Resources for Inclusive Classrooms
I read There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar. This book highlighted a boy with behavior problems and possibly a learning disability. I intend to use this book and other literature like it because it did not specifically talk about disabilities. This can be used to strike up discussion about differences without using labels.
Developmental Disability in Children's Literature (CEC)
This is a great resource for teachers because it gives examples and explains how to find quality literature. It breaks down a book into small parts, explains what it is and how to find it in a book.
Simulation Games: An Approach to Learning
Author: Dennis M. Adams
This book helps to show people that do not have disabilities what it is like to have a disability. It helps to develop awareness, understanding, and empathy of what a life style is like of someone else.
Lessons for Inclusion by (Terri Vandercook, Rebecca Tetlie, Jo Montie, June Downing, Jackie Levin, Marti Glanville, Barbara Sloberg, Sherri Branham, Lina Ellson, and Donna McNear). Published by Insitiute on Community Integration.
-This book is great because it includes many lessons to help the students feel comfortable and accepted in their classroom. This book can be used in the beginning of the year to teach the students how to cooperate with other, especially in group work, or to teach them strategies to make friends. This book not only gives lessons on inclusion, but in the back, it shows examples of activity pages a teacher can use, or scenes they can act out to practice their strategies.
WALD Activity Program( Janet Sauer)
- This program is full of activities to help bring awareness of those who learn differently or need extra time and help in school. The activities present students with visual or hands on material to become aware of others who are different from us and the challenges those people may face and the success they feel when they reach their goals.
The book, Stimulation Games: an Approach to Learning, is helpful because it gives different ideas for students to learn. It takes a different approach to learning than the typical classroom does. Simulation games can be geared to the level of students so everyone can comprehend and everyone will be able to participate. The students can work together whether they have special needs or not. The students experience information rather than simply be taught the information. These games help a class to be a community so everyone feels comfortable working together.
The book, Secrets Aren’t Always for Keeps, by Barbara Aiello and Jeffrey Shulman, is about a girl named Jennifer who has a learning disability and is embarrassed to tell her pen pal, Kay. Jennifer avoids telling Kay about her disability because she fears rejection but when she does tell her, she instead finds acceptance. This book is helpful in teaching children about what learning disabilities are. There is information in the back of the book that answers typical questions that children might have after reading the book. This book would help younger children learn about acceptance of learning disabilities.
When reading chapter one a passage jumped out at me every time I read it. “Your evaluation of differences involves a comparison of what you see with your expected average, with yourself, with someone else. With another time or with an ideal.”
This jumped out at me because it explains how and why I react to others differences which leads me to how I can react in a positive and motivational way every time I evaluate differences.
I had never thought about how and why or even where I react to disabilities. I really thought these three things are important to understanding, realizing and comprehending how one reacts to disabilities and differences.
1.) How our brain functions.
2.) Learning more about disability differences.
3.) Seeking more contact with people who have disabilities.
In chapter 5 of Everybody’s Different we learned about People Who Look Different. The chapter was very informational about why some people look different. It brought up a good point that we could use with kids. It talked about how it feels when you look different, because we have all probably experienced it at least once in our life. We could use the fat that we all looked different with braces, glasses, moles, scars or birthmarks. Sometimes people ridicule others for these things because they look different. So we could ask the kids how it felt to be ridiculed when they had to look different temporarily. Then we would explain that we wouldn’t like to be picked on just because we look different.
Miller, Nancy B. & Sammons,
Catherine C. (1999). Everybody’s
Different.
Talking to Angels and Ian’s Walk are both excellent stories about Autism. Each of the stories tells a little about Autism without coming right out and saying Autism is… It shows that kids with Autism are fun and loved, but they also do things differently. In book books the kids heard things differently, it was almost as if they could hear what the rest of us couldn’t. It shoes that kids with Autism are fun loving kids; they just pay more attention to detail and what is going on around them, something everyone else could take the time to do.
Sources for Different Ability Awareness Project
- I loved this book from the moment I picked it up. It has great ideas, stories, songs, etc. that could be used to teach people about differences. One idea would be to put ideas on the bulletin board. A song could be used because kids love music. It would be a great way to get students involved and aware at the same time.
- This book is amazing!!!! It is about a crippled lamb that gets left behind, but his friend Abigail keeps telling him not to be sad because God has a special plan. This book would be wonderful to use with children in a Catholic school to show how God always has a special plan and just because you are different, doesn’t mean you aren’t worth anything; He always has a plan for us and each person is special.
