Throughout my fellowship, I have been focusing on creating science lessons for students with severe disabilities and deaf/blindness.I also planned to create inclusive lessons for our students to use within general education classes. Recently through conversations with my mentors, I got to thinking about how I am creating my lessons. My focus had been on how to create them so that my students could participate mainly in activities within our classroom. From information I learned at NCCAT, there is more of a focus on students working cooperatively within their own groups for learning science concepts. When I really got into the creation of my lessons, I realized that my lesson plans are multisensory and would be appropriate for students of all ability levels. Through the incorporation of technology, manipulative and communication adaptations, the activities would allow students of all ability levels to participate in group experiments at different levels within the lesson.  Although my lessons will be geared towards students with disabilities, each lesson will have a component that will show how lessons could be used in the inclusive setting. The basic ideas and adaptations of all the lessons will make them appropriate for any setting to meet the needs of all students while embedding science, math and literacy within the lessons.

Each year, I invite all of the classes in our elementary school to meet our children within our classroom. It is very helpful for the students to see how much our activities are like what they do in their classrooms…and how our children are so much like them…just with adaptations. When I think back to some of the group games we played at NCCAT, I remember noticing group dynamics. Some people were more outgoing or outspoken within the group than others. All of the Kenan Fellows are leaders but when some feel more comfortable within certain situations, they were more apt to speak up to be leaders during certain games. This concept demonstrates how all students need the opportunity to see what it feels like to be a leader. When our students with disabilities are in group situations with general education students, those students have opportunities to be leaders and assist our students. In creating these types of lessons, I hope they can be used to allow all students to feel like active learners in the activities.