2016 TASH Conference

This session provides instruction on creating rigorous academic lessons for a diverse group of students, including those with complex support needs. The benefits of inclusive practices, universal design for learning, differentiated instruction, and culturally responsive teaching are becoming more widely accepted and proclaimed. There is no doubt that all teachers must be prepared to teach diverse learners in a variety of settings. It is important to ground all educators in the theory of inclusive practice and as provide them with specific practices to enact that theory in real life classrooms. There are resources available that address general ideas for differentiation and universal design for learning, resources that offer specific strategies but are categorical in nature, and resources that focus only on including one or two students with significant disabilities. While this one-at-a-time format is a start, we acknowledge that teachers are faced with the challenge of meeting many diverse cognitive, social, behavioral, cultural, and linguistic needs all at once. Yes, they may have one or two students with significant cognitive disabilities, but they will almost certainly also have students with IEPs for other needs, students with 504 plans, and students with diverse cultural and linguistic needs. Teachers need theory-to-practice strategies and lesson plan examples that show how lessons can be planned to include all of these students while maintaining high expectations, building community, managing the classroom, and meeting standards and IEP/504 goals. We will focus on the concept of Ÿ??clusteringŸ? student needs to better meet individual student needs. With clustering, teachers continuously reflect on key student patterns of learning and plan instruction to address the patterns of learning, as opposed to focusing merely on individual needs, which can be overwhelming and unattainable for a teacher in daily planning. This session introduces these lesson planning strategies and a bank of inclusive practices, based on universal design for learning practices, for fair, just, balanced, challenging classroom communities where all students are supported to reach high standards for academic content. After this session, participants will be able to: 1. Identify diverse, complex needs of students in inclusive classrooms; 2. Discuss the need to universally design learning to meet all needs; 3. Produce strategies that support studentsŸ?? cognitive, social, behavioral, cultural, and linguistic needs; 4. Explain how all strategies implemented Ÿ??ripple outŸ?? to support multiple students in inclusive environments; and 5. Design content lessons that fully include all students and support all needs.