Amazing Video of a Teacher Teaching Reading Through Guided Groups and Differentiated Instruction

This is a video of a talented 5th grade teacher. I love how she refers to her students as "scholars". While focusing on individualizing instruction, she meets the needs of all of her students. All teachers could benefit from viewing this video!

Guided Reading Video Clip

A Wonderful Day of Differentiated Assignments with Polk County K-5 Teachers!

Thanks to all of the enthusiastic, eager learners at the LFS: Differentiated Learning at Jim Miles Professional Development Center on February 28! It is such a delight when participants are engaged in their learning! With over 24 differentiated strategies modeled and explored, teachers also learned the rationale for differentiating, how to tier assignments, create the menu and combination strategies, create differentiated assessments, and how to manage differentiated assignments. We look forward to seeing the follow-up examples that teachers create to use in their classrooms!


What is Differentiation Video Clip

A Great Two Days Learning About Differentiated Instruction!

We thank the enthusiastic teachers who attended two days of Differentiated Instruction (DI)! Teachers learned the value of creating a positive learning environments where teachers design respectful tasks based on student need. Teachers also learned how to utilize ongoing assessment and adjustment, flexible grouping, and student learning profiles to differentiate content, products, and the delivery process.


Another opportunity to deepen understanding of DI is coming up in January.  Differentiated Instruction Part 2: Assessment and Grading will be offered online January 12-March 1.


We look forward to meeting our online participants!


Maggie and Bonnie

Day Two of Collaborative Planning and Teaching

We had an amazing time with elementary and secondary Collaborative Planning and Teaching! Day two included many teaching strategies and modeling of parallel teaching and station teaching. Teachers reflected on their planning and defined roles in order to meet the needs of all of their students. We look forward to offering Collaborative Planning and Teaching in the spring!

Maggie and Bonnie

Thank You, Chain of Lakes Elementary!

It was a pleasure spending the day with Chain of Lakes Elementary teachers! What a positive and energetic group of teachers! In PLCs, we investigated Differentiated Instruction principles and tools. Teachers received Linda Tilton's book, The Teacher's Toolbox for Differentiating Instruction, which includes 700 DI strategies! Teachers walked away with four ready to use DI tools. Look under Electronic Resources for blackline masters of some of the tools. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Duncan, Mrs. McCollum, and the dynamic teachers at Chain of Lakes Elementary for all you are doing to meet the needs of ALL students!

Collaborative Planning and Teaching

We have completed elementary and secondary day 1 of collaborative planning and teaching. Teachers from across the district learned how general education teachers and ESE teachers can work together in order to meet the needs of ALL learners. In order to be the most effective team, teachers must learn how they work together. Participants identified their working style and learned about their collaborative partner's working style as they prepared a foundation for working together-an eye-opening experience for all! Participants developed an in-depth understanding of co-teaching and support facilitation, which are both in-class supports for students with disabilities being served in the general education classroom.
Participants discovered the strengths they bring to the collaborative classrooms, defined their roles, and began to look closely at ways they can co-deliver instruction in any content area.


We look forward to day 2 with elementary and secondary teachers as we will unravel more strategies to plan and co-deliver instruction in order to meet the needs of ALL students!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Florida Inclusion Network of Polk County blog! Your FIN facilitators are Maggie Miller and Bonnie Dupuis. We are very excited to offer our blog as a way to share resources and ideas to facilitate quality inclusive practices for Polk County. The blog will also be used as a vehicle for follow-up to the professional learning opportunities FIN will be offerening in the 2011-2012 school year.

We look forward to this new year!

Maggie and Bonnie