Episode 60: Encouraging Thinkers in Your K-2 Inclusive Classroom

Transcript

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen. This podcast is brought to you by All In for Inclusive Education. On Today’s episode I welcome my guests Alaina Chip and Anna Maria Contella. Alaina and Anna Maria join me to discuss their presentation from the All In Winter Inclusion Conference titled “Encouraging Thinkers in Your Inclusive K-2 Classroom”.

Arthur: I would like to welcome everyone back to a new episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by all in for Inclusive education. I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and today I'm joined with my guest, Alaina and Anna Maria.

So thank you both for taking the time out to join me today for this conversation.

Alaina and Anna Maria: Hi.

Arthur: Yes. So you both presented recently at the All in Winter Inclusion Inclusion Conference. So can you share with us a little bit about yourself how you became an educator and specifically interested in topics related to inclusive education?

Alaina: Sure. So my name's Alaina Chip, and I've been teaching in public schools for, I’m finishing up my 28th year, so I first became a teacher. I taught history. I was a history major and was just a regular history teacher. And I had maybe five or six years of teaching and I thought I wanted to go back to school. And at that time, I kind of had students in my classroom that had IEPs, and I did not know what to do.

I really didn't have a lot of training. I didn't really know how to teach or how to reach certain students. And I felt like I'm going to go back to school to get my master's so that I can learn how to fix these kids. It was kind of like from this model of who I was back then. I kind of thought like, I need to know how to, like, fix it.

That was kind of like where my mindset was at that time, and I went to grad school. I did attend Teachers College at Columbia and got my master's, and that was what I would call like a real pivotal moment in my life.

Alaina: Like if I look back, that is one of those moments where I'm like, That changed really who I was at my core and how I thought about inclusivity.

And it really changed the way I kind of addressed everything. And when I left, I realized that what I really wanted to do was solely really work with and advocate for inclusive and more equity and education. And that was just that was sort of the beginning. And then from that point on, I then spent the rest of my career really working in inclusion, being a resource room teacher, I taught self self-contained students labeled self contained in that setting and environment everywhere from K to eight.

Then the past three years of being an instructional coach. Really working predominantly focusing on helping teachers and students in our public school system in Bellville.

AnnaMaria: name is AnnaMaria Contonella, and I started my teaching career as a math secondary teacher in high school mostly and then I became an instructional coach. And I think that even though I taught inclusion classes and you always think like I always thought I was including all students, but as you grow as an educator, I think that changes.

And also, I'm a mom of three kids and they're all different learners. They all have different ways of learning. And that also really impacted my drive to find out more about inclusive education. Also being out there as a coach the last eight or so years, I learned a lot from my colleagues in our coaching department and I learned a lot from the teachers that I worked alongside with and those students, students teach you a lot about what they need throughout our tenure as teachers.

AnnaMaria: So it just became something that I became more and more interested in. And also, I think that, you know, kids need this from us as educators. Our kids need this from us. Like to feel that they can learn in any manner, any way and feel comfortable and safe in that environment.

Arthur: Yes. I love what you said about learning from the students themselves and paying attention to the students themselves because they will, you know, definitely help in that way and show you what it is that you know, that they need so that is really important piece.

And the fact, I mean, teachers are, I think they have like one of the most important jobs in the world. So that the fact that you both have been educators for a long time like that, it’s really, really impressive. It's it's great. It's something you don't really hear too much anymore of teachers, you know, having being educators for that, long period of time.

Alaina: For sure.

Arthur: Right. That's really great to hear.

So my next question is, how would you each define inclusive education?

Alaina: Yeah. So I think that inclusive education is that the students can be in the same physical space but have many different learning goals. I think that that's a nice way of thinking about it. I know how I was the first few years of of teaching.

I kind of felt like, well, this kid has a different learning goal. So maybe that kid doesn't need to be in this room, this physical room. Right. And what I think has changed for myself and what I try to advocate for and to work with is just that idea that everyone can be in the same space,

We all can be here, and we all have different pathways to learning, different goals of learning different trajectories, and yet we can all be in the shared environment, physical space, and that's what kind of has to shift, and change. The environments, the parameters, the tools, not the the student, not the human.

AnnaMaria: Yeah. Yeah. And piggybacking on what she said, she said like the pathways so, that students have access I think to different manipulatives, different things in the classroom that they can just go. It would be just like our dream probably classroom.

