Differentiation Reflection – Educating Exceptional Students

 

3. Differentiation – The teacher acquires and uses specific knowledge about students’ cultural, individual intellectual and social development and uses that knowledge to adjust their practice by employing strategies that advance student learning.

3.1 Demonstrating Knowledge of Students

Teacher recognizes the value of understanding students’ skills, knowledge, and language proficiency and displays this knowledge for groups of – students.

 

Differentiation for students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) requires that teachers gain knowledge about individual students with specific accommodations and goals and use that knowledge to adjust their teaching practice to employ strategies that advance that student learning. I have recognized the value of understanding students’ skills, knowledge, language and literacy proficiency through attending IEP meetings and being in the process of revising and adjusting individualized student goals. I display my knowledge of student’s IEPs through monitoring student progress towards goals and making adjustments in the process.

A particular student who has an IEP in a class where I intern was has individualized goals for organization, math-problem solving, and oral expression. Her organization goal is as follows:

Organization – When given academic assignments, Student-X will record assignments in a planner and initiate and use a checklist to track assignments and responsibilities and plan how to complete the assignment or prepare for the test improving task completion and task management, planning, organization and self-monitoring from demonstrating application of skills in 2 to 3 out of 4 opportunities to demonstrate application of skill in 3 to 4 out of 4 opportunities as measured by teacher data collection and weekly planner checks.

Phew! What a goal! It is both lengthy as well as specific, measurable, attainable, and results-oriented within a time-frame (SMART). This goal specifically measures this student’s organizational goal plan. It is measurable because it gives a numerical value to the amount of time out of given opportunities to demonstrate abilities to stay organized. It is attainable because both planners and checklists are provided for students and the goal is deemed reasonable to all parties. It seeks the result of improving specific listed organizational skills. The time frame includes weekly checks and the goals are reviewed annually.

When meeting with this student to review her goals, feedback was given and received. We talked about the nature of checklists and discussed their creation and effectiveness. We also discussed what specific planner worked best for her lifestyle and offered possibilities in choosing the best planner.

Another goal that relates to our LA/SS class is her goal in Oral Expression, which states:

Oral Expression – When given an assignment, task, or instructions in the general education classroom, Student-X will request assistance or clarification from the teacher on given or task improving ability to express wants, needs, and thinking from 2 to 3 teacher requests per week to 2 or more teacher requests per day as measured by teacher reports and data records.

This goal was reviewed with the student and feedback was given and received. According to the teachers’ reports and data records, this student has been having trouble reaching this particular goal. It has appeared that this student has disengaged and has not initiated expressing needs for clarification or help when it would have been beneficial. For this student, it is best to do private check-ins removed from peers. It could be possible that this student feel self-conscious asking for help in front of her classmates and is simply shy to speak up. Teachers involved encouraged this student to ask trusted friends to intercede and ask a clarifying questions for her if she doesn’t feel comfortable asking it in front of the whole classroom. Also, it was suggested to allow this student to ask clarifying questions and express needs discreetly in writing on an exit slip, email, or notecard. Communication is the most beneficial way to understand the needs of students. Providing an environment of emotional and academic safety is foundational to the success of students with specific learning needs.

While this student’s IEP included math goals, it did not mention concerns regarding reading. In the class where I intern, we conduct a monthly reading comprehension screening for all students. This literacy screening test provides data regarding students’ reading level and improvement over time. This student is reading significantly below grade-level, which indicates a need for intervention in this area. This was also mentioned in the IEP review meeting and plans for future intervention were put in place.

Most students’ learning is adequately supported by primary intervention which is done in a whole class setting. Here, students receive instruction that great educators implement. The classroom routines are established, ingrained differentiation occurs, accommodations are provided, and problem-solving strategies are taught to address motivational problems.

As adolescents advance the grade levels and more sophisticated thinking and problem-solving is required of them, there is shown a more complicated array of weaknesses and strengths. Therefore, “innovation is necessary to address academic needs of adolescents with serious, accumulated deficits across a range of subcomponent skills” (Lynn S. Fuchs, 2010). In order to be innovative regarding varied student needs, constant monitoring of student progress is needed in order to potentially revise intervention plans or assess whether students need more or less intervention.

