The Best Visual For The Characteristics Of An Inclusive Classroom

When reading this weeks text, I believe Carole Tomlinson (2014) gave me the best visual for the importance of an inclusive classroom. She wrote “Artful teaching is like a learning triangle. It is an equilateral triangle with the teacher, the kids, and the ‘stuff’ at each corner. If any one of these goes unattended and gets out of balance with the others, the artfulness is lost.” The words are really talking about our art for teaching, but I looked at this quote with a different view. I looked at this quote as the characteristics of an inclusive classroom. When one of these characteristics is unattended, then the classroom will be out of balance. The most important characteristics of an inclusive classroom is engaging the students. This means

A week before school started my kindergarten student moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic. He came to school on the first day only speaking 3 words in English. It was very hard for me to communicate with him, and I could see he was very frustrated because he could not communicate with me or other students in the class. I quickly used the technology that was in the classroom and communicated with him through google translate. I would type in English and translate my directions, questions, and conversation into spanish and the I-Pad would talk in Spanish.. He would then type in Spanish and the I-Pad would read it back to me in English. We communicated the first two or three weeks of school using the I-Pad. As the weeks went on he started picking up on English words for items in the classroom. My challenge came when I needed my student to start communicating with the technology. We had become so dependent on the translators, that the students wasn’t challenged to start communicating himself. With the help of the ELL teacher, we have successfully taught the student the skills he needs to start communicating in English. The positive part to this experience was that the student was not “behind” in the learning process. HE fit in well with the other students when learning the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make. I also teach the students the first 50 sight words that are needed when reading and writing. The student was very fortunate to come to school just in time to learn the basics that will help him be successful in school for years to