Yeah. Cause like, just get up and go and grab lmath manipulatives or reading manipulatives that might help them with their tasks. That it's okay to do that, so students feel that it's okay to do that and learn that way. So I learned that. I learned the other way and it's okay.

And I think that's why it's important that it starts young so they feel that it's okay.

Arthur: Yes, everybody learns differently and every and whatever way that is, it's okay. And I like the student isn't who has to change. It's the way that the information is presented that has to change. I always think about myself, math was not one of my strong subjects in school, but if it was explained to me differently or if I saw something, then, automatically it clicked.

And then I like, Oh, wow, something that I didn't get for weeks automatically. It just made sense out of out of nowhere, it seemed. But just the way that it was presented differently to me helped help my brain make that connection and make it easy for me to understand. All of a sudden, after again, after not understanding it for weeks that the teacher was trying to.

Arthur: So the way the way that the information is presented is so important. And having educators that are willing to shift the way that they are used to doing things, you know, to help out the students in the classroom, that is that, that's so important making sure that everyone is included in the learning process.

So as I mentioned, you both were presenters at our recent winter inclusion conference and the topic of your presentation was encouraging thinkers in your inclusive K to two classroom, which is really great. And you mentioned it just a little bit ago, like educating and starting them early. And this is so important.

Arthur: So part of your presentation references research by Peter LiljedahlI think I pronounced it as close as I could.

Alaina: Yes, I think that's correct.

Arthur: Yes. So can you talk a little bit about Peter's research and the topics that his research focuses on?

Alaina: Yeah. So we we both read his book Building Thinking Classrooms, and we then went and saw him at a person and heard about a few conferences.

We were like fan girls when we went to see him, and that was exciting. And then we've also just read a few other things that he's written in that same sort of field of building thinking classrooms. And what he had done is to kind of research. I think he said he spent something like 15 years kind of researching bath classroom and what worked to engage students and what were some engagement sort of strategies.

And overall, what he found was that students, have vertical sort of up and down vertical whiteboards or nonpermanent writing surfaces that you would use like random grouping to have students work together and that they’re solving like a thinking task, sort of a puzzle, kind of thinking that like that that has maybe a low floor, but a high ceiling where you kind of present this here and every student can kind of engage in that sort of task together. And they're talking together about solving that problem.

A lot of his book goes into other sort of things, we’re going to call it like other practices. You know, maybe I think there's like 15 or 14 practices.

AnnaMaria: and he's tweaked them as time has gone on. He's very honest about this. Didn't work so well. Let's try this with things like notes and so forth. But maybe in the upper grades as well.

Alaina: We haven't used all of his practices. Like we kind of took what we thought would be most applicable and kind of tried them in our classrooms that we work with to see like, is this is this working? And what we found really was amazing. Like, I couldn't believe how effective it was, how engaging it was, how exciting the lessons turned in to how curious the students were.

Kids are not really excited about math, and certainly not excited about like page five in your book. Like, that is not a good spark of curiosity among six year olds. And so when we when we did try some of his practices, we just kind of believe it. And then we kind of went from there and then it kind of grew to other classrooms and other teachers and other students.

Alaina: And it's just been really exciting. Well, what we found I thought was really important was the randomized grouping. I think often times in a classroom you are quick to segregate kids and track them and level them and work with like just a certain group of students. And so even the young students, when you just every day have a new student that you're going to work with a new partner today and every day you have a new partner.

And that is just randomized, whether you're doing a deck of cards, whether you use an online in randomize or generator every day, you are kind of sending that message to your students that you believe that they all can learn this stuff and you it's okay. Whoever you got is going to be okay.

AnnaMaria: Yeah, and you're going to get a different person tomorrow.

So those were three of his things that we started with. And he did say he does say in his book to start with vertical whiteboards, randomized grouping.

Alaina: And it the share the marker benchmark, the 1 to 1 marker. They only have one marker. Yeah. So they have to talk.

Yeah. That was it was really exciting to kind of see that, and the students, if you have a group, even if you are randomizing that group, but you keep that random group for more than a few days, kids fall into like a hierarchy, like the job.

Yeah, yeah. And so they're like, I'm the leader, I'm always the reporter. And so of every day or every hour, you randomize it. There's no moment for that kid to be like, Well, I'm the leader and I'm always the leader. So it's kind of forcing students to take on roles that maybe they're not always super comfortable taking on, which is then leading to just more thinking and more growth.