I believe that Response to Intervention (RTI) should be implemented in schools as a systematic and research-based approach towards improving student academic outcomes. I have seen it be effective in supporting students individualized needs. Having a team of the student’s teachers, counselors, and administration is so helpful in supporting the student with consistency.

Lynn S. Fuchs, D. F. (2010). Rethinking Response to Intervention at Middle. School Psychology Review, pp. 22-28.

 

Reflections on Program Standard 5: Learning Environment

5. Learning Environment– The teacher fosters and manages a safe and inclusive learning environment that takes into account: physical, emotional and intellectual well-being.

5.4 Managing Student Behavior by Establishing Expectations

Standards of conduct are clear to all students.

 

Establishing expectations for student behavior provides the foundation for creating a positive and safe learning environment. Since social and collaborative learning is emphasized in a middle school LA/SS classroom, communicating standards of conduct is required for instructional success. It is important to communicate expectations at the very beginning of the year to set the tone for future success and relationship building. Students in the beginning of the year assess themselves and write personal goals according to the classroom expectations. They also develop a plan to meet those goals. These student self-reflections and goals are referred to at the end of each quarter. In order to hold students accountable to these expectations, a weekly Interdisciplinary Skills and Attributes (ISA) grade is scored.

The three major Interdisciplinary Skills and Attributes standards are that students 1) Exhibit a strong work ethic, 2) Takes personal responsibility for his/her actions, and 3) Communicates and works well with others in whole class and group activities. We grade these three standards on a proficiency scale:   6-12_ISA_Proficiency_Scales (2)

However, when students do not understand their role in making appropriate decisions to meet these standards, a grade can be ineffective. Student reflection on their behavior, quality of work, and collaboration skills is necessary in order for students to understand the values associated with these expectations. Reflection should include concrete examples and development of realistic, attainable, and measurable goals.

Social and collaborative learning happens in the classroom every day. In order for collaborative learning to be a successful and positive experience, students must have the behavioral and social skills necessary for learning. Group learning and small group discussion happens all the time. Before important small-group learning experiences, I reiterate expectations to all students.

In the future, I plan to incorporate student self-monitoring more frequently. I also plan to include student voice in determining what foundational values should be established  to build a safe and positive learning environment. These values should foster respect as students are challenged to take risks in their learning. Students should be involved in determining what guidelines and expectations are required for positive learning. This process builds a sense of ownership and responsibility for behavior. Expectations are more likely to be agreed upon and respected when students actively participate in the development of classroom norms.

Reflection on Program Standard #3: Differentiation

3. Differentiation – The teacher acquires and uses specific knowledge about students’ cultural, individual intellectual and social development and uses that knowledge to adjust their practice by employing strategies that advance student learning.

 

Differentiation means that the teacher acquires specific knowledge about various aspects of their student’s lives and abilities in order to use that knowledge to make adjustments to instructional strategies and approaches to classroom learning. Well-informed differentiation serves student’s needs and utilizes unique assets to reach all kinds of learners. In the 8^th grade class where I intern, I am beginning a unit on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Because of the text’s level of complexity, differentiation practices must be in place to ensure that students are supported at their level of ability and engaged in the material. Providing differentiated support is necessary for students to grasp the content and interact with the text to grasp broader themes.

To differentiate learning for all students before reading the text, I ask an open-ended question in the beginning of the lesson to engage students on a uniquely personal level related to the text to be read in the lesson that day. Before reading Act I, for instance, I instruct students to either free-write in response to this prompt and/or share with a partner next to them in response: “Think back to a time when you wanted to do something that your parents didn’t allow. What were their reasons for these rules and what were the consequences if you did not follow the rules?” Before reading Act II, students are instructed to respond to the question, “If an important task was given to a very mischievous character, what do you imagine might happen?” or “The term ‘unrequited love’ means that someone loves another person who does not love them back. If two characters were in this situation, how do you imagine both of them would feel and react?” These open-ended and semi-autobiographical questions activate students’ personal experiences, prior knowledge, and preexisting assumptions about particular themes to be explored in the text. Students are allowed to respond in a variety of ways and their honesty sets the stage for rich experiences with the text.

