on inclusion practices. Although I am a special education teacher who is very familiar with the inclusion setting, I am always looking for new tips, techniques, or practices to bring into my classrooms and to better help my students. History and Introduction Inclusion is the practice of including special education students in the general education setting. In the past, students with disabilities were often removed from the classroom. They did this to provide them with support and instruction that was focused on their abilities and needs. But, removing students with disabilities from the classroom can cause them to get even further behind, and it also…
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6 Strategies to support students with ASD in an Inclusion classroom
6 Strategies for students with ASD in an inclusion setting.
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Parent Communication: 5 Things to Remember
One of the biggest parts of our job, and sometimes one of the most difficult parts of our job, is talking to parents. Parent communication can be stressful. Usually, when parents contact us, it is not for something positive. They usually contact us when they are upset or confused about something. We must maintain a strong home/school relationships because this will significantly benefit the student. It is important that, to the best of our abilities, home and school are on the same page. When you’re dealing with parents, try some of the following tips: They just want to be heard Sometimes parents, or people in general, often just need to…
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