Classroom Atmosphere

I enjoyed that the articles this week since they focused on more than just the “average” or typical “struggling” student. I also like they somewhat focused on the atmosphere of the classroom rather than solely instruction.

The Winebrenner article was nice to read because it brought many options to the table. It was also nice to see an article broken down into steps and sections instead of long laborious chunks of reading. When it comes to gifted learners, people seem to automatically assume that the person must be gifted in many areas. While for some this is true, for most, I don’t believe it is. I’ve seen this throughout my own life and continue to see it in children I work with. While I was placed in gifted writing/reading or English and History courses throughout my K-12 education, I have struggled with math throughout that same education.

This was the first time I have seen or heard of Brain Gym, other than during my student teaching. My master teacher liked Brain Gym and used different exercises with the class. We often did them with students as a way to refocus them or before an activity to focus their attention in the first place. There was an alphabet of movements on flashcards which I tried to find online but was unable to. I liked the discussion of physical movement over all, including using squeezable objects such as Kush balls. I saw Kush balls used in fourth grade classrooms I subbed in at one elementary school. They called the game Sparkle and it was to practice spelling. Students would sit on their desks and pass the Kush ball from neighbor to neighbor as they each spelled out the next letter in their spelling word. If it got to the next student and there were no letters, they had to say “Sparkle” and sit down. Ultimately there was one winner.

I liked that this article addressed having a respectful and supportive learning environment. It is not too often that a published journal article about DI addresses bullying and teasing. “Teachers and schools must enforce polices that simply do not allow teasing, name calling or other harassment practices that demonstrate rejection of kids for any reason.”(Winebrenner, p. 134). On a lighter note this reminded me of a bit from the new Aziz Ansari special on Netflix which discusses bullying. He talks about bullying and does the majority of the bit in this clip:

The Tobin article described DI pretty simply: “A key emphasis in differentiated instruction is placed on respectful tasks, flexible grouping and on-going assessment and adjustments for all students.” I appreciated that this article recognized that some struggling learners would need direct or explicit instruction. To me it seems like this is almost completely glossed over in DI discussion and the majority of people dismiss it because they think it is boring and doesn’t encourage students to love reading. While I agree with both of those statements, it’s also hard for students to love to read when they completely lack the ability to do it. This article also discussed the importance of relationship building in the classroom and how the teacher’s language can impact students. “Empowering and considerate teacher talk shows a commitment to student’s academic growth. The teacher serves as interactional gatekeeper facilitating the student’s acceptance as a valuable member of the learning community.”(Tobin, 2007).

The subject of Tobin’s study does talk about how she used literacy centers but realized as she worked to bring DI into her classroom, centers were not differentiating because all students were required to do the same thing at all the centers. Questions I had from this article regard her flexible grouping strategy. It mentions exploration or enactment groups. I’m guessing enactment group means students act out a text, but what does an exploration group look like? I’m sure it depends on the student’s age, but how much help do you provide for research?

I think she brought up some good points about encouraging students to explain their own learning. I felt like, "Why didn't I think of that?!"

- Writing key phrases on the board

- Repeating back part of the student's questions to them

- Asking students to create yes/no questions

- Establish discussion routines

The Tobin case study was very long and I felt like it took a long time to explain something that could have been explained pretty succinctly. The different types of teaching also could have been described in simpler ways. “Three themes emerged: learning support within the co-teaching structures, explicit teacher-instigated literacy support and interactional inclusion,”(Tobin, 2007). This also addressed co-teaching. I don’t have any experience co-teaching beyond student teaching. I’m currently working with a para-educator and we work on tag-teaming students who have questions. Later on in the year we will both be working with student small groups. Does anyone have experience co-teaching?

Tobin, R. (2005). Co-teaching in language arts: Supporting students with learning disabilities. Canadian Journal of Education, 28(4), 784-801.

Tobin, R. (2007). Differentiating in the language arts: Flexible options to support all students. Canadian Children, 32(2), 11-18.

Winebrenner, S. (2003). Teaching strategies for twice-exceptional students. Intervention in School and Clinic, 38(3), 131-137. 

Individualized Tasks and Gifted Education

Hello All! It has been a crazy last couple weeks with my after school program starting this past Monday. This first week we are focusing on relationship building activities and drawing them in, hopefully they’re not in for a rude awakening when the really academic stuff starts. Probably should use the word “stuff” as a teacher of literacy but that is where my head is at tonight.

