WH AT WO R K S

FOR

ME

Joyce Anderson Downing, Dept. Editor

Collaborative Units for Addressing Multiple Grade Levels J E N N I F E R J. H U B E R

The Problem As a teacher of an elementary self-contained special education class, I have often found that there are few opportunities for students in my classroom to have access to their general education peers and curriculum. Although the school district mandates that these students be exposed to the skills and standards of their specific grade level (as per the No Child Left Behind Act, 2001), ensuring that this occurs in a class that includes multiple grade levels can be quite a challenge! I have often found myself trying valiantly, but often futilely, to cover more information (e.g., 1st–3rd grade language arts curriculum) in the same amount of time my general education colleagues spend with just one grade level. This was particularly difficult in my self-contained class for students with special needs, who were already struggling with grade-level curriculum. In addition to the issue of addressing multiple grade and skill levels in the same class, I was also stymied by the need to follow the strict pacing I NTERVENTION IN S CHOOL AND C LINIC

plan and scripted programs covered in the general education curriculum. This exacerbated the problem of covering a variety of grade-level skills. As an educator with a strong belief in inclusive education and a passion for collaboration, I realized quickly that in order to create situations that would prepare my students for successful opportunities in a typical classroom environment, I had to first be “on the same page” as my general education colleagues. Determined to ensure my students’ access to the general education curriculum in a way that was academically meeting their needs, as well as providing them with the social benefits often received from an inclusive environment (Jitendra, Edwards, Choutka, & Treadway, 2002), I set my sights on solving this conundrum.

The Solution After many attempts at individualizing and differentiating instruction for my diverse group during language arts, VOL . 40, N O. 5, M AY 2005 ( PP. 301–308) 301

I realized that I could incorporate various grade-level skills, stories, and lessons under one unifying theme. Our language arts curriculum is organized with three main components: (a) phonics and phonemic awareness, (b) reading comprehension skills and strategies, and (c) writing skills and practice. Each of these three areas is integrated into every story selection, and every story selection is related to a central theme. Once I identified a theme that would work for all three grade levels (e.g., friendship, animals, fables and folktales), I was able to attack the task of meeting students’ individual curricular needs while still creating a lesson that would be appropriate for all of the students. One of the first things I did was summarize the story to be read into three versions (A, B, and C). Although these corresponded to the various grades (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), I did not confine students based on their grade level but rather clustered them according to their ability level. Regardless of what version the student read, all students were able to participate in comprehension skills and strategies together and later discuss the plot, characters, and other details of the story in a whole class setting. During literature circles, I encouraged students to work on their comprehension skills at whatever level they were working. In addition, I found that if I modified the three levels of workbook pages, which corresponded with the given text, into one workbook page that met all the various skill components, I was then able to give all students the same modified page with which to work. First graders were expected to master the work in one section, while they were also exposed to the items typically reserved for second and third graders. I discovered in doing this that my second and third graders benefited greatly from the additional exposure and repetition provided by the lower-level material as well. I also thought that it was important to provide consistent and systematic phonics instruction to all of my students, thereby ensuring an important foundation for reading. Consequently, I used the first-grade phonics sequence in the curriculum for the whole class but supplemented more advanced words and included more advanced word skills, such as derivations and word parts, during our phonemic awareness, blending, word building, and dictation exercises for the students with more proficient skills. Once I had a strong grasp of how to accommodate my diverse group of learners, I realized I was ready to seek out opportunities to collaborate with a general education colleague. I decided to approach a second-grade teacher who was not only a colleague but also a friend. Much of the literature I had reviewed on collaboration and coteaching emphasized the importance of parity and voluntariness (Friend & Cook, 2003; Murawski, in press), so I knew I should start with someone with whom I already had an established relationship. I also knew that my first and third graders would be able to socialize well with second graders. 302 I NTERVENTION IN S CHOOL AND C LINIC

Ms. M was nervous when I approached her, having never before collaborated in this way. In an effort to assuage her fears, I shared with her my successes in already modifying and accommodating for my diverse group of learners. The examples I showed Ms. M demonstrated to her my ability to modify and accommodate when working with her as well. The most convincing aspect of my plan, however, was when I described my thoughts and rationale for doing a collaborative unit. Recognizing that our collaboration would be preplanned and limited in scope to a 3-week unit helped my colleague feel more secure about our prospective endeavor. Murawski (in press) suggested taking “baby steps” when co-teaching to ensure both parties feel comfortable with the new relationship. Ms. M also recognized the unique benefits, to both her and her students, that could be achieved only through such a collaborative effort. The use of a unifying theme for the unit was also well received, and we immediately began to brainstorm all of the exciting activities and lessons we could co-teach our combined classes.