During reading, differentiation is provided by breaking up students into small groups and giving them all roles in the process of reading comprehension. One student is designated as the “translator” to puts the text in their own words, another is the “decoder” who looks up definitions, another student is the “cartographer” who maps out the plot and character connections, and the fourth student is the “choreographer” who determines how the characters move and interact on stage. All students are required to read aloud in rotations, pausing at intervals to enact their roles in interacting with the text. These roles give each student a differentiated task in the group work. The roles are designed to also differentiate for different learning styles and strategies – auditory, linguistic, visual, kinesthetic, and social learning.

After reading each scene in the play, students make predictions about what will happen next. This play excellent for practicing making predictions because of all the suspense, plot twists, and dramatic intrigued involved. Students have fun making predictions about what they just read, building off of their experience while reading. Students’ predictions can be as creative as possible in order to embrace unique perspectives in interpretation. Students are also asked to draw a small sketch of the scene, painting that visual representation in their minds.

This lesson comes full circle when students revisit their open-ended responses to those initial questions at the beginning of the lesson. Now that they have read the text, I ask students to respond again to the same question. They do this by either revising their answers with new perspectives gained from the reading, or by making connections to the passage of text read in the lesson, referencing specific details. This process of assimilating new knowledge into prior knowledge is powerful when acquiring new perspectives. Differentiation is honored through this process of reexamining unique, personal preexisting knowledge. Their initial answers where unique to them, and therefore their learning is assimilated into their uniquely different reflections.

Some examples of student illustrations of scenes in Act I to differentiate for visual learners:

I am learning through this experience that students need differentiated support when reading a challenging and complex text. When students are simply handed Shakespeare without activating any prior experiences or receiving instruction geared toward different learning styles, they become disengaged. Students become either disengaged and “bored” or overwhelmed and defeated when they are not given tailored supports to their specific learning needs. I have slowly added more and more differentiation strategies to lessons in order to support different learning styles. This is so students do not become disengaged or frustrated with complex texts. As I continue to finesse my differentiation methods, I will draw on knowledge of my students to become increasingly more specific in the ways I differentiate.

Vocabulary for Informational Text Literacy

Cold War Lesson

This lesson focuses on organizing vocabulary as a means to comprehend informational text. This lesson uses the “Vocabulary Tree” reading strategy (Daniels & Zemelman, 2014). Students are given vocabulary mastered in the previous unit on WWII and instructed to create a concept map using those words.

During reading, they are given new vocabulary they will encounter in the informational text discussing the causes of the Cold War. As they read, they will encounter the new vocabulary and add these new words to their concept map. Based on the reading and definitions of new words, students will construct an accurate visual representation of the relationships between prior and new vocabulary.

After reading, students will individually summarize their learning of the causes of the cold war. They will use all the vocabulary from the lesson in their summaries. After they have worked in groups, this is the point where the responsibility of learning is released to students (92). Summarizing is a key step in reciprocal reading (Palincsar, 1984). Students are given the choice to write a summary with vocabulary or draw a summary labeling the vocabulary.

Textbook Problems and Solutions

What’s the problem with American textbooks and how can this problem be overcome in your content area class?

The problems with American textbooks listed by Daniels and Zelmelman are that they are superficial, hard to read, badly designed, authoritarian, inaccurate, not written for students, and cost too much. Having just taught a unit on WWII, I found the textbook account of this time in history impossibly sparse. Students were asked to read the text in pairs for particular facts and vocabulary. Students were in the first paragraph and the classroom is peppered with hands. They all had the same question: “Ok, the Allies are in North Africa but… why?” In an attempt to make sense of this brazen textbook fail, I initially assumed that the textbook didn’t give students enough information. I figured students needed more background info to decipher cause and effect and put the events in context. After reading Daniels and Zelmelman’s description of textbooks being superficial, I revise my assumption. They state that “strange as it seems, these books just scratch the surface, and that’s because they contain too much material. Often, the really key concepts, the big ideas of the field, don’t stand out clearly, aren’t given enough time and depth for students to grasp them” (2014, 52). This is the source of why there is a disconnect between students understanding and their history textbook. They don’t need a ton of superficial information, they need information to be selective and the exploration of concepts to go deep.

