Reverse Inclusion

      Every effort is made at mainstreaming for all special needs students; however, the fact remains that mainstreaming isn't for every child. One of the practices that our district does to help ensure that self-contained autistic pre-k students have an opportunity to learn from their typically developing peers is reverse inclusion. Reverse Inclusion is when students from the general ed pre-k class come to the autisic class during center time to model appropriate play.

This is How We Do It:
      The general ed pre-k class has 20 students who are divided into 5 groups of 4. They are the Monday Group, the Tuesday Group, etc. These groups remain the same throughout the school year. The general ed and autistic pre-k classes have center time at the same time. Each day 1 group comes to the autistic class to play.

Benefits: 
1.  The self-contained special needs student/s have the opportunity to work on much needed social skills during the small group play with their typically developing peers.
2.  The teacher, has the opportunity to observe his/her student/s with autism at play among their typically developing peers which allows them to focus on specific behaviors that need work.
3.  The regular pre-k students benefit because they learn to have patience, understanding, and compassion for others.  They also have an opportunity to play in the more popular centers because centers being full is rarely an issue in the special education classroom due to the smaller teacher/student ratio.

      Sometimes center time can be challenging for students with autism.  It is not structured and often leaves open opportunities for inappropriate and sometimes dangerous behaviors such as running, climbing, etc.  The following is a link to a social story that I made a while back to help one of my students with behaviors during center time.