CRITICAL REVIEW BLOCK 3: INCLUSION IN CLASS

Regarding the first three blocks of the subjects, we personally believe that this is
the one that has had more impact on us or has called more our attention for an
important reason: it is focused on the class context. As future teachers,
attention to diversity and inclusion is an issue that really concerns us and
through this block we have found some interesting strategies to implement and
activities to develop at class.

Firstly, we would like to highlight the amount of resources we have received and
learnt from the lessons and seminars that, as far as we are concerned, are going
to be pretty useful for our future classrooms. The importance of designing
inclusive didactical units for all the students is a vital need and all the tools we
are going to highlight below have been focused on designing inclusive didactical
sequences as better as possible. Multilevel instruction has been, from our
experience during the block, one the most useful guideline when designing these
kinds of interventions because all the steps are well divided and explained and
the teacher can identify better and clearer the problems and the aspects that
must been improved. Actually, this methodology has been used for some of us to
improve one of didactical sequences, and that is why we would remark it above
the other ones. Another important aspect we would comment in these
reflections, is a very well-known taxonomy: Blooms taxonomy. It has been very
interesting to refresh the theory regarding this topic because we are currently
designing and proposing a lot of activities for all the degrees subjects and this
tool has been very useful to define objectives, propose new activities and, in
fact, focusing better on students needs.

We value a lot the experiences and the role plays done during these block since
they have allowed us to understand and to be embodied with the content we are
learning. For instance the roleplays with the co-teaching models were very useful
for us to understand how they work and the differences among them, the
implications and the situations in which these models can be applied, the
elements that take part on them, etcetera. Considering our performance as
teachers, we get to know a new strategy to use at class to help students
improving reading competence. We believe reading is an essential skill along the
academic and personal life, which is used in many of our daily activities. For this
reason, we value being able to learn a strategy that develops reading
competence in all children, including those who have difficulties in relation to it.
What is more, we realized that this kind of activity is not easy and needs a lot of
work with kids to get used and do it correctly. Secondly, the performances done
by our classmates let us put ourselves in childrens shoes. That is to say, we can
experience which might be the difficulties they need to face through this activity
but also we can see which are the advantages of each. As future teachers, this
let us reflect on the effectiveness of each method and also to think in what kind
of situations it is positive to use them.

In addition, we consider that giving us the opportunity to assess our own group
performance have been very interesting because we did not stop to observe and
to analyze how our collaborative work is being, how we can improve our results
or if there is anything we could change for a better working. We all agreed on
remarking this aspect since is something we are going to expect from our
students, too.

To conclude this reflexion part, we would emphasize on the usefulness and the
utility this block have had for us as future education professionals. During this
degree, there have been few hours in which the theoretical contents have been
developed into practical contents and, as far as we are concerned, this fact is not
benefiting us since they are not allowing us to contrast our concepts with the
reality or with a context. That is why we would highlight this important quality of
this block and that is why we are considering it one of the most useful ones, not
just in this subject but from all the subjects done during the whole course.