As a Special Education and English Learner teacher, I used this lesson with students who struggle with reading comprehension and written expression, and what I witnessed was a powerful shift in how they engaged with informational text. My name is Maria, and for the past 22 years as a teacher in an inner city school … Read more
I often tell new teachers that our students often miss the “signposts” that authors leave behind. These signposts—headings, captions, charts, and bold words—are not just decorations; they are the keys to the kingdom of informational text. In the 6th-grade landscape, specifically under Standard RI.6.7, we focus on integrating information presented in different media or formats. … Read more
Tired of spending hours rewriting the same lesson for students at different levels? In this post, National Board Certified Teacher Maria Angala pulls back the curtain on how she uses AI as an “iteration partner” in her bilingual special education classroom. Teaching students who are navigating both IEPs and English language learning, Maria once spent evenings manually differentiating every text three ways. Now, AI handles the drafts — and she handles the decisions. She shares exactly where AI saves her time (leveling texts, generating sentence frames, simplifying vocabulary) and where it falls short (missing cultural context, overestimating reading levels, using idioms that confuse ELL students). The result? More time for one-on-one instruction, stronger lesson delivery, and a less burned-out teacher. A must-read for any SPED or ELL educator curious about AI — but wanting to stay firmly in the driver’s seat.
As a Special Education and English Learner teacher, I used this lesson with students who struggle with reading comprehension and written expression at my Washington DC school. In the world of intensive intervention, the arrival of February often brings a specific kind of anxiety. While the rest of the building is focused on candy and … Read more
In a standard classroom, we often tell students to “read between the lines,” but for a neurodiverse learner, those lines can feel like a solid, impenetrable wall. If the information isn’t stated explicitly, it simply doesn’t exist to them yet. As a mentor, I’ve learned that our role isn’t to ask our students to be … Read more
To a student with an IEP, every sentence often carries the same weight. They might read an entire passage and, when asked for the big idea, fixate on a minor, colorful detail about a character’s shoes rather than the central message. As a mentor, I’ve learned that our most important task isn’t just to teach … Read more
I remember sitting in my classroom a few years ago, staring at a stack of generic curriculum guides and then looking at my students. In one corner, I had a student who could tell you everything about the history of space travel but struggled to write a single sentence. In another, I had a student … Read more
Learn how to teach characterization and plot analysis to SPED and ELL students using an AI-enhanced visual lesson aligned to RL.6.3. This post walks bilingual special education teachers through a structured 60-minute block—Mini-Lesson, Guided Practice, and Independent Work—built around a clear 3-step strategy: Identify the Event, Observe the Reaction, and Determine the Change. Think-aloud modeling, high-contrast visual organizers, and sentence frames help neurodiverse and Tier 3 learners move beyond “what happened” to understanding how plot episodes shape a character’s growth. Includes extension activities connecting to RL.6.5, a Quick Quiz for IEP data collection, and an accommodations checklist—giving every student the tools to see themselves in the stories they read.
Discover how to teach sequence of events as a visual, repeatable strategy for SPED and ELL students who struggle to organize narrative information. This post shows bilingual special education teachers how moving beyond “beginning, middle, end” to a four-step framework—Identify Key Events, Order the Facts, Use Transition Words, and Retell with Accuracy—transforms passive readers into active, organized thinkers. Real classroom moments reveal students independently using anchor charts and transition word banks to debate event order and retell stories without teacher prompts. Framed as a foundational workforce skill, sequencing prepares students for multi-step job tasks while strengthening both reading comprehension and written retelling across fiction and nonfiction texts.
A DC bilingual SPED teacher shares real data and classroom breakthroughs from using a differentiated RACE Writing Strategy lesson built around MLK quotes with ELL students with cognitive disabilities. This post details how tiered graphic organizers—with heavy sentence starters for Level 1 and more independent drafting for Levels 2 and 3—transformed blank-page shutdown into productive struggle. Two powerful student moments illustrate the shift, and the numbers back it up: successful evidence citations jumped from 20% to 65% independence in one week, a 45% growth in structural accuracy. Learn how treating writing as an engineering task, not a creative one, gives SPED students the repeatable blueprint they need to find their voice.
