Inclusion is a buzzword in education, especially in England and Wales, where the National Curriculum requires schools and teachers to ensure that all students participate in effective learning, regardless of their individual needs.
But what exactly does inclusion entail in the context of schools and education? What exactly does inclusion look like in the classroom? Most importantly, how can teachers create an inclusive classroom that benefits all students, regardless of their specific needs?
Bonus: If law students require online law essay help then they can ask for assistance from reputable online teachers or experts.
What Does Inclusion Mean?
In the simplest terms, inclusion in education means ensuring that every child, regardless of individual needs or barriers to learning, has equal access to knowledge and opportunities to succeed.
Teaching students with special needs in inclusive classrooms. Inclusion in schools is more than providing extra assistance to children with special educational needs. It is about creating a learning environment that works for all students, regardless of whether they have a disability, speak English as a second language, are members of a minority community, come from a low-income family, or struggle to learn and succeed for other reasons.
This is a challenge for teachers: how to include all these children in learning, considering their different needs and barriers to learning.
While probably each will need to have particular plans in place to meet the specific needs of the children in your class, there are several things all teachers can do to help create a safe, happy, purposeful, and inclusive environment. This article focuses on how educators can promote diversity and inclusion in learning spaces.
Who Benefits from Inclusion?
This comprehensive review of the impact of inclusive education discovered that the vast majority of students without additional needs were either unaffected or benefited from the implementation of inclusive classroom strategies. All students benefit from effective inclusion because they can access some of the additional support. Just like students get external support and need Law dissertation help when they write their final year law dissertation.
Inclusive Classroom Strategies
Here’s a closer look at these twelve classroom strategies:
Set up clear minimum standards of behaviour
Every child in your class should understand the minimum, basic acceptable levels of behaviour. These should be rules that you and your classmates have discussed and agreed on. Once agreed upon, why not have children sign a class contract to ensure that they understand that the class rules are everyone’s responsibility to follow? You might even want to involve children in the creation of a class rule display.
Make these short and simple so that everyone can understand them. Make these rules about ensuring everyone feels safe and respected, rather than just learning.
Examples of rules that you could agree on are:
- Be kind.
- Keep your hands and feet to yourself!
- Always use kind words.
- Always respect the property of others.
- Everyone deserves to feel safe and respected.
- Everyone has the right to express themselves and be heard.
Enforce those standards consistently
Just as you must make the basic class rules absolutely clear and understandable, you must also agree on the consequences if those rules are broken.
These consequences must be proportionate and consistent in application. Remember that the rules for behaviour are the bare minimum of what is acceptable in your classroom, so try to be consistent with consequences when they are broken.
Handle low-level disruption sensitively
Do you remember how we said not to write the name of the child who was constantly calling out on the board? That’s because it’s an insensitive way of dealing with a problem that clearly singles out one child in front of everyone. If you write a child’s name on a piece of paper, they will realise they have misbehaved. They also have the option to stop and change their behaviour without further consequences
Build opportunities to listen to all children
This is especially important when resolving conflicts between students in your classroom. Allow sufficient time for the children involved to fully explain how they believe the incident occurred, as well as what has upset them and why.
Provide opportunities for children to be heard on a daily basis, during regular lessons and learning. This allows them to engage with the learning and feel included in it.
.
Create a scaffolded’ approach to learning
What does “Scaffolding’ mean in terms of teaching and learning? We could write an entire book about scaffolding, but in the most basic terms, scaffolding is providing support so that all students have access to the same learning.
Scaffolding is absolutely essential for creating an inclusive learning environment. You want all of the children in your class to have access to the same information during a lesson (even if your resources and activities differ slightly). Instead of activities that are completely different from those you planned for the rest of the class, why not plan activities with the same objectives and outcomes while scaffolding them to meet the needs of the children?
Be aware of the individual needs of each child in your class
Knowing which of your children has Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) isn’t enough to create a truly inclusive classroom. You should know which of your children receive Free School Meals (FSM), which are carers, which are in foster care, which speak English as an Additional Language (EAL), and which are from the particularly vulnerable Roma or traveller communities.
Knowing this will help you think about every aspect of your classroom, including how to make it inclusive, safe, and purposeful.
Final Words
Inclusion works because it gives children what we all want and need: a sense of belonging. Creating an inclusive classroom where everyone feels valued is incredibly powerful. You may not consider yourself to be the greatest teacher in the world, but you can be the most significant teacher in a child’s life, the one they always remember, who had the greatest impact on them by including them and making them feel safe and valuable.
