Standard One | Teaching Diverse Students
The competent teacher understands the diverse characteristics and abilities of each student and how individuals develop and learn within the context of their social, economic, cultural, linguistic, and academic experiences. The teacher uses these experiences to create instructional opportunities that maximize student learning.
Spa
Spa
Artifacts
Spring 2012 | Social Class Preassessment Survey
Performance Indicator 1I) Stimulates prior knowledge and links new ideas to already-familiar ideas and experiences
Performance Indicator 1L) Uses information about students' individual experiences, families, cultures, and communities to create meaningful leaning opportunities and enrich instruction for all students
Performance Indicator 1I) Stimulates prior knowledge and links new ideas to already-familiar ideas and experiences
Performance Indicator 1L) Uses information about students' individual experiences, families, cultures, and communities to create meaningful leaning opportunities and enrich instruction for all students
classunit_attitudepreassess-2.docx | |
File Size: | 16 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Spring 2012 | Stations Activity (OCD articles)
Knowledge Indicator 1B) Understands how each student constructs knowledge, acquires skills, and develops effective and efficient critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities
Performance Indicator 1J) Differentiates strategies, materials, pace, levels of complexity, and language to introduce concepts and principles so that they are meaningful to students at varying levels of development and to students with diverse learning needs
Knowledge Indicator 1B) Understands how each student constructs knowledge, acquires skills, and develops effective and efficient critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities
Performance Indicator 1J) Differentiates strategies, materials, pace, levels of complexity, and language to introduce concepts and principles so that they are meaningful to students at varying levels of development and to students with diverse learning needs
ocdreadings.doc | |
File Size: | 45 kb |
File Type: | doc |
4-23105ocdstationsactivityhandout.docx | |
File Size: | 90 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Reflections
Spring 2012 | Social Class Preassessment Survey
Together, my Professional Learning Community created this preassessment activity to use to begin a unit on the novel There Are No Children Here. Thematically, the unit is centered on the ideas of social class and social privilege. We wanted to help students connect with these ideas on a personal level, with the ultimate goal of them really understanding the effects that their own personal social status has had and will have on their lives. These goals, combined with our needs for beginning a new unit, resulted in this list of 10 provocative statements about class. Students worked in groups to decide whether they agreed or disagreed with each statement, as well as their reasons why. No instruction or knowledge about social class was given by the teacher at this point – students were entirely engaging their background knowledge about how they’ve seen the world work in this realm in their own lives.The whole-class discussion stemming from this activity was one of the most engaging of the entire semester and even spilled into the next day of instruction. I could almost see the connections being made in their heads as we went along – it seemed like this was the first time that many of them had to take what they knew about America’s social hierarchy and actually make sense of it out loud to their classmates. Debates arose from a few of the questions, notably #7, “Wealthy people should pay a higher tax rate than poorer people.” Differences in political opinions quickly became obvious, yet the discussion remained amazingly constructive overall, likely because we were focused on the ideal (“What SHOULD the country do?”) not the reality (“What does the country actually do?”)
Overall, this activity was one of the most fruitful and meaningful of the semester, due in large part to the large requirement that the students had to connect with the topic on their own terms, constructing their own meaning and ideas based on what they’ve learned from their families, communities, and life experiences.
Spring 2012 | Stations Activity (OCD articles)
While reading the young adult novel Ball Don’t Lie, it became apparent that my students needed some background information on obsessive-compulsive disorder, a disability that affects the main character of that novel. Students received the information in a differentiated and interactive way through reading the three articles above in different stations set up in the classroom. In their groups, students were required to read the article at their station and fill out the corresponding section of the worksheet (which contained varying levels of thinking, a la Bloom’s Taxonomy – some required basic comprehension of the articles, some required more sophisticated interpretations of that knowledge, and others required connections to be made with Ball Don’t Lie). The fourth station was a review of Ball Don’t Lie, where students looked directly at the text for manifestations of OCD.Groups rotated until each had visited every station. My co-teacher and I circulated to keep students on task and answer any questions they had. My co-teacher was working more closely with a group of students who I knew would work more slowly and need a lot of extra help, both with reading and the questions.
This activity went over extremely well – the highly structured environment made the group work positive and productive. The differentiated grouping strategy helped a lot – I purposely created the groups to mix students heterogeneously in terms of ability, background, and previous classroom behavior. As mentioned above, I put many of the students who I knew would need extra help completing the tasks (because of special needs or behavior management issues) in the group where my co-teacher was helping. I circulated and gave personal attention to all of the other groups on a regular basis, answering questions and figuring out each group’s level of understanding and synthesis of the articles. This activity is therefore an example of meaningful differentiated instruction, effective for students at varied stages of their learning development.
Together, my Professional Learning Community created this preassessment activity to use to begin a unit on the novel There Are No Children Here. Thematically, the unit is centered on the ideas of social class and social privilege. We wanted to help students connect with these ideas on a personal level, with the ultimate goal of them really understanding the effects that their own personal social status has had and will have on their lives. These goals, combined with our needs for beginning a new unit, resulted in this list of 10 provocative statements about class. Students worked in groups to decide whether they agreed or disagreed with each statement, as well as their reasons why. No instruction or knowledge about social class was given by the teacher at this point – students were entirely engaging their background knowledge about how they’ve seen the world work in this realm in their own lives.The whole-class discussion stemming from this activity was one of the most engaging of the entire semester and even spilled into the next day of instruction. I could almost see the connections being made in their heads as we went along – it seemed like this was the first time that many of them had to take what they knew about America’s social hierarchy and actually make sense of it out loud to their classmates. Debates arose from a few of the questions, notably #7, “Wealthy people should pay a higher tax rate than poorer people.” Differences in political opinions quickly became obvious, yet the discussion remained amazingly constructive overall, likely because we were focused on the ideal (“What SHOULD the country do?”) not the reality (“What does the country actually do?”)
Overall, this activity was one of the most fruitful and meaningful of the semester, due in large part to the large requirement that the students had to connect with the topic on their own terms, constructing their own meaning and ideas based on what they’ve learned from their families, communities, and life experiences.
Spring 2012 | Stations Activity (OCD articles)
While reading the young adult novel Ball Don’t Lie, it became apparent that my students needed some background information on obsessive-compulsive disorder, a disability that affects the main character of that novel. Students received the information in a differentiated and interactive way through reading the three articles above in different stations set up in the classroom. In their groups, students were required to read the article at their station and fill out the corresponding section of the worksheet (which contained varying levels of thinking, a la Bloom’s Taxonomy – some required basic comprehension of the articles, some required more sophisticated interpretations of that knowledge, and others required connections to be made with Ball Don’t Lie). The fourth station was a review of Ball Don’t Lie, where students looked directly at the text for manifestations of OCD.Groups rotated until each had visited every station. My co-teacher and I circulated to keep students on task and answer any questions they had. My co-teacher was working more closely with a group of students who I knew would work more slowly and need a lot of extra help, both with reading and the questions.
This activity went over extremely well – the highly structured environment made the group work positive and productive. The differentiated grouping strategy helped a lot – I purposely created the groups to mix students heterogeneously in terms of ability, background, and previous classroom behavior. As mentioned above, I put many of the students who I knew would need extra help completing the tasks (because of special needs or behavior management issues) in the group where my co-teacher was helping. I circulated and gave personal attention to all of the other groups on a regular basis, answering questions and figuring out each group’s level of understanding and synthesis of the articles. This activity is therefore an example of meaningful differentiated instruction, effective for students at varied stages of their learning development.