If I had not read this passage in Subjects Matter, I would have figured I must supplement the textbook with more information. But I predict that students would have had the same kinds of questions and gotten even more overwhelmed.

To solve this dilemma in my content area class, I can carefully select – or allow my students to select! – one piece of information and go deeper with it. This would mean curating primary source documents on a specific event or having them research primary sources and documents.

Establishing key concepts (67) on which to link information throughout the year also provides consistent context for information learned. Because textbooks don’t provide the “big ideas”, it is up to the teacher to determine what they believe are important themes. Teachers have particular philosophies and personal areas of interest that inspire what overarching concepts are important to come back to. If students know that the important theme of the unit is “isolation, intervention and engagement in world affairs”, maybe they can begin to answer their own questions when reading the textbook. I can direct them to the overarching theme of the unit and they can try to make a connection between the information and the themes.

Zemelman, H. D. (2014). Subjects Matter. Portsmouth, NH: Heinimann.

Engaging Students in Learning

2. Instruction– The teacher uses research-based instructional practices to meet the needs of all students.

2.2 Engaging Students in Learning – Most activities and assignments are appropriate to students, and almost all students are cognitively engaged in exploring content.

This standard addresses student engagement in instruction. In order to meet the standard, instruction must be cognitively engaging to students. This means that the activities and assignments are at the appropriate level for student engagement so that they can explore content at the level in which they are able to comprehend the content while being challenged to expand their understanding.

In the eighth grade Social Studies class where I intern, to engage students in exploring what life was like during WWII in America, we set up a WWII museum in the library. Myself and cooperating staff gathered artifacts through the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) located in Seattle, as well as through the generosity of teachers and staff within our school community. By bringing the museum to the students, we were able to providing students with the opportunity to participate in a simulation of a museum experience. Because of the variety and quality of artifacts, every student was able to find a piece of the museum that deepened their understanding of the WWII era. Seeing the staff-related artifacts, students began to comprehend how many families were impacted by WWII. Students could read newspapers and magazines from the 40’s, which all described the war over seas, presented political cartoons and propaganda from that time, and depicted general American life during wartime. There was a real ration book, gas mask, victory garden manual, uniforms, pictures, medals, and flags. Information on all the artifacts were given so that students could read the context and purpose of each one.

In order to direct student attention during the WWII museum and keep them cognitively engaged, we provided a notetaker. To engage students in active learning, the notetaker employed certain macrostrategies such as summarizing and notetaking, nonlinguistic representations, questions, reflection, and cooperative learning (Barley, 2002). According to Marzano, “small chunks of content must still be actively processed by students” (2007). Therefore, to answer these questions, students picked artifacts that were the most interesting to them to comment on in order to break down the available material into smaller chunks. This allowed for student choice in which artifact to engage with on a deeper level. Students were then asked to examine the chosen artifacts using strategies consistent with the macrostrategies listed by Barley and her colleagues (2002). They described the artifact they saw, illustrated the artifact, predicted what purpose the artifact served, inferred author bias in newpapers and photographs, and asked questions for further inquiry. These prompts scaffolded the process of examining and analyzing artifacts and documents using these learning strategies.

These questions keep students cognitively engaged in the material presented. If students are either overwhelmed by the material presented or bored by it, they will disengage. Both reactions are indicative of the content material being either above or below student’s Zone of Proximal Development (McCormick, 2007). In order to lead students into learning in their ZDP, students should be directed in how to make meaningful connections between the content, skills and concepts. The prompting questions provided during this activity focus and scaffold that comprehension process, leading students to make meaningful connections between the artifacts and associated concepts, while using strategies and skills in the process. This student-centered learning experience was scaffolded appropriately, giving students ownership of their learning with adequate support.

