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Why You Should Be Using Exit Tickets in Your Classroom
What are Exit Tickets? An exit ticket is when you have the students respond to a prompt, answer a question, solve a problem, some activity that you have students do and pass in to be able to leave at the end of class. An exit ticket is a great way to get an on the spot assessment of how the students are doing, or for the students to reflect on their learning. Exit Tickets for Assessment Exit tickets are a great way to get a sense of how your class is doing. What was the objective of your lesson? If you wanted to make sure that the students knew how…
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Using Editing Stations in Your Middle School ELA Classroom
Will they ever learn!? Every year, I am always surprised at the eighth-grade students who pass in papers with their names written without capitals. They just aren’t doing the editing! If you ask an eighth-grade student whether they know to capitalize names, they always say they do. And yet I repeatedly receive assignments passed in with the same error. In the past, I have used checklists to remind students of the different things they need to be looking for when they are editing their writing assignments. But, the students who really need to lean on the checklist are often the ones that leave them on the floor. Check out the…
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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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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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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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4 Awesome Middle School Reading Resources
Most school districts that I am familiar with, do not have a reading curriculum to use with inclusion students in middle school that receiving pull out reading services. At my school, there is a sub-separate curriculum for reading but this does not address the specific needs of my students because they are not far enough below grade level to qualify. When I started working at my school, we did have a reading curriculum, although, no one was using it because it was stale, outdated, and the kids hated it! Because of this, I have had to find my own tools and resources to use to teach my pull out of…