Co-Teaching a Collaborative Unit Co-Planning Before we began planning our actual unit, Ms. M and I met for a movie just to have some fun. Although we were friendly previously, we didn’t know each other well, and it was fun to spend non-school time together. On the way home, we began talking about our students and our classes. We thought it would be helpful to observe one another teach and worked on our schedule to accommodate that desire. One day when Ms. M’s class went to the library, a community volunteer and the librarian monitored her class while she observed me teaching mine. This worked well, and the following week I observed her teaching during my class library time. Having previously attended a workshop on coteaching, I learned of the necessity for teachers interested in co-teaching to identify one another’s frame of reference and expectations. Murawski (2003) developed the S.H.A.R.E. worksheet to provide a forum for new coteachers to proactively discuss these perspectives. One example of how using the S.H.A.R.E. form helped us was when Ms. M and I found that our expectations were very different when it came to homework. I anticipated assigning homework daily in language arts, while she typically assigned language arts homework only 2 days per week. This was an easy area upon which to compromise, and by facing it during the planning stage rather than in front of our students, we prevented power struggles and harsh feelings. This is just one example of how important it was to proactively plan specific details ahead of time so that we were prepared later. It also helped us to know each other’s hopes and wishes for the experience because

then we were better able to work toward those goals specifically by identifying them so early. Finally, we used this time to schedule regular planning sessions throughout the 3-week unit to prepare, modify, and debrief. We planned our schedule together so that the unit would include 3 weeks of activities during our language arts time block. Because our typical schedules include 3 hours daily for language arts instruction, we decided that we would use the first 2 hours for our collaborative unit but return to our own classrooms for the last hour each day in order to address independent work time and small-group instruction. We worked out scheduling conflicts such as recess time differences, computer lab, and library time (Murawski & Dieker, 2004). It was easier to find creative schedule solutions to these problems because we were planning early and had time to work it out. One of the greatest benefits to our extensive coplanning was that we learned more about one another in ways that helped our students. Watching each other teach helped us to recognize our different teaching styles, but more important, we learned about each other’s areas of strengths and weaknesses. This was particularly helpful to me when I discovered that though I was dismal at art, Ms. M loved art! We also discovered that both of us are very interpersonal and learn well through social interactions. Keeping this in mind, we prepared specific “down” time for students to reflect and have the quiet time that we otherwise may have overlooked. Finally, during our co-planning sessions we planned our specific lessons, materials we would need, modifications and accommodations we would make for individual students, and opportunities for assessment. We ensured that the skills and standards for the grade level were being met. An exemplar of our unit plan overview is provided in Table 1. A final note on our planning is that we carefully stayed within established time limits. If we planned to spend an hour planning, that is the amount of time we spent. This helped us ensure that we were not taking too much extra time that we did not have. Co-Teaching Lessons In our planning we included stories from Grades 1, 2, and 3 so that all students were exposed to the curriculum of their own grade level. We used the first-grade series big book Animals. Major concepts from this unit included an introduction to hermit crabs, spiders, baby animals, and the foods animals eat. From the second-grade anthology we used the stories in the third unit, Look Again, in which the major focus was animal camouflage. The third-grade unit was on City Wildlife; this provided us with the broad, unifying theme we needed to pull all three grades together. Unit Openers. To ensure that all of our students had the same background information and to tap into their prior

experiences, we focused the beginning of our unit on visual and tactile experiences. Much as we had when we coplanned, Ms. M and I wrote a graphic organizer of the entire unit with the students. We included learning objectives clearly for students to see. We then asked them to help us write on the organizer what they already knew about animals, what they would like to learn, which activities they hoped to participate in, and what their ideas were for some of the objectives we shared, thus creating a KWL chart. We also introduced real representations of the animals and concepts for students, including a pet hermit crab and spider. Using these classroom pets allowed us to integrate science and responsibility to animals. In addition, it made the information we were reading about the animals more authentic to students. We also used this time to show a PowerPoint® slide presentation we prepared that showed a picture and goal sentence for each major concept we were teaching. Instructing the students in the use of PowerPoint was a skill we carried throughout the unit. In cooperative groups, students created their own PowerPoint slide show that included a picture and one-sentence summaries of the main idea of each selection we read. The ability to identify main ideas and details was an Individualized Education Program (IEP) goal for many of my second and third graders and also a skill standard for the second-grade curriculum. Core Lessons of the Unit. One of the most central learning objectives in the language arts curriculum series was for students to differentiate between expository and narrative genres. After reading and working on comprehension skills and strategies for two expository and two narrative selections, we completed a Venn Diagram. We found a graphic organizer used to compare similarities and differences, such as the Venn Diagram, to be an excellent way to visually compare the strong genres. We asked our students to begin researching an animal in their animal group (composed of a heterogeneous, randomly selected group of five students). They assigned roles to each group member (leader, recorder, time manager, editor, and materials specialist) and researched their animal using online and classroom materials. They then wrote a simple report together (see Figure 1) and made a model of the animal in its environment, which was displayed in a shoebox. In each aspect of this project, students with and without identified disabilities were actively engaged. After having students write their expository report, Ms. M and I introduced the narrative writing assignment. First, we asked students to bring a stuffed animal from home to share. We used the parallel teaching approach to co-teaching (Friend & Cook, 2003) to instruct students in heterogeneous small groups on how to write an invitation (one of the second-grade skills in the curriculum); following that direct instruction, we used guided practice to have students write an invitation to their stuffed aniVOL . 40, N O. 5, M AY 2005 303

