Behavior Management Cue Card Approach!

Here’s a way to quietly cue students to choose positive behavior. Use a cue card! 

Behavior management cue card instructions:

     1.     Print out this card or your own version of the card.

2.     Choose your method:

a.     Tape a card on the upper right corner of each student desk.

  i.      Laminate the card Read the rest of this entry »

Co-teaching, Personality Styles and Flexible Grouping were topics for seminars at Woodington Middle School

The teachers at Woodington Middle School in Kinston, NC. For the past two days, I’ve had the pleasure of working with dedicated teachers at Woodington Middle School. Their Principal, Diane Heath, is doing her best to support the teachers through their Inclusion and Co-teaching initiative.Yesterday, we covered co-teaching strategies and personality styles. Everyone dug right in and worked with the material finding ways to use the information in their classrooms. I love it when I have the opportunity to work with motivated teachers!

I spent today at the National Speaker’s Association of New England program in Natick, MA. Steve Mertz, SEO Speaker, presented my kind of seminar: It was loaded with strategies to get my teacher resource website noticed! I’ve been trying to find ways to get my website noticed by teachers looking for co-teaching, inclusion, differentiated instruction, RTI, etc. strategies. My site offers many web resources and down-loadable tools. Today, it was affirmed for me that blogging is a great way to get the word out about websites.  For more… Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have difficulty finding planning time with your team, paraprofessionals, co-teacher, or special education liaison?
In order for collaboration to be effective, you need time to plan together. If you don’t have the time to discuss plans, review upcoming tests, consider recommended modifications and implementation of I.E.P. goals, it will be difficult if not impossible to have a successful inclusive classroom.

 If your school provides you with planning time, stay focused on the task. Try to avoid social conversation because it will only leave you feeling as if you accomplished nothing afterwards. If possible, share agenda and task information beforehand through school mail so that the time you have can be used to the maximum benefit.

Speak up if you are being asked to give up planning time for other duties. You need that time and it is legitimate to require it.

If your school does not provide planning time, it will probably make your life easier in the long run, if you can employ some of the following options:

1. Use time before school, after school, or during common preps/specials to meet and plan. Remember: The goal is to make YOUR job easier and more successful in the long run. It is a waste of your energy to begrudge the time if you choose this option.
2. Arrange for coverage with a substitute one day a week or month to free time to collaborate.
3. Contact your local PTA and see if there are parent volunteers who may be willing to help cover classes so you can plan. High Schools seriously under utilize volunteers.
4. Oftentimes substitutes have free blocks of time when the teacher they are substituting for has prep periods. See if a substitute can cover your class during a free block of time.
5. For information that must be communicated before the next school day, you might arrange to call each other after hours.
6. At the least, communicate through the mailbox by sharing what is working, what isn’t working and what is needed.
7. Communicating through e-mail is another viable option.
8. If the regular classroom teacher can provide the special education staff person with copies of lesson plans, tests, projects ahead of time by simply photocopying and placing these items in the support teacher’s mail box or e-mailing the plans to the collaborative teacher, it allows enough time for the specialist to assist with accommodations and make helpful recommendations. It also enables that person to go into the class prepared to help.
9. Grade reports placed in the special education teacher’s mailbox enables both the regular classroom teacher and the special education teacher to catch failures before they become quarter grades.
10. Use the time you do have face to face effectively. Avoid going off on tangents. If you are stuck, put the difficulty aside and come back to it later.

Copyright 2002 Susan Fitzell, M. Ed.
www.aimhieducational.com