Alaina: And so that was really exciting and that was one of the things that I think we've noticed the most in the classes and the vertical boards have been really kind of nice to have these boards that you can write on them, but unlike a desk where you write on having them up and down allows for there to be more mobility of knowledge in the classroom.

So typically you can't see what someone else is doing when it's flat, right? I'd have to get up and move to that spot. But if they're up and down, if they're vertical, even if they're vertical, but low or vertical on the table, but they're this way, you can scan around the room and see how other students are kind of solving that problem or that puzzle or that task.

AnnaMaria: Yeah. One of the things that we make that we get away from is like cheating. Some of the kids will think like at first of all, they're cheating, they're looking around. But then that's something that we talk to them about. But it's okay to look and see what other people are doing. Maybe you'll get an idea and that will start your thinking off and that's okay.

No, we don't want to copy exactly what somebody else is doing, but we want that. Maybe we could look at our other groups around the room and it might spark.

Alaina: and that we're a community. This isn't a competitive environment.

AnnaMaria: It's not.

Alaina: So we're a community. Let's all share and learn. And how did you solve that? And look, it's a little different than how this kids solved it.

And you share how you did it. And maybe that student might be struggling. You say go over to that group and see how they do, see how they're doing it. Go talk to them for a few minutes.

AnnaMaria: So it really it's really nice to see the students learning from each other and not just from the teacher as well.

I also think that some of the pairs in K to 2 to you only pair them up in groups of two and then upper levels. It's groups of three, but it's nice to see students that may not be friends or talk to each other normally to have a really nice conversation. And within that conversation, something sometimes other things come out and yeah, that maybe often.

But like somebody that likes baseball and somebody that plays the piano, they may bring their knowledge into a problem. And then there's like, Oh yeah, you know, he plays the piano really well or something, but it's not something that somebody would have ever said before because they don't know them well enough so that even at those young ages they have those conversations that just makes the students feel better about themselves even in different ways.

Alaina: It just changes the environment. It's another sort of teaching tool that can tweak the environment to make it more age appropriate and more inclusive so that students aren't sitting at their desk. They're six years old, they're all at a desk. They all have a workbook, they all have their pencil. Like this is just a different way of kind of it's just an engage as a tool, right?

Where kids are now, the room looks more age appropriate. This is what you should be doing at six. Talk to your friend, solve a puzzle. Look at how they're solving the puzzle. Just makes math a little bit more curious. Curiosity based.

Arthur: Yeah. I love the switching of the pair, switching them around because I was just thinking, what you said, That's a great way to get to know your classmate to, you know, you may sit on opposite sides of the room from each other and so you may not get to talk as much as you as you might like.

Having these groups together, as you said, you find out that this person plays an instrument or this person plays sports or likes a certain sport. It’s that's a really cool way of getting getting them to to get to know each other in a better, you know, in a more close way.

Alaina: Yeah. And I thought that each there's more goals than just the math goals, right.

So having students engaging in social conversations and talking and having to share a marker or take turns is something that they're they need to learn at that age.

Arthur: Yeah, as you said it, it helps communicate of, you know, who's using the marker and when the next person gets to use it. And yeah, it does definitely builds those skills that we're learning at that age, which is such a fun age.

It’s a really is it's a cool age. I have friends that have children that age and just getting to know them at that age, it's like it's really, really great. They have great conversations, to actually sit and talk with them.

Arthur: So we've talked about it a little bit, but can you go into a little bit more and talk about why you feel it is important to expose begin exposing students to inclusive settings in the K to two age range?

Alaina: Yeah, I mean, we all know it's best. That's said we don't always do what's best. You know, in school sometimes you know the way that school is structured and we might not be able to always do unfortunately like what we know is best for students and what is research supports. But that's the bottom line is including all students in those groups in school together, in the same physical space is what's best best for everyone.

Arthur: No, I was just going to say, I think it goes back to what we were just saying that at that age, like, you're learning so many different things and how to interact with each other and have conversations and who's going to be the leader of a certain task or something like that.

So to add that in to having students with disabilities in the same classroom, it just makes it makes it easier for children to understand at that age what it means. And and they find out that they have similarities and they like the same things. And it's just it's just it's really great to have children exposed to inclusive settings at such a young age because it makes it easier for them as they grow older and encounter more, people throughout their education and through their years in school.

Arthur: Yeah, for sure.

AnnaMaria: Yeah, I agree. And I think even at that young age, I was surprised being secondary level teacher going in when I started coaching and coaching at different grade levels when I went into first and second grade, kids are already saying like, Oh well, he's smart or she's smart. And that label, sometimes you didn't think like probably 20 years ago, I didn't think that that was a label that we shouldn't use but kids were using is that a label?