Table 1. Overview of 3-Week Unit Week First

Monday

Third

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Introductions to Unit

Expository genre

Expository genre

Expository genre

Expository genre

• PowerPoint presentation • KWL chart

Read Baby Animals • Comprehension skills • Asking questions • Compare and contrast

Read Munch Crunch • Comprehension skills • Clarifying • Summarizing

Read Hermit Crab • Comprehension skills • Drawing conclusions • Main idea

Read Spiders • Comprehension skills • Clarify • Supporting main idea with details

Form animal groups

Second

Tuesday

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

• Synonyms • Capitalization of proper nouns

• Verbs • Position words

• Opposites • Adjectives

Introducing Venn Diagrams

Expository genre

Expository genre

Expository genre

Expository genre

Expository genre

Read City Critters

Read City Lots

• Comprehension skills • Draw conclusions • Summarizing

• Comprehension skills • Main idea/details • Visualization

Read City Superheroes • Comprehension skills • Main idea/details • Summarizing

Read Animal Camouflage • Comprehension skills • Making connections • Asking questions

Read What Color is Camouflage? • Comprehension skills • Clarify • Cause and effect

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

• Plurals

• Pronouns • Power paragraphs

• Abbreviations • Power paragraphs

• Types of sentences • Captions and headings

• Phonograms • Adverbs

Making a wildlife mural

Begin animal reports

Continue animal reports

Animal reports

Make shoebox diorama to go with animal report

Narrative genre

Narrative genre

Narrative genre

Comparing fiction versus nonfiction

CAMPOUT!!!!

Read How the Guinea Fowl Got Her Spots

Read Sunflowers for Tina

Read All Eyes on the Pond

Songs, stories, snacks, and more!

• Comprehension skills • Predicting • Classifying in categories

• Comprehension skills • Fact/opinion • Author’s purpose

• Comprehension skills • Visualizing • Clarifying

Read How to Hide a Crocodile and Crafty Chameleon • Compare and contrast

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

Skill lessons

Unit review

• Possessives • Figurative language

• Dialogue • Compound words

• Writing with suspense and surprise • Common or proper nouns

PowerPoint presentations

Write invitations to stuffed animals

Stuffed animal sleepover

mal for a sleepover at school. Ms. M and I provided a variety of forms to help students write their invitation. Some students wrote on a blank page, other students filled in the blanks using the Cloze procedure, and still others used a graphic organizer model. The next day they brought their animals to school and left them overnight. My colleague and I positioned the animals in the classroom in such a way as to show that the animals had a wild party during the sleepover. In the morning, when the students and teachers walked into the sleepover classroom together, we were “shocked” at the fun the animals had, and students wrote a narrative from the animals’ perspec304 I NTERVENTION IN S CHOOL AND C LINIC

Write s’mores recipe

tive of the sleepover. This was also an opportunity to practice point of view, one of the third-grade skill standards. Culminating Experiences. To celebrate our successful and fun collaborative unit, we planned an in-school campout. Most of our students came from the inner city and had not had an opportunity to experience camping in the woods with the animals about which we were learning. We decided it would be fun to create this type of environment in our classroom. I brought a huge tent and set it up in the classroom, moving desks and chairs to the outskirts of the classroom. Ms. M used her expertise in

Name of animal: ____________________________________________ What does it look like? (size, color, features) ______________________________________________________________

Lesson Objective: Students will be able to write a recipe, including ingredients and step-by-step directions and will be able to follow those directions, to make their own product.