First off I really enjoyed the Donna Wederich article on individualized responses. This was a very practical way to get students involved in reading and also includes a small way to assess their comprehension or interest. It repeated throughout the article that the entries included were from very high-level students and that was part of the reason the teacher was able to open such a strong dialogue. Do you think this method would be as effective with “average” or “low” students?

I think the assignment could be tailored (there it is again) down or up depending on the student. An average-level student should be able to complete this assignment. I would perhaps give more prompting questions to students on the lower half of the spectrum, rather than letting them have free reign over the letters and journal entries. I also wondered about doing an assignment like this with younger students since the students in this study were in middle school. I think it could easily be done with upper elementary or even 2^nd/3^rd with a lot of prompting.

What struck me from the Herzog article was how different differentiation form looks like for gifted students. I think it is especially hard for teachers who are so used to teaching to the middle, or even the bottom half of the middle, to include those higher order thinking activities. Activities that would be completely out of reach for over half of the class. I think this is why gifted education has taken on criticism or hostility for being “elitist” as the article mentions. I wonder if I as a teacher or if the whole new workforce of teachers is as prepared to teach a gifted student as we are to teach one who is below benchmark? Obviously this is just a part of the big spinning wheel of the push for standardized tests and raising test scores.

Examining gifted education makes me think back to my own. I went to enrichment classes in elementary school which was a pull-out program. Also my 4^th/5^th grade class was relatively small (our teacher looped with us) and the majority of us were very high achievers. Most of the people in my class ended up being the same people I was in honors courses with all through high school. I wonder looking back how much of this was based on intrinsic vs. extrinsic factors. Most of these students were from middle to upper middle class families, most had parents who had college degrees themselves and stay at home moms. Our teacher was also very involved and really nurtured our want to explore higher level thinking. I know for myself that even as a child I was perfectionist, who strived to do my absolute best anyway, even without my parents or teacher pushing me. This is a totally different ball game but how much of a child’s performance at school or even ability level do you think is just luck of the draw based on factors completely outside of their control?

Micro v. Macro (I guess)

The readings this week vacillated between being very interesting and just appearing to be a jumble of strung together words, with key quotes I liked.  The Parson’s article discussed macro vs. micro differentiation in a somewhat veiled way. A question I came away from this article with is what is the difference between micro differentiation and “reactive teaching”? Isn’t micro differentiation small changes you make while teaching? Not necessarily planned as your macro differentiated lesson is. I thought this quote really summed up differentiated instruction, but also makes you realize how massive of a task it is:

“Therefore, teachers who effectively differentiate their instruction not only carefully plan instruction to differentiate for the variety of learners in their classrooms but also provide moment- by-moment adaptations to meet specific needs that become clear during instruction — needs that were not or could not be anticipated”(Parsons, 2013).

I find it interesting that the Duffy & Hoffman article is from 14 years ago but we are still having the same whole language vs. phonics debate even if it is just on a minor level. I found this quote to be interesting:

“Most U.S. elementary students are learning to read better than they ever have in the past (Berliner & Biddle, 1996), are competitive with students in other developed nations of the world (Bracey, 1997)”(Duffy & Hoffman, 1999).

Is that still true? We did an exercise in one of my undergraduate classes ranking different countries in different subject areas. The U.S. normally faired in the mid-to lower half of the bunch when the statistics came out. Though when I discussed this assignment with my brother, who has a master’s degree in Political Science and is just a fountain of random knowledge otherwise, he questioned the validity of the information since often the countries that came out on top were much smaller than the U.S, (Finland, Norway, etc.), so of course it would be easier to have a higher literacy rate in a country with a population one-fifth the size of Texas.

Another quote I took away from this article was one of my favorite from the readings this week:

“Such excellent teachers do not rely on a single program or method because they know that good teaching requires "doing the right thing in the right way and at the right time in response to problems posed by particular people in particular places on particular occasions”(Duffy & Hoffman, 1999).

I did not relate to the Tomlinson article very much. While it has good general ideas, middle school is just not my game.

Finally the big article. The Shulman. I immediately identified with a point he made, “Teachers themselves have difficulty in articulating what they know and how they know it.” This reminded me of my student teaching observations and the conversations I had with my supervisor afterwards. He would ask me how it went and they ask me how I knew. This was extremely hard for me to answer at first. The first observations always warranted answers like the students were engaged, they asked questions etc. Which his response to was always “and what else?” I think it would still be hard for me to articulate an answer to that question now, but the practice of it made me better.

