Learning for All: A Philosophy of Inclusion

by Marina Bresba

Making adaptations and modifications that allow all students to benefit the most from the learning environment is an integral part of teaching. I believe it important – and easier – to build the adaptations into the initial lesson plan from the very beginning. This holds true for most all classroom adaptations. One reason for this is the fact that many adaptations are suitable for all students. Using learning centres, offering hands-on activities, providing choices, addressing multiple intelligences, clearly stating goals, objective and instructions, using the whole-part-whole method, providing exemplars, starting off with a strong hook... All these techniques promote learning in all students, not just those with exceptionalities.

Another practical reason for considering adaptations at the moment of initial lesson planning is the fact that it is simply easier. The teacher plans the lesson once, rather than planning it and then re-planning it all over again for particular students. Considering adaptations from the very beginning also reinforces the idea that students with exceptionalities are students like all others, who must be considered from the start, rather than as an "afterthought."

Many classroom adaptations are techniques which need to become habits for the teacher. Ways of delivering instructions, using the whole-part-whole method, asking students to repeat back instructions, offering choices, etc – all these are basic ways of operating in the classroom which need not to be so much adaptations, but well-ingrained teaching habits.

By combining good teaching habits with lesson plans which consider the learning of all students from the very start, much of the work of creating classroom modifications and adaptations is both simplified and reinforced, and the classroom becomes a place of learning for all students.

A .pdf version of this is available here.

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