Sarah's story

Meeting individual student and class goals in an inclusive classroom

Introduction

Sarah's work with the class was based on an individual student goal and a class goal.

Individual student goal:   increasing interaction with peers
Class goal:                     valuing diversity

Sarah was keen for her Prep. class to make a positive start to their first year of formal schooling.

video clip 5 video clip 6	Sarah operates from a strong personal values base herself and therefore she was anxious that her students experienced the benefits of belonging to a cohesive group, while at the same time coming to appreciate individual differences
video clip 1	Sarah believes strongly in the power of observation. In her initial observations of her students as they settled into their class, she noticed that one of her students, Tom, a student with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) remained distant from his peers. This prompted Sarah to make further more detailed observations about the nature of any interactions between Tom and his classmates in the classroom and in the playground.
	As a thoughtful practitioner, Sarah also began doing some reading about the nature of Tom’s disability to help inform her practice. This reading particularly helped Sarah understand more about the nature of play and what to look for when observing play. She has provided a very useful annotated list of the reference texts [Word 28KB] she used as the basis of her work.
video clip 2	Sarah’s reading and observations caused her to reflect further on the lack of interactions between Tom and other students, particularly in the playground. On this basis, when reviewing his Individual Education Plan (IEP) she ensured that ‘Increased interaction with peers in class and playground’ became a key outcome. The attached IEP [Word 93KB] shows in detail how Sarah planned understandings and short term objectives around this key particular outcome and the detailed range of strategies she implemented to support Tom in meeting these. (The suggested activities and strategies pages are highly recommended for the wealth of workable, practical ideas they contain) With the other students in mind, as well as Tom, ‘How to facilitate better peer interactions for Tom’ became the focus of Sarah’s action research for the Inclusive Curriculum Project.

Successful outcomes

References and resources

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