Thoughts after facilitating, and inclusion...

Wednesday seemed to be a day of trials for many of us before we came to class, and even after we left class. After reflecting on my facilitation of class, I found that there was something special that happened to our cohort Wednesday night, or so it seemed to me, the support that was shown to each other was very nice. It can be hard to go from teaching all day to sitting in class at night, but having people who care about each other and support each other in that night class makes it so much more tolerable. In fact, for me, its often part of the best time of my week. I think the understanding and support that was shown to each other Wednesday night is exactly the type of support and understanding that we are asked to have in an inclusion classroom. I took some notes while each of you were talking about a strategy that you use to appeal to the numerous intelligences, and I wanted to share them here so that you could have a little "tool box" of ideas if you wanted to adapt them to your content area. 

Intrapersonal: peer mediation, peer tutoring, school improvement team

Verbal-Linguistic: Re-write a chapter of the text book with the important/necessary information that the student found most important

Mathematical: Personalize things, and look for the things in everyday items...for example, Mr. 60, Mr. 30, find Waldo

Visual-Spatial: Visual representation of the quotes...soil that makes quotes grow

Musical: Tone & Voice-piece of music that indicated the tone of voice in a character

Kinesthetic/Bodily: Skits, songs with hang motions, games that involve moving around

Interpersonal: Working collaboratively in groups, creating a newspaper, checklists to keep all members involved, self and group evaluation of the process

Naturalist: charts to help keep things organized 

I enjoyed our discussion Wednesday night very much, and I enjoyed that I had to adapt the schedule and things to accommodate us better, it made for a nice challenge for me, because after all, it ties into exactly what we talked about...making accommodations for the needs of our students. 

Thank you for a great semester, I have learned many things from each of you :-)