I tried to comment after Gneiss teacher yesterday but my comment wouldn't post!
My co-teacher and I don't have a lot of time to lesson plan together due to our schedules. I use similar lessons for all of my classes, and the earth science department usually plans together. We make our plans so that they work for all levels. We make sure that we incorporate differentiated instruction, plan activities for all types of learners, make time for reading comprehension practice. Of course we have lots of hands-on activities and lots of labs and mini-labs, and we added virtual labs to the mix this year.
What I think we need to do is have some classes where we have several "centers" and make a small group section for remediation (specifically for the inclusion kids) so that they have extra help with soem of the concepts. That's where I'm lookign for some advice: do you have anything that you've done that works!?
I just got my score breakdown today and out of the few that failed, every one except 2 were in special education, so that tells me I do really need to focus on those students more next year...
That's a concern for me as well. we don't have a lot of time to do remediation so the stations or centers idea works well. The problem there is always room flow. I have found that assigning projects like a Tic-Tac-Know to be helpful. The students have to choose 2 lines (a total of 5 - 6 assignments) and you arrange them so that they have to complete at least 1 medium to difficult assignment. The students like to in the center of attention so I have them research and teach a portion of the lesson. This helps them to learn the material and allows them to be creative. Having them write/make children's book on a topic has helped some of my SpEd kids understand the concept better because they were able to bring it to a level they can understand. Hope this helps some. Let me know if it does.
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