Coaching Call: Making the Qualitative More Quantitative
Q: My special education co-teacher has told me that I do not do enough direct reading instruction nor enough reading comprehension checks with my students. I hold book conversations with my students but do not give them quizzes or anything quantitative. How can I combine the qualitative aspects of teaching reading with something more quantitative for IEP writing? - Dawn
A:
I was so excited to get this question from Dawn because I spent the first half of my teaching career teaching collaborative, inclusion special education classes. I’ve been in my fair share of IEP and 504 meetings.
However, in those years, I wasn’t teaching the way I do now.
So, as you’ll hear me tell Dawn, I loved the opportunity to think about how to make student-centered reading and writing instruction more quantitative for the sake of IEP and 504 goal-setting.
Before you watch, here’s a point I make in our chat that I want to reiterate: as non special education teachers, we can — and should! — rely on our special ed colleagues to take what we are able to “count” and transform it into IEP / 504 goals.
The bottom line is that you can teach the way you want to teach. And you probably do more quantitative work than you even realize.
Here’s my coaching conversation with Dawn and some resources I’ve created for you: a one-pager of strategies for making the qualitative work of English more quantitative, and a one-pager showing what this kind of “data” looks like for one student. You might use this to have a chat with your special ed. counterparts to think about potential IEP/504 goals. Or just use this to imagine your own students using this kind of “data”.