Creating the Inclusive Classroom: Strategies for Success

A lot of teachers think the inclusive classroom looks much different from the room they teach in every day. But guess what? Your classroom is already inclusive! The adaptations you make to promote inclusion are ones that every student can benefit from—and they're simple changes. In this lesson, you'll learn about the décor, rules, and communication that make the inclusive classroom as effective as possible.

Just who are the special needs students in your room? Believe it or not, they're not that different from you. These kids have some extra challenges, yes, but that just means they have even more opportunities to grow. In this lesson, you'll learn about the common learning disabilities, neurobiological disorders, and physical disabilities that you may see in your students.

Classroom management is about the right techniques at the right time. You want to give students the ownership over their own success, the structure to make good choices, and the motivation to keep them coming back for more. You'll learn about these lifesaving management techniques in this lesson.

You may know a little something about multiple intelligence theory and how it relates to the classroom, but do you understand how to help your kids identify their own smart parts and cognitive strengths? You will after this exciting lesson!

Once you understand students' cognitive strengths, it's helpful to do a strength-based interview to help kids focus on the ways they learn best. Once you've got interview data, you can help students formulate appropriate goals and meaningful learning strategies. It doesn't take a lot of time, but the results are impressive!

Now that you know more about students' strengths and how to turn them into goals and learning strategies, you need to stop and think about how you can help this process along. Making the right lesson modifications is the key to giving students equal access to learning opportunities. In this lesson, you'll follow a very interesting social studies lesson to see how technology and creativity can help you modify and adapt with ease.

As you go through the year, it's pretty common to see at least one or two students falling into common learning traps. This lesson will talk about learned helplessness, tunnel vision, and isolationist thinking, three obstacles to student success. As you explore each trap, you'll also discover ways to turn it into an opportunity so that students can maximize their learning potential.

The previous lessons have already talked a lot about your classroom and your students, but they haven't spent much time on you! Teachers are the glue that holds the classroom together, so this lesson will spend some time talking about your own learning style and how it affects the classroom dynamic.

As you may know from experience, the inclusive classroom can't function without productive collaboration—between you, your students, aides, volunteers, school support professionals, and the like. In this lesson, you'll learn the joys (and common pitfalls) of collaboration so that you can start every relationship on solid footing.

Along with collaboration comes co-teaching, where more than one teacher works to serve the needs of all students. While this can turn into a sticky situation or a fight for territory, there's no need to make co-teaching adversarial! In fact, there are plenty of reasons to enjoy the benefits of this very adaptable teaching style. Learn how to make this relationship work for you in this lesson.

It's easy to get so busy teaching that you forget to stop and see how things are going. This final lesson will talk about the best ways to reflect on an inclusive classroom and its successes and shortcomings. As you discover what works and what doesn't, you'll also look at some simple solutions for overcoming common obstacles.