Lesson Planning for a Resilient Special Education Classroom
(whether in person, online, or asynchronous )
Featured guest blogger: Lisa Lawler, a Special Education Teacher and BCBA.
PLANNING AHEAD
So I don’t know about you but, each summer I set a goal for myself usually related to lesson planning. I knew this year needed to be different. So I found myself attempting to create Google Slides that could be used on the internet or printed so I could teach in person or remotely, for all of my students whether they had access to the internet or not. These included some Google Slides for my one:one live sessions. I had started to modify them to be self-guided, for individuals that I could not teach synchronously via Google Meets and/or when we are back in class and for novice staff to be able to assist the students without having to be too close.
INSPIRATION
“A flexible, resilient pedagogy finds the overlap between what’s sustainable for teachers and what’s best for kids.” – Truth For Teachers Podcast
At about the same time that I was trying to wrap my mind around how to teach with all of these new factors in play, I was lucky enough to hear a podcast on Truth for Teachers. The topic of the podcast was resilient pedagogy.
“Resilient pedagogy is a combination of course design principles and teaching strategies that are resistant to disruption and change as much as possible.”
As I listed I thought, yes that’s it!!! That’s what I am going to do. I am going to make my lesson planning resilient!
GETTING STARTED
WHO and HOW
First I needed to lay play of the who and the how.
WHO I differentiated the plans into three slides based on DLM (Dynamic Learning Maps) Precursor, near, at level.
HOW This is the resiliency piece. What mode would it be taught? No internet, some and full or in person. My answer is Google Slides. I never used them before this spring and now that is how I do all my lessons.
*I think it is important to note that resilient teaching may be best for teachers and best for students. It’s equitable for those that are in school and online and those that need to be on paper.
REIMAGING SYSTEMS
This means frameworks that can be used for many years to come. Structure and repetition are a way of life in our classroom, especially since I work with individuals with ASD. Teaching remotely has required me to increase my technology skills. Having these new skills helps me to access the resources I need. And even more important is that it allows me to provide high-quality instruction. There are so many resources out there. Aside for Google slides the ones that I use the most are Google Classroom, ReadWorks, Edpuzzle, Screencastify, and Boom cards)
For me Google Slides are the answer to HOW.
My biggest hurdle was determining how to create structured frameworks that can be reusable and not have to remake every slide each time.
LESSON PLANS/MATERIALS
I created a template for weekly assignments. Above you see the cover page for the take-home packets. All of my students receive this and the corresponding work for each subject. By the way, the color-coding was a system that I had already incorporated into my classroom.
You also see the first slide of the weekly assignments. This deck of Interactive Google Slides is submitted as my lesson plan, the weekly assignment in my google classroom, and for my live lessons. I allow students to select the order of the subjects. Within each subject, I have various links to targets and activities that I do throughout the week.
Individual programs (IEP goals and/or discrete trials)
Each student has a Google Slide deck of between four to ten programs. These are only used in live sessions. The student selects the program that they want to and I have linked their choice to the corresponding slide or website. After each session, these decks need to be adjusted according to each student’s performance.
IMPLEMENTING RESILIENT PLANS
This way of lesson planning is what I have been doing since that start of this school year. I am finding it to work well so far. Disclaimer my school is still completely virtual. So while I think this plan will become my resilient way of lesson planning for some time to come. I have not had the opportunity to try it in person yet, I hope my sharing with others will find this helpful.