So that means that if he or she is smart, then I'm not. So they're already labeling themselves. So I think, you know, Peter’s book, even though it wasn't like a like the main component was how do we get these kids to enjoy math, to like math, to learn better?

But I think it's it is an inclusive way of teaching because it shows how students can learn differently and learn from each other. And learn in different ways.

Arthur: Yes, absolutely. That's it is. It's just it's so great. I always learn so much when I have these conversations and was just sharing with someone else yesterday when I was recording an episode, how, I always find like new resources for myself, so I can't wait to get into Peter's book myself when I want it. Definitely make sure I look into that and read and, you know, see the great things that he's talks about there.

Arthur: So continuing the conversation about your presentation, can you share one or two takeaways that those who attended your presentation, what they would have learned?

Alaina: Sure.

I think that one of the one takeaway, which we did share quite, quite a few resources with the participants was how important it is to build your community. And sometimes we think as educators there's a lot of pressure, you know, to get to certain standards or certain goals or to keep the peace up and that first I'm going to say like month the first like 30 days or so of school, you have to really invest that time to build a community in your classroom.

And whether that be changing, shifting their mindset, allowing your students to recognize that we all make mistakes, that we all are learning together, that we can persevere through things that we can learn from each other, that there's more than one way of doing a problem, that there's more than one way of solving that problem.

Alaina: These are all like really important kind of messages that you need to kind of set in your classroom right in the beginning and those routines and those structures about how do we get the the counters, if I need to use counters, how do I use the blocks in this classroom?

You know, do I have a toolbox? Does every student have a toolbox of math tools that they can use?

So those things are kind of established in those first like month of school where you really have to have to do that. And it's an investment where if you don't and you start right away, you're going to see that things kind of fall apart as the year moves on.

Whereas if you just invest that time in the beginning to create this community where we're all Math-ers, we're all we're all doing this together, we're going to be puzzle solvers. It goes a long way in your room. So that was definitely one, hopefully one takeaway that people left with.

AnnaMaria: And that has to happen because again, years ago people used to send like ten kids up to the board and write, math problems, ten math problems.

But that's not what we're doing here at all. That's not what's happening is building that community. It's like Elaine is fostering that perseverance. So not, you know, a lot, not letting students know that it's going to be hard at some point and not to give up. And you can rely on not only your partner but other people in the classroom, other people in your math community to help you.

So perseverance, as Alaina mentioned as well, was another thing that we had that we presented that we had in our presentation.

Alaina: You have to like, do math, right? Like, math is something you're doing, like you should have like tools to do it. And sometimes if you don't teach, especially at kindergarten, first and second grade, you have to explicitly teach your students how do we use these tools?

Like where are they in the room? How do I get them? How do I take care of them? Where do I put them when I'm done with them? And these are things that you have to explicitly like show and teach and remind. And because you don't want students to just be doing math with a workbook page all like they should be doing something with their hands, especially at that age, it's it's more appropriate for them.

Arthur: Yes. The building community is so important. It's again, especially at that age, it's so important. And as I mentioned, math not being my strongest point. I remember that sometimes it was the other students who helped me understand how to solve the issue, the problem. So it really does make a lot of sense that it's so important to say to build community, especially in the beginning of the school year too.

AnnaMaria: It's so nice that they teach each other. You know, like you said, you have your other students help help you. So like even something like, you know, three times for another student showing them like three dots and four dots and then, three rows of four and actually putting dots on the board. And that other student might just have needed that visual to make it make sense to him or her where like you see that you see that happening?

Arthur: Yeah, it does. It makes it makes such a big difference.

So my last question to wrap up our conversation is can you share a few of your go to resources on topics related to inclusion in the K to 2 classroom?

Alaina: So for math, there's a lot of educational consultants out there that I think have really wonderful ways of looking at math that are beyond sort of a textbook where everyone everyone's sitting in their seat and opening the page and I'm going to show you how to do it. And you do it one way, right? Like this is the way to solve that.

And that's kind of what you don't want to do, right? If you want your class to be more inclusive, you want everyone to have multiple ways of solving that problem, of doing the math, of thinking. Kids are really smart, and if you just let them figure it out, they come up with the coolest, best ways of of doing math.

And there are some some really cool places out there and some really experts that are out there for sure that you can kind of like use what they already made in your classroom to make your math class a little bit more curiosity based.

