Inclusive practice

Planning for all students needs to be the foundation rather than planning “for some” or “for one”. By focusing on what is to be learned by the community of learners in the classroom, the inclusive pedagogical approach aims to avoid the problem and stigma associated with marking some learners as different.

– Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011

Begin by knowing your learners

Learner profiles support you to:

• identify students strengths
• identify students' learning needs
• involve parents and whānau.

Learner profiles are designed to help you plan instructional activities and provide materials that will support your students to effectively access the classroom curriculum. Learner profiles can be created collaboratively with students and parents, and in any format, including:

• document with photos
• PowerPoint presentation
• video
• blog

Learner profiles

• Develop learner profiles with students
• Sample learner profile

Planning teaching and learning programmes

Identify what:

• students can do independently
• students can do with peer support
• digital technologies/tools will support learning.

Effective teachers use a range of assessment data to differentiate the curriculum as needed and engage learners in purposeful learning through a range of media and resources.

Dimension 2: Frameworks and evaluation indicators for ERO reviews

Consider how you can create learning opportunities that all students can participate in.

• Identify barriers to student learning.
• Extend what is ordinarily available for all learners, rather than using teaching and learning strategies that are suitable for most alongside something additional or different for some who experience difficulties.
• Focus on what is being taught and how you are teaching it rather than who is to learn it.
• Believe that all students will make progress, learn, and achieve.
• Focus teaching and learning on what students can do rather than what they can not do.
• Use a variety of grouping strategies to support everyone's learning rather than relying on ability grouping to separate "able" from "less able" students.
• Use formative assessement to support learning.
• Inquire into new ways of working to support the learning of all students.
• Work with other teachers and support staff to respect the dignity of students as full members of the classroom community.
• Commit to ongoing professional development as a way of developing more inclusive practices.
• Use strategies to focus on all learners, rather than most or some.

Teacher, Kate Friedwald explains how she uses a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach in her classroom at Wairakei School. Teaching is based on students' specific needs and learning activities are differentiated and personalised for each learner.

Your students will have a unique perspective on learning and teaching. Ask them the following questions and gather the information to find out what they think about inclusion. Use this to inform your approach to creating an inclusive classroom, where everyone belongs.

1. What does belonging mean in our class?
2. Does belonging matter to your learning?
3. How are the children similar to each other in our class and how are they different?
4. Does being similar or different matter to your learning?

Consider the environment

"The key challenge facing teachers who wish to become more inclusive in their classroom practices is how to respect as well as respond to human differences in ways that include learners in, rather than exclude them from, what is ordinarily available in the daily life of the classroom."

Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011

Classroom climate

• Create a comfortable and safe classroom community.
• Embed learning as a collective endeavour.
• Nuture mutually supportive relationships.
• Promote shared behaviours and values.Teaching/Inclusive-classrooms

Physical environment

• Consider how a solution for one student can be offered as an option for everyone.
• Provide timetables that students can see and access easily – these could be online and displayed.

Wairakei School teacher, Kate Friedwald explains how information and feedback presented visually and orally in her digital classroom are designed to meet the learning needs of Daniel, a student with ADHD. This way of setting up the classroom environment means Daniel can participate fully in the classroom programme and access information easily. The modifications made to include him support all students in the classroom.

Key resource

Developing an inclusive classroom culture

This guide for teachers provides strategies and suggestions for developing an inclusive classroom that:

• values the contributions of all students, their families/whānau, and communities
• recognises that every learner is unique and builds on their languages, cultures, and interests
• identifies and removes any barriers to achievement.

Consider how you can use digital technologies to:

• develop a more inclusive learning environment
• ensure all students have equitable access to the classroom curriculum
• meet the needs of diverse learners within the classroom learning environment

Use digital technologies to create multiple learning pathways

Having multiple learning pathways helps to foster motivation in students because their interests and strengths are used as a vehicle for exploring new concepts and reinforcing learning.

Tools you could use

• Text to speech tools – introduce students to alternative ways of accessing text if they have difficulty reading.
• Speech to text tools – dictation features allow students to talk into digital devices and have the text 'typed' as they speak.
• Story writing tools – such as Book Creator and Storybird removes the barriers created when writing by hand.
• Mindmaps to support planning – such as Popplet, Coggle, and MindMup can support students with organising their ideas. Students can use either images or text.

Felix is a Year 5 student with dyslexia at Wairakei School. He explains how he uses iPad apps like IWordQ to make the process of reading and writing easier.

Key resource

Technology tools for learning

Students and teachers can work together to find the most effective ways to integrate digital technologies into learning environments: removing barriers to learning, providing increased choices matched to student needs and interests, and expanding collaboration opportunities.

What is differentiation?

"Differentiations are changes to the content of the school and classroom curriculum and expected responses to it. These changes support students to experience success."

What is adaptation?

"Adaptations are changes to the school and classroom environment, teaching and learning materials, and associated teaching strategies. These changes support students to access and respond to the school and classroom environment."

Collaboration for success, 2011 p 12

Wairakei School teacher, Kate Friewald describes how she uses Google Docs to support differentiated learning in her classroom. She uses Google spreadsheets to create her weekly plan, maths plans, and literacy plans. She shares these with students based on a "must do/can do" process. Students are split into cooperative work groups, not necessarily structured on reading or maths ability. Each group member has a number of "must dos", to complete within the morning block, and some blank time to structure their own learning focused on their learning needs.

Within a flexible learning environment, where barriers to learning have been minimised and supports and options made available to all, there will still be a need to differentiate learning for particular students in specific contexts.