Where does it live? (jungle, desert, ocean, house, farm)

Standard:

______________________________________________________________

California English Language Arts Standard, Reading Comprehension 2.7. Follow simple multiple-step written instructions

______________________________________________________________ What does it eat? (worms, grass, meat) ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

Anticipatory Set: Teachers will describe how students will create their own snacks and will be able to eat them during campout. This will create intrinsic motivation for the lesson.

What are its babies? (cubs, foals, calves) ______________________________________________________________

Direct Instruction:

Interesting things about the animal:

Teachers will describe the components of a typical recipe. Teachers will instruct students in the importance of proper sequencing and point out silly mistakes that could happen if the steps were out of sequence. Teachers will also discuss units of measurement and show students how to list ingredients and materials they will need. Teachers will also remind students of expository writing tips, such as using simple sentences to explain how to make the snack.

______________________________________________________________

Modeling:

______________________________________________________________

Teachers will show various sample recipes to students. Teachers will use an overhead to model completion of the recipe by writing their own recipes for a different but similar snack using a “think aloud” procedure.

______________________________________________________________ How does it protect itself? (sharp teeth, hiding, color) ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

Draw a picture plan for your shoebox diorama:

Guided Practice & Checking for Understanding:

Figure 1. Animal report.

At various points throughout the lesson, the teachers will take turns pulling smaller groups of students aside to work with greater intensity using alternative teaching. These smaller groups will work on editing and proofreading skills. Students will peer-review the recipes of one another with teacher guidance, and the teachers will recommend suggestions for improvement.

Independent Practice:

art to create a model campfire inside the tent with red cellophane paper and large sticks from outside. Before the day of our big campout, we asked students to write a recipe for the snacks we would eat during the campout. Students wrote about making s’mores (snacks of graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows) and during the campout had to follow their own recipe exactly as they had written it. When they were done, they were allowed to eat their snacks; it was interesting to watch their surprise when it did not result in the exact s’more they had planned! For example, one student forgot to write about breaking the chocolate into smaller pieces before including it in the s’more, so she was unable to fit it into her mouth when she tried to eat it. Another student did not remember to include napkins and was very messy by the time he was done! An outline of this lesson plan appears in Figure 2.

Students will write their recipe for a s’more independently during writer’s workshop.

Assessment: Prior to the assignment, teachers will create a criteria chart with the students to illustrate the expectations and objectives for this assignment. They will create a checklist to which the students and teachers may refer during scoring. The ultimate assessment is the final product the students create to eat, based on their own recipes and directions.

Modifications/Accommodations: Teachers will display a word bank for students who need help with writing and spelling. Other modifications include allowing some students to cut and paste, some to use graphic organizers, and some to dictate responses or use assistive technology. One student has a one-on-one paraprofessional to assist with fine motor and communication skills. Figure 2. S’mores lesson plan—Day 18.

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I know my score! My name is ________________________________________________ I think my score will be

____________________________________

____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ The reason I think this is ____________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Next time I will

____________________________________________

____________________________________________________________ I am proud that

____________________________________________

____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Figure 3. Self-assessment.

Write your word:

On the final day of the unit, both classes spent the whole day inside the tent, reading, singing campfire songs, and telling stories around the campfire. Because one of the stories we read was a folktale about how a bird got spots on her feathers, we told stories aloud with similar ideas, such as how the stars got so high in the sky or how the first person learned to make fire. This would later segue into our next unit on fables and folktales. After making the snacks, we went on imaginary hikes and shared what we saw. In our imagination, we looked for wild animals that we had never seen before in our city and told one another what they looked like, how they smelled and sounded, and what they were doing. Finally, we shared “warm fuzzies” around our campfire circle inside our tent, telling each other what we learned through our time spent together. As the students dictated their kind comments, Ms. M and I wrote them down and assembled a book for each child about their strengths.

Draw a picture of your word:

What did you learn about your word?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Words to use: Choose five words related to our unit and complete the chart. Camouflage

Expository

Narrative

Blend

Habitat

Predator

Prey

Cubs

Hatches

Accommodations and Modifications for Specific Learners: • John will choose 3 words instead of 5. • Tamiko will cut and paste pictures rather than drawing. • Biranne will dictate answers to a peer or to her one-on-one assistant. • Sandra will select from given answers, rather than finding own responses.

Figure 4. Sample homework sheet.

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What Works, in a Nutshell • Trust your colleagues and relinquish control. • Communicate in writing. • Share creative ideas and materials. • Allow for flexibility in scheduling and pooling resources. • Create agendas and try to stick to them. • Plan specifically, not in generalities. • Choose your collaborative partners . . . don’t wait to be assigned one. • Learn and practice effective communication skills. • Create workable and consistent schedules. • Use the expertise of your colleagues, and offer your own areas of strength. • Get to know each other well. (When I called my co-teacher to plan yet again, her husband answered and said, “It’s your wife on the phone again!”) • Consider the needs, strengths, and personalities of your students. • Outline clear goals . . . what is to be gained from the experience? • Make it fun! Use humor and energy throughout to keep it that way.

