102746 Inclusive Education: Principles and Practices

102746 Inclusive Education: Principles and Practices

Assignment 3: Applied Project (2000 words)

This assignment requires you to apply your knowledge of inclusive principles and practices to plan for the effective inclusion and learning of a student/child with disabilities. Every classroom has diverse learners, some students will be working above expectations and others will be emerging learners. As a teacher you will be expected to cater for the diversity of learners and take into account their capabilities, strengths or emerging skills. For this assignment, you may focus on a child/student with a diagnosed disability, sensory, cognitive or physical impairment, developmental delay, chronic illness or medical condition that impacts learning in an educational setting relevant to your course.

Which assessment should I do?

Select one of the case studies found in the Assessment 3 folder. You will do Part 1 and the alternative Part 2 (see option 2).

Early Childhood students (Course 1783)

The purpose of this assignment is for you to plan, using Sandall, Schwartz and Joseph’s Building Blocks Model for Effective Instruction in Inclusive Early Childhood Settings, for the effective inclusion and learning of a child with disabilities. You will plan for six embedded learning opportunities, which could be incidental, or teacher directed. Use the inclusion plan template to guide your assignment preparation.

Primary (1781) and Secondary (1714 or 1848) Students

The purpose of this assignment is for you to plan for the effective inclusion and learning of a student with disabilities and apply the Universal Design for Learning framework (UDL) framework. You will plan three sequenced lessons.

You may find it appropriate to use the same or similar UDL and differentiation strategies for the three lessons. You may choose to

–   use the UDL template to guide your assignment preparation. It is recommended that you use different colour font to show how you will apply the three principles of UDL to the lessons for your class and explain how it includes the focus student.

–   use your own lesson plan proforma or the one available on vUWS.

–   provide a summary of your lesson plans with the UDL strategies embedded in your lessons; OR

–   provide a summary of your lessons with the UDL strategies that you will use consistently across all the lessons under the summary.

The inclusion and learning plan will be clear and with sufficient explanation that your teaching team, or a casual/RFF teacher could implement the plan in your absence. Thus, you are not writing the plan just for you, but for your teaching team and/or others who may teach or interact with the child/student. The inclusion and educational plan will be informed by academic research, the relevant framework (UDL/Building Blocks) and provide evidence of your understanding of inclusive principles and practices.

Structure

Part 1. The Inclusion and Learning Plan, The plan will include the following components (approximately 1600 words).

Profile Write a short introduction to the child/student with disabilities. Use a strength-based approach when presenting the profile (Approximately 200 words).

–   Identify the child/student’s strengths, capabilities, interests, dispositions, emerging skills and support needs

–   The profile will be based on your assessment for learning and the families’ aspiration and priorities for their child.

–   It is not enough just to describe what you know, you must analyse the information and consider how it will inform your plan. Use relevant child development literature and learning theories to analyse observations and information presented about the child/student.

–   Where possible, introduce the child in the context of their everyday life and relationships, include information about the families’ priorities and child/student’s community life that may influence learning and social inclusion.

–   Remember, you are introducing the child/student to others so it must be succinct and have enough detail that they are ready to interact and teach the child/student.

–   You will need to explain the relevance of the information you are providing, for example explain the implications of the assessment information or the implications of learning in regards to the diagnosis.

–   If you are on professional experience, it is anticipated that you will complete this section during your first two weeks of professional experience. You can then refine it as you develop your understanding of the context and child/student.

Environment: Introduce the learning environment/context. Deidentify the specific setting/school. Describe the foundational qualities of a positive inclusive, learning environment (about 100 words).

Collaboration: Identify the key stakeholder and explain the strategies for collaboration and continuity with key stakeholders (about 80 words).

Learning Intentions: Identify the learning intention or focus of this inclusion plan, or lesson plans, with links to appropriate curriculum documents (about 20 words).

Learning Outcome: Write a specific learning outcome for this child/student aligned to the learning intention of the overall plan (about 10 words).

Rationale: Justify why you selected this learning outcome for this child. This section may include links to the family’s priorities for the child/student, the child/student’s aspirations, preferences, interests and capabilities, the curriculum, access and participation, and/or planning for the future. (about 100 words).

ELO or Lesson Plans: Develop either a) for Early childhood - six embedded learning opportunities or b) for primary/secondary - three sequenced lesson plans.

Teaching Approach: Apply the principles of the Building Block model or UDL and identify specific modifications, accommodations or adaptations to the environment, curriculum or resources required to support this child/student’s inclusion and learning. In this section you will make links to specific information you know about the child/student and how they learn. This section will include references to your research about the child/student’s capabilities, strengths, emerging skills, and the implications for teaching.

AND

Identify specific, detailed, evidence-based instructional teaching strategies you will use to support the child/student’s inclusion and learning during your interactions. You may write this as a script, include how you might specifically encourage engagement and what will you do if the child/student was not focused or participating, what additional strategies would you use. Where possible reference these strategies to demonstrate they are evidence-based.

Monitoring Method: Develop a method to monitor learning and the effectiveness of your teaching strategies. It would be anticipated you will use the same method throughout the plan. The method will identify how you will know your teaching strategies are working and how the child is progressing. For instance, you may want to gather data about the frequency, intensity, duration and/or latency of engagement. Therefore, identify what, when and how you will collect the data (about 50 -100 words).

The plan should not be written as an essay but rather as a planning document. The word count is a general guide only. Components 7 and 8 will be about 1000 words)

If you are on professional experience, it anticipated that you would complete the plan before teaching your first experiences/lesson.

Part 2: Complete Option 2

Option 2 for those not on professional experience and doing the Alternative Assignment Develop a Social Inclusion Support Document for your colleague. (400 words)

Imagine you are currently working with a support worker (inclusion support worker/teacher aide/SLSO) to include your focus child/student. As you know, it is important to be consistent when supporting inclusion, but you have noticed lately that this support worker is not as positive as you would like and sometimes they create barriers to the child/student’s social inclusion, particularly during outdoor play. To address the issue you have decided to develop a support document to share with your colleague(s) and set out how you, as a team, will promote social inclusion, especially in the outdoor learning environment or, if in a school setting, in the playground.

Process: Research how best to support children with disabilities social inclusion and sense of belonging. You might want to review the recommended unit readings, your text and the literature about how best to support children with disabilities developing social competence and positive relationships with their peers. Evaluate relevant processes, programs, strategies, and evidence-based practices. Consider how you will present the information in an engaging and accessible way.

Social Inclusion Support Document

The document will include the following components. It will be engaging brief, very specific and clear.

–   The intention, why it is important that this child/student’s social inclusion and peer relationships are supported.

–   The characteristics of a learning environment that is conducive to social inclusion.

–   The approach you will take, as a team, to promote this child/student’s social inclusion.

–   Justify why you have selected this approach, linking your explanation and justification to current literature.

–   Promote consistency by explaining specifically how to implement the approach, including how they will introduce the ideas to the child/student and their peers (this may be in the form of a script), what the support worker will do if the child/student or peers are not interested or reject the ideas.

–   An evaluation strategy, that is how will you evaluate the success of the approach.

–   Your paper must be appropriately referenced with three peer-reviewed articles relevant to social inclusion, social competence, and developing peer relationships.

–   You may include images, a link to one video or website to support your colleagues understanding.

Resources:

Resources to support your assignment preparation, including exemplars will be available the vUWS>Assessment 3 folder.