Enter to win a gift card of your choice by reading this month’s posts and filling out this short form.
Lydia Finchum teaches inclusion ICP (Integrated Chemistry and Physics) at Ben Davis High School. She answered some questions for us about how she has been successful reaching students with learning differences during virtual instruction.
How did you support your inclusion students during remote instruction?
One thing that I did that was effective in supporting my inclusion students virtually was limiting the amount of information that I gave them at once. Each class period was spent working on very focused skills and content. To approach a multistep concept like finding formula mass, the classes leading up to actually calculating the formula mass involved understanding the information on the periodic table, how to read a formula, and how to fill out the chart that we use to calculate the formula mass. All this was done without a single math problem completed. Once they were able to do those skills independently and with confidence, then we worked on how to multiply and add the numbers.
Can you share a favorite tool, or suggestion to help other teachers reach their resource student population in virtual or hybrid scheduling?
There are several things that have helped me in finding success with my inclusion students:
1) All of our work is done in ItsLearning. This simplifies my life so much that I am not having to tell students where to go to find the work.
2) Use of break out rooms. Students know that they are going to get to practice their skills with me nearby without feeling like they have no one to ask for help. They are good at using that raise hand button when they have questions!!
3) Use of Lightspeed Classroom. I tell students up front that I am going to be looking over their shoulders, just like I would in class, using Lightspeed Classroom. This way I can catch mistakes easier and earlier and correct them before they become learned behavior. I can also see who is working and who is not working easily, especially when I say to open up a new folder, assignment, etc. I am able to follow up with that student as to why they were not participating in class and eliminating some of the behavior that I have seen where students join the meet, turn off their mics and cameras, and go right back to playing video games, being on their phone, or sleeping.
4) Having students take tests with me in class. This was a game changer for final exams. Students joined their regular class period, I put them into individual break out rooms. They were able to take their quiz/test and ask questions as needed using the raised hand feature of Google Meets. Due to the limit of class time, I divided my final into two parts and they took it over the course of two days. Students that didn't attend class, were still able to take the final on their own time as needed. The students that showed up for class and took their final with me, had higher scores than those that did not attend the class meets. This semester I have set office hours on Friday afternoons for students to show up and take quizzes using the same break out rooms as I did for finals. Tests will be taken during class time in both virtual and hybrid modes to ensure that students are getting the support that they need to meet their educational goals.
Written by Madison Jacob, Jessica Breedlove, and Mike Vetter, Ben Davis iTEC Teachers