From having this experience, I learned that a lot of preparation and communication is needed to facilitate this level of activity. Months ahead of time, faculty and staff in the school community are alerted to the museum’s future date, and asked to contribute their artifacts to the museum. It’s amazing what people will show up with! However, one must be courteous and allow for ample time for staff to find and transport these items. Communication with the MOHAI is necessary well in advance. Pick up and drop of the artifact “trunk” must be arranged. Inquiry into whether museums in the surrounding area have resources such as these is recommended as much as a year in advance. Communication with the library is fundamental as well. Librarians, if given enough time to prepare, can put up books related to the content of the museum, play music for ambiance, and prepare for an alternative schedule that day. Much goes into this rewarding experience!

Assessing and Reflecting upon Technology Use in Lessons

The ASSURE model has helped systematically enrich the process of reflecting upon and revising implementation of technology in classroom learning.

I choose one lesson to evaluate using the ASSURE model. I evaluated the effectiveness of an Socratic Seminar conduced on an online discussion format. Through the ASSURE model, I

• analyzed learners in my classroom
• stated the targeted objectives intended students to be able to do by the end of the lesson
• selected media and materials with rationale
• explained how the selected media and materials was utilized in the lesson
• explained how I was going to require learner participation
• evaluated the learning outcomes.

Through this whole process, I was able to implement a lesson that best suited by students needs and strengths. Students were able to meet the learning objectives and also articulate where they were inhibited by the media and materials to meet the learning objectives. Through the process, I was able to evaluate the effectiveness of technology in helping students reach the learning objectives.

A link to the GoogleDoc that outlines my analysis of my lesson through the ASSURE model is here

 

Digital Citizenship

ISTE 5: Technology Operations and Concepts

Question: How can students become digital citizenship leaders as they begin to create habits in digital academic learning that will carry on into the future?

When students enter the work force, chances are pretty high that they will be using the internet to collaborate, inspire, inform, and create. They will be collaborating through communication with people they see in the office and people across the globe with different time zones and cultures. They will be searching for inspiration on the internet to make their work better and more interesting. They will be informing themselves through the knowledge found on the internet by researching on their own. (These days, many people get hired to do jobs they are underqualified for and have to research how to do their job on their own!) People in the work force are using everything that has inspired and informed them on the internet, and they put it together to create something new to share. Students need to start habits now that will prepare them for this kind of relationship with the internet that is ethical and legal.

The school where I intern already uses http://turnitin.com/ as a way to track student’s originality in their writing assignments. I would like to expand on this platform by treating it less like a way to “catch” kids cheating, and more as an opportunity to observe originality of student work. I would like them to develop skills in summarizing and paraphrasing by looking at the percentage of similarity. An experimental activity would be if a whole class is given a paragraph to paraphrase, or a longer essay to summarize, and they all submit it to turnitin.com and see how the percentages come out. This activity would be an interesting exercise into the summarizing/paraphrasing skill. That activity could launch students into examining the art of originality in summarizing longer texts.

When teaching students about digital citizenship and citations, I would like to appeal to student’s ethics and values when discussing citations and copywriting. This article http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ccia-teaching-online-ethics-heather-wolpert-gawron shares a webquest that starts off defining “ethics”, which is essential idea when addressing conduct online. The words “justice” and “etiquette” could also be defined. With the definitions students can predict, at the start of the webquest, how these words could apply to digital citizenship.

The second step is a “netiquette” quiz on http://www.learnthenet.com/how-to/get-started/. I couldn’t find the quiz, but the site offers tips to various online topics such as writing an e-mail, social networking, doing business online, and researching online. It’s important that kids know, when learning “netiquette”, that what is written to people online should always be double checked with the audience in mind.

This acronym can be applied to communication on the internet. 

