Creating Inclusive Classroom Community

One of the key components of creating inclusive lessons and including all students in instruction is to create a community that makes all students feel valued and capable. Below are a few ideas and resources to use to create communities that support learning in your classroom:

Establishing Ground Rules: 

Ground rules make students accountable and engaged in their own behavior. This exercise also establishes roles, boundaries, and expectations. Additionally, having students be a part of the process for creating round rules for their class invests them in the meaning behind the rules. Facilitating a discussion, but making sure that you as the educator know what it is you are not willing to negotiate is important. This process also helps to foster community - balancing the educational needs of the individual with that of the group.

Here is one guideline for creating a classroom contract.

Engage flexible group collaboration:

Getting students to work together in flexible ways allows them to find each others strengths. Benefits of collaboration are beyond just having more brains that think differently to accomplish a task. Collaboration at its core allows students to get to know each other, and encouraging respect and understanding.

Here is an article on flexible grouping that highlights it's strengths.

Highlight students strengths and support their weaknesses:

It is important in the classroom to find ways to let students show of what they are best at. This helps them feel valued, and for others to see their strengths. Additionally, it is crucial that students feel the classroom is a safe space for them to work on their weaknesses. As teachers we can find ways to support these weaknesses and potentially make progress on them.

Here is a list of strategies that help all students show off their strengths.

Connect with Students:

Get to know your students and what gets them excited about learning. The more you know about their learning styles, the personalities and the way that process information the more you can tailor your lessons to make sure they meet each and every student's needs.

Why connecting with students is important

Connect with Families:

Find ways to make your student's family feel as though their voice is important in their child's learning. Keep them informed of what is happening in the classroom and potentially even find ways to bring them into the classroom. This is helpful for building trust between teachers and parents, and also for students to understand you are invested in them.


Provide Immediate Feedback with low-risk assessment:


Be self reflective: 

When you find that students are not experiencing success, first look at your own practice to determine if there is anything you can do better to help your students learn. Being self reflective can be difficult, but is an essential process for becoming a better, more inclusive teacher and reflecting that in both your lessons and your classroom.

UDL Lesson Guidelines

Inclusive Secondary Science Education Position Statement

 To overcome physical and educational barriers for all students in secondary science I believe the best practices for educators are to:

-Assume that all students are competent, capable of learning, and able to complete projects which challenge them

-Understand each student's educational needs, strengths and weaknesses and provide appropriate challenges that deepen individual engagement and understanding of material

-Ensure that assessments are not used to punish or minimize student achievement, and that they are used as a way to gauge learning to improve lesson planning and class structure in the future

-Incorporate literacy and mathematical tools into lessons in order to help students across subjects subjects and minimize the barriers students may have in these disciplines

-Promote an inclusive environment where every individual is an equally valued member of the learning community and feels safe to express ideas and ask questions

-Encourage peer collaboration through the use of project work, discussion, and exploration based inquiry

To accomplish these goals in the classroom I aim to:

-Provide many ways of learning material for all students that include textual, visual, kinesthetic, and exploratory learning while providing educational aids such as technology (assistive and otherwise)

-Make all classroom and out-of-class work accessible to all students by miming physical, auditory, or visual barriers

-Select curriculum that presents diverse people with a range of abilities that reflect classroom, as well as diversity outside of the classroom and role models for students

-Create meaningful connections to students and their families to promote trust, communication, and accomplish learning goals both inside the classroom and out

- Design and execute varied assessment tools with choices and accommodations so that all students can demonstrate their knowledge and communicate effectively what they know and are able to accomplish

-Provide students with relevant examples to real life science applications and careers