Joyful Learning: Active and Collaborative Learning in Inclusive Classrooms

by Alice Udvari-Solner, Paula Kluth

Create a classroom that is truly responsive to all diverse learners!

This resource is ideal for inclusive classrooms serving all learners, including those with cognitive, sensory, cultural, learning, and/or linguistic differences. The authors present strategies for engaging students in discussion, debate, creative thinking, questioning, and teamwork. Providing classroom-tested examples, specific guidelines, and reproducibles, the book gives teachers the tools to:

Promote relationship building and interdependence Help students teach one another as they make discoveries about course content Support learners in preparing for assessments Engage in whole-class learning while assisting students who need personalized instruction Assess learner understanding and celebrate growth

Genres: Teaching

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 4, 2007

Reviews

[Samuel Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the first books assigned to me to read as part of my graduate studies in teaching and I am beyond empresses by the authors use of research to develop inclusive activities from student comprehension to community building. The way these activities were incorporated with wonderful differentiation tips and worksheet templates makes me so excited to one day have my own classroom!

[Caroline Head · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to have Alice as a professor at UW-Madison. Her course on collaborative teams was one of the best classes I have ever taken. Her teaching style and joy for building teams and understanding our students shines through this book. I highly recommend it!

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joyful learning is an awesome book for many uses in the classroom. It is divided into sections, like community building, lectures, collaboration, and assessment. It provides clear and easy to use ways to incorporate more collaboration and movement into lessons you are already teaching. What is so great about this book is the real classroom examples you are given. There are also realistic tools for differentiation with each new teaching method.

I would recommend choosing three or four of your favorite activities and preteaching them to your class. You can then add them in when you feel the kids need a change of pace throughout the year. Some of my favorites are fishbowl tag, walk it to learn it, what is it?, and the paper toss. Definitely recommend checking out this book!

[Jen Brandes · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many ideas. I love this book. Paula is a dynamic speaker and she documents the ideas she modeled in this book.