 

Students then look at https://creativecommons.org/about/ and learn about Creative Commons. This site has a great short video that provides an overview of copywriting and what Creative Commons does. If students think about how they want their own work to be protected, either now or in the future, they are more likely to respect other people’s restrictions on how their work is to be shared and used. After student’s learn what Creative Commons is, they can explore finding images on http://www.photosforclass.com/, which searches for Creative Commons photos and provide citations for each photo.

Students transition to exploring sites using a Google Advanced search to find resources that are fair use, and then suggest that site to another student. Speaking of Googling, here is a fabulous infographic that provides tips on how to search on google most effectively http://www.dailyinfographic.com/get-more-out-of-google-infographic.

The last two steps of this webquest asks students to watch a video and read about fair use and copywrite laws. Although relatively dry, the information is necessary for students to understand what they are dealing with when handling other people’s work online. After students go over all the information, they sign a classroom contract. This contract states that, for the rest of the year, they will conduct themselves ethically and responsibility on the internet, citing each source appropriately for every project for the rest of the year. This establishes high expectations. As a teacher, it is important to know that students realize the implications and you can hold them accountable to the expectations. By holding them accountable to these expectations in class, students will create online habits that will serve them throughout their lives.

Works Cited

Aisling. (2014, February 16). Get More Out of Google. Retrieved from Daily Infographic: http://www.dailyinfographic.com/get-more-out-of-google-infographic

Brown, S. (2013, April 15). Before You Speak: THINK. Retrieved from Homeschool With Love: http://www.homeschoolwithlove.com/2013/04/15/before-you-speak-think-free-printables/

Creative Commons . (n.d.). Retrieved from Creative Commons : https://creativecommons.org/about/

Learn The Net. (2015). Retrieved from Learn the Net .

Photos for Class. (2016). Retrieved from Photos for Class : http://www.photosforclass.com/

turnitin. (2015). Turnitin.com . Retrieved from Turnitin.com: http://turnitin.com/

Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2014, February 18). Common Core in Action: Teaching Online Ethics . Retrieved from Edutopia : http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ccia-teaching-online-ethics-heather-wolpert-gawron

 

Scaffolding Brochure for New Teachers

Scaffolding Brochure

This brochure outlines the fundamental ideas regarding the scaffolding process in classroom instruction. In order for students to truly master content, concepts and skills, they must be able to eventually guide their own learning. The scaffolding process depends on the interactive exchange of feedback between students and teachers. Eventually, students are weened off of heavy teacher support and the responsibility of learning is taken to heights initiated by the student. This brochure provides tips and reminders on how to strengthen this process.

Interactive Fiction

ISTE 4: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making

A great way for students to exercise their skills in critical thinking, problem solving and decision making, is for them to make artistic decisions while creating. While making creative decisions, students manifest a vision by navigating resources and using skills necessary in the creative process. Students who create their own video games are practicing how to think critically about their own processes and products, problem solve in order to manifest their original vision, and make decisions that shape outcomes.

Creating a game and/or community inspired by concepts related to the learning curriculum offers rich possibilities for students. In order to do this, students must have computer programming skills. This is not always possible to teach. An answer to this dilemma is a program called Inform7, which translates computer code into plain English. This way, students and teachers can use building blocks to get them started on the process of creating without needing to use code.  Using this program, students will create their own games, simulations, and interactive stories.

In the middle school Language Arts class where I intern, students are required to read the popular science fiction novel, Ender’s Game. As a project in the past, students have created board games based on the novel. It must include all the elements of a board game and incorporate character, setting, plot details from the novel. Because Ender’s Game has a strong computer-game element, it would be appropriate for students to create a computer game or simulation that reflects the novel. The use of technology would be replacing physical board-games, but the use of technology in the creative process would transform the process immensely.

The site includes has historical simulation project and rubric ideas that are inspiring: http://gamingthepast.net/simulation-design/inform-7/inform-simulation-assignments-and-rubrics/

It also gives a brief timeline of Interactive Fiction’s development:

http://inform7.com/if/interactive-fiction/

 

• Kiang, D. (2014). 3 ways coding and gaming can enhance learning. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/coding-and-gaming-enhance-learning-
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