Helping Special Education Teachers Deliver Effective Interventions
1. Introduce States & Capitals by Region of the Country When I first began teaching fifth grade, I made many mistakes when teaching the states, capitals, and their locations on a map. I threw all fifty states at them. I gave a specific deadline and somehow expected them to memorize them all. After many trials […]
Differentiation and Intervention are two very different things, yet I often see them used almost synonymously. Funny story—Our school was audited by an outside company several years ago. During their debriefing, they expressed that they weren’t seeing much differentiation happening in grade level classrooms. I heard one teacher say, “Well we send our kids to […]
Throughout the school year, we cover reading skills through a hardcore Guided Reading set up. However, during this time of year, we are knee deep in statewide testing. I like to make this week special and low pressure. One of the ways that I do this is to by doing Book Clubs. It is something […]
In my opinion, citing evidence is one of the biggest standards in upper elementary. I would even assume, that regardless of what state you are teaching in, citing evidence is a core part of your upper elementary curriculum. Over the last few years, I have felt that my students are typically doing well with restating […]
While the RTI process is definitely not new, finding an effective way to develop and maintain a team for assisting students who are receiving an intervention is difficult. In our school, fine tuning and perfecting our process is still a work in progress. Over the last several years, we’ve learned a lot. I thought I […]
Today, I’m going to share my opinion on something that I seriously hope is not offensive or argumentative. Over the last five years, I have spent a lot of time in upper elementary classrooms. I’ve played two roles, a special education teacher and a general education teacher. Regardless of my role, my opinion has remained […]