Shulman (1987) articulated all of the plates teachers have in the air at any given time, “the subject matter being taught, the classroom context, the physical and psychological characteristics of the students, or the accomplishment of purposes not readily assessed on standardized tests, are typically ignored in the quest for general principles of effective teaching.”

Another point he made that stood out to me is that teaching is a learned profession. A teacher should never stop learning or believe they have all the answers. I think that is often a sign of a teacher who has given up or is bored with teaching or the school system. There are too many teachers who get far into their career and then never change their methods or point of view and it’s their students that suffer. I can only hope when I am at that point in my career I will still be open to new ideas. That’s part of the reason I think having student teachers is so important because it often shakes up what tenured teachers have concretely set up in their classroom.

On a final note I would like to discuss tailoring in class. I don’t think there was enough in the articles about it besides:

“Adaptation and Tailoring to Student Characteristics: consideration of conceptions, preconceptions, misconceptions, and difficulties, language, culture, and motivations, social class, gender, age, ability, aptitude, interests, self-concepts, and attention”(Shulman, 1987).

The term tailoring reminds me of this video from one of my favorite Disney movies.

English Language Learners

The video was hard to get through. Is it being read by a computer? The narrator’s voice has a very choppy, Siri-like quality at times but seemed totally normal at other points. 

While fractions is a little high for my target age group, I think this idea in general is great. I know in my student teaching class my master teacher had students work on the ipad with our 8^th grade “helpers” to play math games. I know they really enjoyed it. (On a side note if anyone knows of math apps, sites or games that target 1^st or 2^nd graders let me know! I’m looking for games for my new job!)

Finally an article that feels more in my wheelhouse! This is probably because it has a bilingual/ELL focus, but it was so much easier for me to read than a lot of our past articles. An issue this article brought up right away is the viewpoints of native language as a deficit vs. native language as a resource. “Viewing heritage language as a resource encouraged us to design an instructional approach that valued and leveraged cultural practices and linguistic knowledge”(Puzio, Keyes, Cole & Jiménez,, 2013).Depending on your viewpoint on ELL education and your own level of education about ELL education and second language acquisition, there is a large divide. On a side note, when public education began in this country some of it was what we now consider to be dual language in English and German.

I think the idea of collaborative translation is a great way to involve a student’s native language in the classroom, particularly if you have a large about of students with the same native language. I like that this also gives students a level of independence they may not have doing work only in English, if they are at a proficiency level where they must depend somewhat on the teacher. As a substitute in bilingual classrooms I didn’t see a whole lot of translation work but I did see students who would complete assignments in a mix of Spanish and English. Often times if they were prompted to complete an assignment solely in English, if they weren’t sure of a word they would write that particular word in Spanish. The difference there being that all of their teachers were bilingual.

There are a lot of misconceptions about English Language Learners and how they learn. Many of the “facts” that are out there are really chalked up to be folk linguistics perpetuated for certain peoples political gain. I included a little snippet of an assignment from my T&L 510 class that just ended that was about disputing folk linguistics:

I disagree that the more time students spend in a second language context the quicker they learn the language. A child being put in a poor quality immersion or submersion program is not going to help them learn L2 as quickly as a high quality transitional or development bilingual program. As Crawford (2004) states, “What counts most is the quality of second-language exposure, not the quantity,”(Crawford, p. 189). I also disagree that children acquire an L2 once they can speak it. According to linguistics expert Stephen Krashen, “We acquire language when we understand it,”(Crawford, p. 189). We acquire a language through comprehensible input, or being able to understand what others are saying in L2. “Speaking per se does not cause language acquisition,’ Krashen argues, but follows from it as a ‘result of obtaining comprehensible input,’”(Crawford, p. 189). Students also often experience a silent period where they choose not to speak English, no matter the amount they are able to speak or understand.

The most preposterous of all the statements from the focus reflection is that all children learn L2 in the same way. Many factors affect how a student learns L2. Including negative influences that may change their affective filter such as “anxiety, lack of self-confidence and inadequate motivation to speak the second language,”(Crawford, p. 191). All of these factors can make acquiring L2 more difficult for students. There are also positive influences they can affect how students feel while at school and may affect their attitude towards L2 such as a bilingual-bicultural curriculum and a classroom that recognizes the value of their L1 and native culture. Implying that all students acquire L2 the same is the same as implying that all students learn to read or learn early math skills in the exact same way.