Alaina: So I would definitely recommend esti-mysteries steve wyborney. We’ve learned they're all free. He has a website and you can kind of do the esti-mysteries where the students are estimating how many things are in like a jar and they might be a bunch of like marbles and there some kind of fun things along that line.

Three Act math is another really great resource. I think Graham Fletcher does three act math and those are available as well and they're are like videos that you can kind of show students and it takes them through like some math, real world math, things that kind of happen in life and it'll show a video and then you kind of pause and you have a conversation in your classroom about;

what did you notice? Like, what did you wonder? What questions do you have about what you just saw? You know? And then the students are kind of looking at that video and maybe they have a whole bunch of questions because they always do their like five. And then you're like, Well, let's explore that question and let's find an answer to that question.

And now they're like, engage and they're into it. It's very curiosity driven. There's a lot of things with like number of pictures to where you can find like number of images.

AnnaMaria: Yeah, number number talks. Like would you rather But there's a site like would you rather just to have students have that conversation, this or that, Would you rather this or that or what do you notice? What do you wonder.

Alaina: I would say Dr. Nikki Newton is also a really great resource for things that are more hands on. You can just Google like Rec and Rex and you know like I would say using a rec and rec in your K, one, or two classroom is like, I'm a big rock and rec person.

So I would say to Google that and you could like find them online and ways that you can kind of use that math tool in your classroom to make your lessons a little more hands on for students.

AnnaMaria: So there's been books like number of talks, math workshops, multiple people wrote books called Math Workshop with a little bit of different titles.

Nikki Newton was one of them before Peter Liiljedal, you know, I mean, during probably his research, some of their research coincides as you read them. They have a lot of common threads in there to make math more interesting and exciting. John Sanjivani has a lot of stuff out there. productive struggle. He's one of those authors.

There's a lot of things out there. I think it's called table talk math, where it's just an idea as to how you can kind of use math around the table. Sometimes we like talk a lot to our own children, right, Or kids about language, right? We might watch a TV show, let's say, and you talk about who the characters are, how do they feel, and a lot of that is very ELA driven.

And we don't often talk about math with our kids. You know, even just how many places should we set the table today or, you know, let's look at the food, let's count, counting and cardinality is so important in in kindergarten, you know, And so all of those little things that you can kind of build into just conversations around numbers really does help students see that math is not a horrible thing.

Alaina: It can be fun, it is curiosity driven, it is solving puzzles like who does it love to do a puzzle? You know, like it's fun.

AnnaMaria: I remember when my kids were young and we would take to the supermarket and I had to have them read. But, you know, if you take them and you also say, like, how many bags of Doritos do you see or is there there how many, you know, how deep like how many do you think are on the shelf?

Alaina: Like are there 50? Is 50 too big of a number or 50 too small of a number for how many you think are in that? Is that a just right number. Like just to ask them these kind of questions in our regular lives really helps helps kids embrace the subject.

AnnaMaria: Or even playing games like board games where kids don't do as much as when I was a kid. That's all we had. You know, word games count backwards, but those are standards that are, you know, in those to grades like counting forwards, counting backwards, being able to do that, you know, kind of estimating ow many more spaces do I have to go before I win $200 or something where we're you know, they like a little bit of that now because they don't do it as much.

Arthur: So I had a I had a great flashback when you just mentioned the word games and I thought of the game, Chutes and Ladders, how Yeah, how you have to count. And then if you get to the ladder, yeah, it takes you up or down and.

Alaina: Yeah that's right. And that's a hundred frames. Yeah. Right. And so kids are learning in those tens without even realizing it, but kids don't play Chutes and Ladders anymore.

Arthur: Right. But as you said, it's all around us, and counting, you can make it the game at the grocery store or in your house at the dinner table, like everywhere. I thinking of washing dishes and putting away the spoons and things and, you know, the silverware, you know, just counting is all around.

It can be a lot of fun. You know, making it a game is always a good thing to do.

Arthur: Thank you both for this conversation. I really enjoyed it. And, you know, it's always nice to have conversations. And as I as you saw it, it me back to my time in school, which was so long ago.

But it's really great to hear of the work that you are doing and doing these presentations to educate others about how we can bring inclusion into the the primary education setting in the elementary schools from a to two and just now starting our children early and inclusion is so important. So thank you both for taking the time to talk with me today.

I really appreciate it.

Alaina and AnnaMaria: Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us.

Arthur: You’re Welcome.