Inclusion Classrooms

I feel that inclusive classrooms are an incredibly positive part of a school. When envisioning my classroom, I see diversity, set backs and achievements. Incorporating students with disabilities in the general education classroom is a great method. It is great for the disabled students and the typical students because they can learn from one another ultimately creating a classroom community where discrimination is left outside the door.

I believe that my students will not only learn from me, but also from their peers. By incorporating students with differences, they can learn from one another and be able to work together as a team, growing and learning. Understanding and learning about differences is one of the major lessons I want my students to learn. I feel it is great to incorporate a range of types of students including disabled students because the class can come together as a united community.

The real world is filled with differences and diversity; I want my students to be well equipped with book knowledge and lessons about working well with people similar and different than you.

When further envisioning my classroom, I envision set backs. It takes a lot of patience and discoveries to include disabled students in the classroom and still be able to effectively teach and touch as many student’s lives as you can. Incorporating diverse students into one classroom without any setbacks is unlikely, but there are advantages. In order to learn and grow as a teacher, you must endorse those set backs. Not only do students need to be equipped with diversity to learn, but so do educators. I am a true believer that by including disabled students in my class will constantly benefit me and my students. Together we will experience set backs where we may not understand or become impatient, but it is from those set backs that we learn what a blessing it is to be graced with people all around us with differences.

The third element of my classroom that I envision is achievement. By incorporating disabled students in the classroom, it becomes very rewarding when the class as a community achieves and reaches their goals. I feel that it is great to have an all inclusion classroom where you can learn from one another and be rewarded with achievements that you reached as a team that includes students who are not the same from one person to another. With the differences in an all inclusion classrooms, it may not be a simple process to achieve all our learning goals. By working as a team though, it suddenly becomes much more rewarding to work together through the differences in the classroom. In order to embrace one’s achievements I believe you must overcome and work with any differences that the students around you have that you are working with.

Overall, I could not see the implementation of a diverse classroom with disable students in an all inclusion classroom to be negative. In every aspect of the class, positivity comes out of incorporating students with disabilities into the general education classroom. Disabled students are your typical students too, just with some minor physical and/or mental set backs. I don’t believe that these setbacks they may have should prevent them for being given the opportunity for typical students to work with them as a team and for them to work and learn from typical students. I want my classroom to be an interactive learning community, where my students are all learning and achieving together setting their differences aside. Every student deserves the opportunity to be given an education that touch’s and changes their lives, without being alienated from their peers.

Discovery Box

I believe that Discovery Boxes are a great thing to incorporate into the science classroom. It gives students the opportunity to explore and discovery their own learning.

For example, I’ve chose erosion as my topic for my discovery box because students can manipulate sediments and be able to see erosion at first hand. Erosion can contain complex subject matter, but within these discovery boxes students can experiment and use inquiry based learning to discover erosion.

This discovery box is excellent because it includes all forms of sediment and water. The students will use dirt, sand, rocks, water, ice cubes, heat and wind to experience first hand how erosion forms. With this discovery the students can learn and explore more about our land and how it has formed over time due to erosion.

I would use the discovery box in the duration of a geology unit. I don’t believe that students can learn about our land forms and environment without being exposed to hands on experiments; in this case, to form their own erosion. I would utilize the discovery box of erosion after the engage stage where the students will simply vocalize what they know about how landforms develop and erosion is created. After developing curiosities, the students will then be able to utilize the discovery box to solidify their knowledge and discover facts.

I find that this particular discovery box would fit perfectly into the explore stage after the engage step in the learning cycle. The erosion box would be good for the explore stage because the students will have the opportunity to apply their curiosities to a hands on experience. Using a constructivist approach is crucial in complex subjects such as erosion because students often learn much more from exploring themselves to discovery answers to their questions.

The discovery box of erosion would also fit into the elaborate stage where they also experiment and discovery answers to their curiosities throughout the learning process of the unit. Whether the box is placed in the engage or elaborate stage, the box is a useful tool for the students to see erosion right in front of their eyes.