CHAPTER 3Strategy Cards for:

Communication with Colleagues, Students, & Families

PART 1The Basics of Effective

Communication

Strategy 1: Acceptance

• As the educational workforce and student demographics of our schools become more diverse, understanding and accepting personal perspectives becomes even more pertinent.

• The increasing diversity within our classrooms, including English language learners (ELLs), students with disabilities, and students who are gifted, requires collaboration with other professionals and families of students.

Strategy 2: Listening

• Your willingness to listen to parents and professionals is important to your ability to learn and to work effectively with others.

• Effective listening is more than waiting politely for one to finish before you speak. You must hear the message that the other person is sending and ask questions to clarify. Effective listening is…• Listening for the real content in the message• Listening for the feelings in the message• Restating the content and reflecting feelings• Allow the speaker to reaffirm or correct your perception

Strategy 3: Questioning

• Questions are a vital part of the communication process. Questions can be used to teach, to establish relationships, to inquire, and to investigate. Be sure to set a tone of acceptance, so that questions are not bullying or intimidating.

• Questions can be open or closed. An open-ended question encourages many responses. They often begin with: how, what, or tell me about.

PART 2Collaborating with other Professionals

“Interpersonal collaboration is a direct interaction between at least two coequal parties who are voluntarily engaged in

shared decision-making and achieving a common goal,” (p.73).

Strategy 4: Consultation

• Friend and Cook (2010) define consultation as “a voluntary process in which one professional assists another to address a problem concerning a third party,” (p.85).

• The overall goal is to consult an expert to resolve a problem.

• Examples• Special education teacher & general classroom teacher developing a

behavior management plan for a child with a behavior disorder• Reading specialist & general classroom teacher finding research-based

interventions for a struggling reader

Strategy 5: Teaming

• Formal work groups that have clear goals (task specific and ongoing) and committed members.

• Effective team efforts necessitate: • Focused leadership• Efficient procedures/rules• Clear definition of roles• Mutual understanding of accountability/responsibilities• Active communication• A method for problem-solving/conflict resolution.

• Example: You might serve as a general education teacher representative on an RTI leadership team.

Strategy 6: Co-Planning

• Co-planning is when one or more professionals collaborate to construct a unit and/or lesson plans.

• Examples• Collaborating with a special education teacher to develop a long-range

mathematics plan for teaching math to a child with learning disabilities.• Collaborating with colleagues to develop a unit and/or lesson plans

based on specific standards.

Strategy 7: Co-Teaching• 2 or more professionals jointly giving substantial instruction to a diverse, or

blended, group of students in a single physical space.

• Co-teaching partnerships can occur with any combination of general education teacher, special educators, or other specialists. Each partner has a particular area of expertise and uses that specialized knowledge to meet individual student needs and promote learning for all students. This requires co-planning, where the specific roles and responsibilities of each teacher are determined ahead of time.

• Both teachers must work with all students and both give instruction.• When a general education teacher and a special education teacher co-teach, the

instructional goals and the needs of all students are the responsibility of both teachers.

• Example• During a math lesson, you may divide the students into 2 teacher-led groups for guided

practice sessions.

Strategy 8: Co-Assessment/Co-Grading• 2 or more professionals are actively engaged in assessment data

collection, evaluation, grading student performance, determining report card grades, and reporting grades to parents/caregivers.

• Assessment literacy: understanding both formal and informal assessments and making instructional decisions based on assessment and student performance data.

• Assessment vs Evaluation (as determined by the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities 2011)• Assessment: “the collection of data through the use of multiple measures,

including standardized and informal instruments and procedures”• Evaluation: “the process of integrating, interpreting, and summarizing the

comprehensive assessment data…this is data-based decision making”