Tailor Your Structures and Methods to Provide Students with IEPs What They Need

Date: Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Time: 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM ET

Location: Online, via Zoom

Led by: Kara Arnold and Logan Fisher

Who Should Attend: Grades K-5 teachers and coaches

Cost: $150 per person

This day will help self-contained and inclusive classroom teachers with methods, strategies and structures to support their students.

During the first part of the day, you’ll learn ways to make your whole-class structure even more accessible. You will think about your classroom from top to bottom, considering the structures and methods you rely on and how to ensure access and joyful learning for all within those structures. It’s easy to focus only on the instructional components of your work with students, but in fact, the routines you put in place, from book shopping to partnerships to connections with service providers, can be just as critical.

Then, you’ll hone in on one-to-one instruction, learning ways to make the most of this important, precious time. You’ll hear about ways to create goals and plans with kids, based on their needs and their IEPs, and learn some tips for inviting kids to collaborate and support one another more effectively, stretching your influence around the class even when you can’t be side-by-side with a student. You’ll think about the difference between giving content and teaching content, and get ideas for how to move kids along a trajectory toward a concrete goal. You’ll see examples of scaffolds that can support students’ learning – and make plans for how to remove and adjust those scaffolds over time, so students are continually growing in their independence.

Expect to leave today with an armful of ideas, tips, and inspiration

Across this day, expect to:

Learn about ways to assess and see the whole child, especially how you can move from a deficit mindset to an additive one when thinking about working with children with disabilitiesE

Learn about ways you can make your classroom and workshop truly inclusive for all your learners, especially those with IEPsE

Take a close look at key structures you have set up, from book shopping and writing centers, to reading and writing spaces, and time for collaborationE

Hear about ways to vary methods and materials in order to make your teaching stick for students with varied needs

• Consider text selections in read aloud and independent reading, so that you balance grade level content and skill development, while providing models and scaffolds for independent practice

• Take a deep dive into whole class instruction to find ways to make your teaching more accessible to a variety of learners, to bring more applicable transfer of skill development access points

• Hear ways to loop into the work of service providers in order to gain more alignment to propel student growth

• Use IEPs to create action plans that help students practice and approximate over time before achieving mastery of a goal

• Hear how you can set students up for success and for independence by creating work plans for when you are not sitting side by side

• Learn how to lean on your classroom community to get kids working collectively with learning goal partners instead of working in isolation

• Learn about the intersection of workshop and station teaching, and consider areas where station teaching might be most supportive for students.