Week 3: Everyone can do something
1. Introduction
Welcome to Week 3.
In classrooms all over the world educators face challenges as they work out how to teach to include every child. This week you will be focusing on this statement: Everyone can do something to support excluded children, even without specialist training.
Despite all the challenges of large classes and limited resources, many teachers keep finding new creative strategies to overcome these barriers and provide quality education, often with active teaching and learning.
“The question that needs to be addressed is not whether to include children, but how to do it effectively and in a timely fashion.
UNICEF (view source)
The ‘Wave model of intervention’ theory you met in Week 1 highlights the importance of all teachers taking responsibility for making all classrooms inclusive. You are here because you too want to take responsibility for supporting inclusive teaching.
This week builds on Weeks 1 and 2, where you learned about the big picture at global and national levels about why inclusion is an important policy and part of quality education. This week you are going to focus on the how by considering what happens in the inclusive classroom as part of quality education, for example how active teaching and learning and learner-centred attitudes can be put into practice.
This week you will:
- explore key active teaching and learning strategies teachers can and do use in the classroom
- identify some of the features of inclusive learning and teaching
- consider how to involve all learners
- relate these strategies to some of the inclusivity challenges highlighted in Week 1.