Many of the proponents of English-Only education are politicians or public figures with absolutely no background in education or any kind of scientific research. In fact the man behind getting ELL programs taken out of California schools (where there are more students who speak a native language other than English, than those whose native language IS English) is Ron Unz, a “businessman” with a Harvard physics degree. While he may be highly educated about physics, that doesn’t give any background in SLA or teaching 6 year olds who speak zero English. His movement was/is called English-Only. An interesting fact is that his supporters included Arnold Schwarznegger, which I find ironic. Not because of the picture seen below but because part of his original fame coming from his imperfect ability to speak English.

I included another section of a past assignment about the English Only movement and Proposition 227 in California:

Bilingual education is dismissed by this movement as failing students with ineffective instruction to help them learn English. However this movement is built by politicians looking to capitalize on semantics through deceivingly worded catchphrases such as English Language Empowerment Act, English for the Children and Yes on English (Crawford, 2004). This movement and Proposition 227 is built mainly on public misconceptions such as language is easier to learn the younger you are, immersion is the easiest method for children to learn English and bilingual support from classroom teachers acts as a crutch. Unz was not quick to point out that “because of teacher shortages, fully 70 percent of California’s LEP students were not enrolled in bilingual classrooms,”(Crawford, p. 324). Bilingual education with a gradual transition to a traditional English classroom is a strong and effective option that school districts should be able to consider and/or implement based on their own needs. I believe that bilingual education should be an equal effort on the part of the school, school board, teachers and school support staff as well as parents of students.

Crawford, James. Educating English Learners. 5^th ed. 2004. Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Education Services.

Puzio, K., Keyes, C., Cole , M., & Jiménez,, R. (2013). Language differentiation: Collaborative translation to support bilingual reading. Bilingual Research Journal.

D'Oh! Thoughts on the videos from Walden Pond

Apparently I had a blonde moment last class. I thought we weren't doing blogs for multiple weeks, not just last week. 

To be fair, this is what I looked like the day I graduated from college:

Here are my notes from the videos. I wrote down information I found important from the video or that I really related to.

Video 1: Supporting all learners

- Essence of differentiation: Where are we trying to go? Who’s with us? When you find out who is ahead or behind, what will do about that?

- Is it just me or does Jay seem a little bitter to be playing second fiddle in the video?

- I like that Carol Tomlinson makes the point of studying students to understand how their lives are affecting their learning.

Common misconceptions of differentiation

-          Not differentiation: Giving struggling students less work and high achieving students more work.

-          Not helpful for struggling student to do less and not useful for advanced learner to do twice as much of the same thing

Make understanding for advanced learners

-          More complex

-          More abstract

-          More multi-faceted

-          More connective

Make understanding for struggling learners

-          More scaffolded

-          More concrete

-          More guided

Video 2: Authentic Learning and Assessment

- First thought, why are these videos filmed in stone cottage in the middle of no where? What is this Walden Pond?

- Carol looks equally bored while Jay is talking.

- Examining what a discipline is. Science is a discipline because it evokes an entirely different way of thinking.

- Coaching analogy – I never thought of coaches as differentiating. Playing team sports as a child, I don’t really see the connection but I can compare this to swimming in high school. We were divided in lanes by our ability/times or by what stroke we were practicing and often we all had different individual goals.

- Conceptual Velcro – Big ideas help the little ideas adhere

- Carol referring to someones work as “interesting plowing”, what a great way to say long and hard to read. Who knew we could have something so simple in common with Carol Tomlinson?

Carol’s point that some teachers believe only a few students can use knowledge. Differentiation is broken up between smart and not smart students. This is terribly sad, but I think it is all too common in classrooms.

Video 3: A Change of Mindset

To me this was by far the most boring of the videos. It had almost a Charlie Brown teacher way of coming through to me. Wahhh Wahhh Wahhh standardized tests Wahhh Wahhh Wahh.

- Jay often hears the phrase: I’d like to teach to understanding,I’d like to but… - misconception

- Most missed items on state tests are not skill based questions but understanding based questions. This seems particularly interesting to me since as they say in the video, we often assume standardized tests are all fact based. 

- “I don’t think too many of us signed on for test prep as a career” Amen sister!

Carol's tips for high test scores

1.  understanding, 
2. confidence 
3. competence

- Assessment as a photo album, not a snap shot. Standardized testing gives us just one look into learning. - - - Standardized testing is like taking a picture with a wide angle lens, it only shows the students understanding from a far away view.

- The teacher from a small school in Idaho: 8 ways to teach reading? That is impressive!

Video 4: Teaching, the Ever-Evolving Profession

- AMT – Acquisiton Meaning Transfer

Can often tell which classes are advanced vs. remedial by looking at students.