Special Olympics Awareness Curriculum - I thought this resource was very useful. It has 4 different lessons, one of which uses success stories of special olympic athletes. I thought that lesson would show that all people can achieve goals if they set their mind to it. It was a fun set of curriculum, and I would love to use it in my classroom someday.
Lessons for Inclusion
-This book is great because it includes many lessons to help the students feel comfortable and accepted in their classroom. This book can be used in the beginning of the year to teach the students how to cooperate with other, especially in group work, or to teach them strategies to make friends. This book not only gives lessons on inclusion, but in the back, it shows examples of activity pages a teacher can use, or scenes they can act out to practice their strategies.
WALD Activity Program
- This program is full of activities to help bring awareness of those who learn differently or need extra time and help in school. The activities present students with visual or hands on material to become aware of others who are different from us and the challenges those people may face and the success they feel when they reach their goals.
http://agrability.sdstate.edu/BNG4H.html
http://resources.co.ba.md.us/Documents/Community/ada/disabilityawareactivities5.pdf
http://members.rogers.com/my-universe/awareness.htm
http://www.girlscoutsmilehi.org/pdf/pageinpage/handouts/games/DisabilityAwarenessActivities.pdf
http://library.thinkquest.org/5852/activitiesandsimulatons.htm
http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/special_ed/\
http://www.vsarts.org/x595.xml
Jennifer H. & Stephanie:
THe third resource does not have an author because it is your book and I could not find it on the internet. Could you bring it to class so that I can add it to the list like you requested?
I read There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar. This book highlighted a boy with behavior problems and possibly a learning disability. I intend to use this book and other literature like it because it did not specifically talk about disabilities. This can be sed to strike up discussion about differences without using labels.
Developmental Disability in Children's Literature (CEC)
This is a great resource for teachers because it gives examples and explains how to find quality literature. It breaks down a book into small parts, explains what it is and how to find it in a book.
Simulation Games: An Approach to Learning
This book helps toshow people that do not have disabilities what it is like to have a disability. It helps to develop awareness, understand
1.) Kids-on-the-block- www.kotb.com
While exploring this website I found that doing the kid-on-the-block in your classroom the students will enjoy the show and informs them about different abilities of students. They perform different characters with different disabilities. So, you can have your characters perform the parts of maybe some children in your classroom or school might have. This will show that they are the same as everyone else. They provide many different programs like ADHD, AIDS, Autism, Asthma, etc. I found this website interesting because the students would have fun watching it, but it is also educational for the students.
2.) http://www.ldonline.org/article.php?max=20&id=773&loc=11
These resources are different first person essays that describe their disability and how it effected their childhood in school. I think this would be good to have students read because it shows how they felt when other people made fun of them and how they had to make things up so their friends would not know that they went into the resource rooms.
3) Circle of Friends, written by Robert Perske
This is a book written about “down-to-earth”, large hearted adults and students who became good friends with people once thought too limited or strange for life in ordinary neighborhoods.” This book illustrates children and adults with disabilities and allows you to see through eyes of a person with a disability. I think this book could be useful because it would allow you to teach children, or adults the importance of understanding the people with disabilities are no different than the rest of us.
Archambault, John & Martin, Bill. (1987). Knots on a Counting
Rope.
His grandfather of a boy born blind tells a boy a story.
Levi-Hoffman, Levi. (1989). A Very Special Friend.
Frannie,
a lonely little girl, discovers a new friend when a deaf girl her age moves in
next door.
Holcomb,
Danny, who has cerebral palsy, visits the park with his mother and watches other children playing on a playground. He makes friends with a young girl after his mother explains cerebral palsy to her and points out that it is not contagious.
Schwier Melberg, Karen. (1992). Keith Edward’s Different Days. Impact Publishers.
Five-year-old Keith Edward, who takes a little longer to learn new things, has an interesting day as he meets a woman in a wheelchair and other people who are different from him in various ways.
Girl Scouts-Mile Hi Council. Celebrating
Diversity: Disability Awareness Activities. Retrieved on
The Book Chuck Close Up Close, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, is told in first person. In the first chapter, Chuck talks about how school is difficult for him. He says he eventually finds a way to study. If he fills up the bathtub to the top, turns off the bathroom lights, turns a flashlight directly on his book, and reads the text aloud five times he can usually memorize enough information to pass a test. Through the first chapter, Chuck talks about the many difficulties he has had while in elementary school, high school, and college. This book is a great first person story.
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