Assessment For each assignment my general education colleague, students, and I wrote a list of elements that should be included so that students understood the expectations very clearly (Resnick, 1999). As a result, all students—special and general education alike—were able to score their own work through the use of a rubric. Students were able to understand skills and standards for which they were accountable. Later, when they received their scores, they showed a better understanding of why we as the teachers assigned the scores we did and how they could improve their work in the future. Figure 3 provides an example of the self-assessment report form used. We gave homework that was generally accessible to all of our learners but provided modifications as needed for individual students (see Figure 4). In addition, as we progressed through the unit, Ms. M and I worked together on individual grades. Our primary means of doing this was through the collection of observational notes and anecdotal records. Each of us kept a file folder with squares labeled for each student in the class (both of us maintained records for all of the students). We used Post-it notes in each square to record our observations of students throughout the lessons.

When we compared notes later, we were able to see if students were meeting the objectives and if there were students we were not focusing on enough. For any formal assessments, such as comprehension and writing assessments conducted after each selection, all students were accountable for the information; however, I provided accommodations, such as reading the test aloud or allowing students to dictate their answers into a tape recorder, for those who needed them. We also took turns reading with students daily in a decodable book and recorded their fluency rates on a daily graph. This process was so much easier to conduct with another teacher to help! For skill evaluations, we kept a portfolio of student work samples throughout the unit and at the end of the 3 weeks, we reviewed each student’s portfolio together.

Conclusion This project has taught me an important lesson that Dr. Marilyn Friend points out: Effective collaboration is a learned skill that requires practice and preparation (Friend, 2000). Despite the intricacies of collaboration and the fact that it is more difficult at times than one might assume, I discovered through the literature and my experiences that there are things I can do to ensure positive experiences that lead me to want to collaborate more in the future (see the sidebar: What Works, in a Nutshell). In particular, as my school district has adopted more structured curriculum programs and stricter pacing plans, collaboration has been invaluable. Through these types of collaborative experiences I find myself using time in more creative ways. Co-teaching collaborative units has enabled my colleagues and me to pool our resources, time, and personnel in ways that we could not if we were working independently. Within the bounds of a strict structure and fast pacing plan, these projects are not only fun for students but are also a way for all students to access the general education curriculum and for students with special needs to be integrated with their nondisabled peers for a mutually beneficial experience.

Persons interested in submitting material for What Works for Me should contact Joyce Anderson Downing, Central Missouri State University, 4132 Lovinger, Warrensburg, MO 64093.

ABOUT

THE

AUTHOR

Jennifer J. Huber, BA, is currently a special education teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, California. While teaching general education elementary students for 12 years, she found she had a special interest in teaching students with mild to moderate disabilities and has been teaching in a selfVOL . 40, N O. 5, M AY 2005 307

contained classroom for students with various eligibilities for the past 3 years. Her specific interests lie in the areas of the academic instruction and classroom management of students with specific learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral disorders, providing mentoring and professional development for new teachers, and finding ways to increase the collaborative and inclusive activities at her school. She is currently in the masters of special education program at California State University, Northridge. Address: Jennifer J. Huber, 7529 Vassar Avenue #101, Canoga Park, CA 91303; e-mail: [email protected]

REFERENCES Friend, M. (2000). Myths and misunderstandings about professional collaboration. Remedial and Special Education, 21(3), 130–132. Friend, M., & Cook, L. (2003). Interactions: Collaboration skills for school professionals (4th ed.). New York: Allyn & Bacon. Jitendra, A. K., Edwards, L. L., Choutka, C. M., & Treadway, P. S. (2002). A collaborative approach to planning in the content areas for students with learning disabilities: Accessing the general curriculum. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 17(4), 252–267. Murawski, W. W. (2003). Co-teaching in the inclusive classroom: Working together to help all your students find success. Bellevue, WA: Bureau of Education and Research. Murawski, W. W. (2005). Addressing diverse needs through co-teaching: Take baby steps! Kappa Delta Pi Record, 41(2), 77–82. Murawski, W. W., & Dieker, L. A. (2004). Tips and strategies for coteaching at the secondary level. Teaching Exceptional Children, 36(5), 52–58. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, 20 U.S.C. 70 § 6301 et seq. (2002). Resnick, L. B. (1999). From aptitude to effort: A new foundation for our schools. American Educator, 23(1), 14–17.

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