Consider how you could use digital technologies to answer some of these questions as you plan to meet the needs of your students:

• Would technologies help some/all students?
• Do some students need material presented differently?
• Should some students present their work differently?
• Will all students be assessed in the same way?
• Will some students need additional or different goals?

In deep expressions of practice, students' learning activities and the curriculum/knowledge content they engage with are shaped in ways that reflect the input and interests of students, as well as what teachers know to be important knowledge.

Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching – a New Zealand perspective

It is important not to confuse individualised and differentiated learning with personalised learning.

Personal learning or instruction is a method of teaching that tailors learning for each student's strengths and motivations, needs, and interests –including enabling student's voice and choice in what, how, when, and where they learn – to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards attainable.

Basye, 2014; Bray & McClaskey, 2014; iNACOL, 2016; Patrick, Kennedy, & Powell, 2013 in Ntuli, 2017

Personalising learning allows akonga/students to take control of their own learning. In a personalised learning environment, students can articulate the how, why and what of their learning. Student voice is expressed and encouraged, while learning goals – and the means of achieving those goals – are co-constructed by students and teachers.

When learning is personalised, students:

• understand how they learn
• own and drive their learning
• are co-designers of the curriculum and their learning environment.

At St Hilda's Collegiate, every Year 9 student is mentored with someone from the local community and they work throughout the year on their Passion project.

In a personalised learning environment, students can use digital tools and technologies to learn at their own pace. They can access and revisit content to support them with achieving their learning goals. They can be the experts, share their learning, and provide feedback to their peers. They can showcase their expertise to a selected audience using the digital tools that work best for their need. Students can work at their own pace according to intrinsic motivations, leading to higher engagement, and improved student outcomes.

Kate Friedwald, teacher at Wairakei School, describes how students in her classroom use iPads to engage in independent, self-directed learning.

Key resources

Making Learning Personal
This site is maintained by personalised learning specialist Kathleen MacClaskey.

Personalising learning: Principal's Perspective
Pat Heargreaves research project includes the views of principals in schools around New Zealand on personalising learning.

Plan learning that acknowledges who your students are and where they are from.

• Start with students' culturally-located needs and strengths.
• Create ongoing opportunities for students to share where they are from, what is important to them and why.

Susan Lee, Te Kura o Kutarere, shares how using Storybird , a free digital story writing tool, has made a significant impact on the literacy development of her students. She describes how students have become self motivated and proud of their work. Susan's planning is based on her learners. She designed the learning around who they are and where they are from, with literacy being grounded in local stories from Opotiki and the kura’s place-based curriculum. The student in the video clip makes these connections when he says, “It's about Māori people and dragons and stuff and yeah, it's Maui. He put on a meeting for all the people of Opotiki.”

This approach allows students to:

• bring their prior knowledge (ako)
• work reciprocally, learning by modelling, watching, and doing

The technology (Storybird on laptops) supports the local focus, the reciprocal nature of the activity, and the different strengths and needs of the students.

Teachers from Pegasus Bay School discuss how introducing waiata, students learning their pepeha and rakau games has created an inclusive environment where tikanga Māori is celebrated and valued.

By creating classrooms that encourage peer supports, we:

• capitalise on the knowledge and abilities of our students and their relationships
• take the pressure off of ourselves to have to do and know everything all of the time.

Consider the following:

• individual student learning strengths and needs
• develop and explain roles and expectations in peer partnerships
• teach basic strategies for supporting support the academic and/or social participation of peer partners
• provide means for ongoing feedback and assistance to peer partnerships
• shift teachers' aides to a broader support role in which they assist all students in the classroom.

Students at Houghton Valley School made a book using digital photos with simple captions to help prepare a student needing extra support for their first school camp experience.

Matt is a Year 13 student at Wairarapa College. In this video Matt, who has low vision, describes how, with technology and the help of friends, he accesses and participates in the curriculum alongside his peers.

Key resource

Supporting positive peer relationships in the classroom

This guide focuses on supporting relationships between students to develop their sense of belonging and wellbeing and to improve their learning outcomes. It outlines whole-class and small group strategies that support every student to build relationships and work successfully with others.

Shift the focus from those individuals who have been identified as having additional needs to the learning of all children in the classroom

• Create learning opportunities that are sufficiently made available for everyone, so that all students can participate in classroom life.
• Extend what is ordinarily available for all learners rather than using teaching strategies that are suitable for most alongside something additional or different for those who experience difficulties.
• Focus on what is being taught, and how, rather than who is to learn it.

Reject deterministic beliefs about ability as being fixed and the idea that the presence of some will hold back the progress of others

• Believe that all students will make progress, learn, and achieve.
• Focus teaching and learning on what students can do rather than what they can't.
• Use a variety of group strategies to support everyone's learning rather than relying on ability grouping rather than ability grouping to separate "able" and "less able".
• Use formative assessment to support learning.

See difficulties in learning as professional challenges for you, rather than deficits in the students

• Try out new ways of working to support the learning of all students.
• Work with experts and support staff, eg RTLB, teacher's aide to respect the dignity of all students.
• Seek ongoing professional learning to develop more inclusive practices.

Adapted from Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2010

Kate Friedwald teaches Years 5 and 6 at Wairakei School. In her classroom, groups are needs-based rather than ability-based. She and Daniel, a student with ADHD, talk about how this approach has helped him to be a successful learner. This type of grouping allows all students, Daniel included, to help each other. Daniel can use his skills with his app to help students that are even working a level above him in writing. Rather than always being in the bottom or top group, students work with others learning the same skill.