1. Innovation Showcase Amanda Rizer & Jodi Little Leveled Texts within a Class

2. What’s so innovative about…  Literature Circles?  They can be innovative for students who have never been exposed to collaborative learning.  I’ve been guilty of maintaining a teacher- centered classroom with academic and inclusion classes.  It’s hard to let go of “control” and let students “control” their education, especially when the spectrum of abilities is exceptionally broad.

3. This particular class contains:  OCS students, students with physical and mental disabilities, and behavioral disabilities.  Due to recent changes to The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), classes of this nature are no longer unique.

4. To meet the needs and abilities of several students, we:  Accessed AIMSweb data for lexile scores,  Provided students with a selection of books from which they could chose,  Modified literature circles, where groups meet and collaborate one at a time in a different location while the rest of the class read their novels and worked on their role work in class.

5. We came up with three levels:  Level I: read Monster by Walter Dean Myers  Level II: read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson  Level III: read A Separate Peace by John Knowles

6. Clip of Monster

7. Monster, Summarizer

8. Monster, Discussion Leader

9. Speak, clip

10. Speak, Vocabulary Wizard

11. Speak, Discussion Leader

12. Speak, Summarizer

13. A Separate Peace clip

14. A Separate Peace, Summarizer

15. A Separate Peace, Vocabulary Wizard