HRU Classroom at the Ranch
by Nancy Kubel
December 12, 2011
The HRU Classroom at the Ranch
I am a special education teacher and work with Mr. Brooks, the para-educator for HRU. Both Mr. Brooks and I have worked in the field of special education for many years and find that the students in our classroom definitely benefit from our varied experiences. We strive to make our classroom an exciting place; we believe that if you are having fun, learning occurs much faster!
We have ten students who can be in grades five through twelve. All classes except PE are taught in one room. While sometimes I feel like a teacher in a one-room classroom from another century, I do appreciate the 21st century technology that we can incorporate into our lessons.
Several times a week we utilize our electronic interactive white board which enables all the students to simultaneously participate in the lesson that has been projected onto the large viewing screen. This past week in Language class, we studied "confusing words" and were able to choose the correct answer to sentences portraying choices of "they're, there, their" or "to, two, too" or "principal, principle". In Earth Science class, we studied the solar system in a simulated three-dimensional activity that enabled the students to highlight surface conditions of specific planets and moons.
Thanks to the internet and the on-line resources included with the lessons in our various textbooks, there seems to be no limit to the materials provided for educators that we can use to provide a more meaningful and interesting learning environment in HRU.
