Workshop Wednesday

Ideas by Jivey

I have a unique classroom set up and resources this year.  I teach an inclusion class and many students perform below grade level and/or need extra time and support to learn new objectives.  I also have an intense combination of behaviors.  Due to the dynamics of my class I have a co-teacher most of the day, a full time classroom tutor, a part time teacher assistant, and the assistance of the Exceptional Children's teacher. {Even with all this support it is still hectic and stressful in my room, but we take it one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time.}

I teach my whole group mini lesson, above is a lesson plan of how I teach my mini lessons {This is a Freebie}.  I have assigned students into small groups with a specific classroom teacher {we are all teachers in my room no one person is "in charge"}.  To create my small groups I put all my students with IEPs in the EC teacher's group, this helps her meet their IEPs too. My students in SST are assigned to my tutor, she is hired specifically to assist with struggling students.  The remaining of my students are split among my co-teacher and I, I just separated behaviors when grouping.

*Names have been changed*

Due to the clustering of my class small group instruction is not difereintated as it might be in your class. The differetiation is through the teaching and assistance in each small group.  After my lesson I have a slide on the Smartboard with directions for small group.  Each teacher completes the lesson, or tries to, by focusing on the goal from the mini lesson.

In the above pictures two groups had the same passage, while the other group had a lower level text to use to practice the day's objective. We were working on 4.RI.4 on this particular day.

For small groups I love glueing passages to bulletin board paper and having students write responses, questions, tables, charts, or graphic organizers related to the text.  This also makes for a quick bulletin board :)