What is Inclusion really?

A question repeats in my mind often and that is ‘what is inclusion?’ Although I have read many responses, I like the reply given by Giardina (2019, para 2), “Simply stated, inclusion is about ALL students belonging. Decisions are made on the basis of student needs and not on labels and places”.

A standard way of creating an inclusive class is to ensure that “A variety of instructional strategies, materials, technology, and groupings are being used”, (Giardina, 2019, para 10). My favourite is to use flexible grouping as “Today, teachers are discovering that grouping and regrouping students in a variety of ways throughout the school day actually makes their job easier, and makes their students more productive”, (Cox, 2015, para. 3).

The level that I teach is middle school or the group of adolescents. This is a transitory age as they move from childhood to adulthood. Adolescents have “a Preference for being with peers” which has an evolutionary advantage of helping create “affiliations with the people they will be spending most of their time with in adulthood”, (Armstrong, 2016, p.19)

Further, “Adolescents are more likely to take risks if they believe that their peers are observing them”, ((Armstrong, 2016, p.21). This makes flexible grouping very essential and rewarding for this age group.

For me, any class also needs to be integrated with development of life skills. “When students work in a variety of groups, they learn to work independently and cooperatively with a variety of personalities”, (Cox, 2015, para. 7). These are important life skills.

Adolescents are emotionally volatile. As they move from childhood to adulthood, their brain is getting used to the change and learning to take charge. Grouping is “…a great way to meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of each student, and it allows the teacher to zero in on any specific needs of one student”, (Cox, 2015, para. 7). I find that most of the students can work very well in their groups while I can focus on individual students with difficulties.

Working in flexible groups requires a lot of clear planning and focus. The central question I ask myself is, “What is the best type of configuration to meet my learning outcome for this activity?” (Cox, 2015, para.7). I can choose between small groups, pairs, whole group and also bring in the variety through homogenous or heterogeneous groupings.

To illustrate grouping in middle school as I see best, I am taking examples of 1 activity each from 3 subjects, sports, maths and history. This is in order to cover sciences, humanities and physical education thereby have a wide spectrum. I have added a column to give my reasoning for the chosen activity for each subject.

Age Range: Middle

Sports: Watch video clip of a match.

Whole group: Watch the video of a cricket match that was well played.

Small groups : Analyze the skills of the players. Present their finding to the whole class. Sports is considered as a subject that is only about play. However, there is a lot of scope of developing critical thinking skills in sports too, which in turn would affect the game positively.

Mathematics: Learn a new concept

Whole group: I teach the class the full topic

Pair Work : “Think-pair-share (TPS)” (Williams, & Alsha'ar, 2020) to learn in pairs.

Work in pairs for problem solving. Whenever a new concept is introduced in a whole group setting, one is never sure if all the students have understood. Expecting the teacher to ensure the same might not be very practical. TPS helps in sharing the responsibility for learning among the students.

History: Visit a Historic monument.

Whole Group: Visit a historic monument as a whole group with a guide. Take notes individually.

Small groups: Work in small groups and share notes, research further and make a presentation about the monument. Sharing one’s perspective of a Historic monument with peers helps bring on a different dimension of the subject.

Conclusion

By using flexible grouping, I aim to achieve the “3 R’s” of effective inclusion–respect, relationships and responsibility”, (Giardina, 2019, para 10). All round respect, good relationships and shared responsibility to ensure content mastery for all the students in the class.