"The Peer Collaboration program is designed to assist students who have needs within their classroom environment.
The program pairs a peer with a student who is struggling with a particular course, has trouble staying focused, has difficulty building relationships with classmates, or any other obstacle a student may face on a daily basis.
Placing peers into classrooms with students who are struggling allows collaborating peers to build their empathy and leadership skills.
Additionally, having more leaders in the classroom allows the teacher to focus on all students, balancing his or her time with each student.
Peers learn to collaborate with their fellow students as well as with the classroom teacher. Classroom students learn to collaborate with their peers and gain a new understanding of the material, learn to build friendships, and overcome obstacles, eventually leading them to success."
Some great resources that can be downloaded in PDF form from these workshops focusing on special education and differentiation! Each presentation includes the presentation and handouts in PDF form (2 documents per workshop). Good article on co-teaching.
Excellent resources, presentations, handouts from teacher workshops on special education and differentiation. Teacher-to-Teacher is US Dept of Education initiative.
The Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative has been created by and for America's teachers. It supports teachers' efforts in the classroom through professional development workshops and digital workshops and by sharing relevant information through email updates.
Teacher Workshops
Teacher Workshops offer classroom teachers a free opportunity to participate in high-quality professional development designed to provide the classroom support, technical assistance, and increased collaboration needed to assure academic success for all students.
"Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a set of principles and techniques for creating inclusive classroom instruction and accessible course materials. At its core is the assertion that all students benefit when they are given multiples ways to take in new information, express their comprehension, and become engaged in learning."
Below, you will find teacher-friendly examples and resources that illustrate each of the UDL checkpoints. Exploring these examples and resources not only helps to clarify what is meant by each of the checkpoints but also gives teachers ideas of ways to implement UDL in their classrooms.
This is a fantastic start page option for teachers and students. It has everything teachers want (widgets, privacy controls, booksmarks, calendar, RSS, mini blog(journal), notes, to-do, video, and more). The file upload is a big bonus. Students and teachers can personalize the designs and add/share tabs. You can make each tab public or private and grant specific privileges for the tools (widgets).invitIe students individually or bulk upload from a file.