Advanced – higher income, more opportunity, often cacasioon

Remedial – low income, students of color

Pedagogy of Poverty

Do you start with the curriculum then differentiate or do you start with differentiation and then tie it to the curriculum? Where does assessment come in? Start with it? Or include it later on?

- Parts of a classroom are inter-related, hard to pick which to start with?

Steps of Backward Design

1.       Identifying desired result – standards, essential knowledge, skills

2.       Think about assessment evidence, particularly summative assessment, connect goals to the evidence of learning

3.       Plan instruction, develop lessons

- You can kind of hear the camera man or someone coughing in the background!

- 21^st century skills or learning – aligns with UBD, need to be able to apply what you learn, not static but adapting.

My most burning questions from the videos are:

1. What would you consider 21st century skills?

2. What is UBD? I don't remember them ever saying the whole acronym. I'm guessing it has something to do with backward design.

3. Do you start with the curriculum then differentiate or do you start with differentiation and then tie it to the curriculum? Where does assessment come in? Start with it? Or include it later on?

I find the third question to be the most pressing on my mind. 

DI for the (Mostly) Younger Set

The readings this week offered more direct examples of DI in literacy situations, as well as common literacy problems students have. I thought it was interesting in the Brown and Morris article how some low spellers were able to regurgitate spelling words for the test but “were unable to spell these same patterns even a week later,”(p. 168). That sounds like the classic cramming study behavior of a college student.

I was not surprised to see the classic rule of 3 under Brown and Morris’ organization of spelling instruction. I was also not surprised to read that their reading groups and spelling groups were relatively similar. I liked that this article offered different tangible activities to do in the classroom. I particularly liked the partner game day activities: memory, racetrack, bingo and speed sort. I think this article made a good point about quality intervention, the longer it takes for a teacher to intervene the farther the student will fall behind and “the spelling achievement ‘gap’ will be easiest to close before it starts to widen,”(p. 181).

My favorite article from this week was But They All Read at Different Levels by Laura Robb. I liked that it directly answered real questions about differentiated instruction. I liked the examples of tiered activities. This made the whole idea of tiered activities much simpler. With this as a reminder I can now think back to literacy projects I did in elementary school and how the choices we were given was a method of differentiated instruction. I often chose to make posters for book reports rather than dioramas or do a dramatic monologue about the book. I can see how technology in the classroom now opens even more doors for options for tiered activities such as moviemaking (as Robb mentions), PowerPoint, Prezi, online book talks, book trailers etc. I remember making a terrible video for a book report in the eighth grade in which my group and I acted out a scenario we wrote as the characters of a certain book. But it was made with a VHS camcorder and may as well be considered Stone Age technology now. It will be interesting to see how technology continues to impact literacy instruction. Regarding book trailers I found this great site that is all book trailers for books for third grade and up: http://www.slimekids.com/book-trailers/. This is a great link that spans more grades and gives more insight behind the stories: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/65-book-videos-build-excitement-summer-reading. An example is a trailer for Lily Brown's Paintings by Angela Johnson which I posted just before this post because it was having trouble uploading to this post.

Another thing I appreciated about the articles this week was that they were more focused on younger elementary grades (since that is my focus) rather than upper elementary or middle school. The Tobin and McInnes (2008) article provided great insight into real life differentiation in a primary classroom. Since we spend so much time discussing small group instruction I found this quote important:

“Researchers found small-group instruction (three students) to be just as effective as one-to-one instruction in developing reading skills such as phoneme segmentation, fluency and comprehension, while the former study documents the success of mixed-ability groupings (four to five students) to achieve fluency and comprehension in reading at the primary level,”(p. 4).

I already believed that small group instruction was more effective than whole group, but it is good to know that it is believed to be as effective as one-on-one interaction with the teacher. 

Lily Brown's Paintings - Book Trailer

Equalizing DI

The readings this week were much easier for me to understand. They offered similar yet varying perspectives on differentiated instruction and the idea of using graphic organizers in the classroom. My only issue with this topic is that they would be quite difficult to use in a kindergarten or first grade class room.

The Tomlinson text did a good job of explaining different methods of differentiation: foundational to transformational, concrete to abstract, simple to complex etc. While these individual parts made sense I’m not sure about the whole equalizer metaphor.

I did however like this Tomlinson quote: “All students need lessons that are coherent, relevant, powerful, transferable, authentic, and meaningful,”(p. 49). This pretty much sums up the need for differentiated instruction. I think the Tomlinson readings this week really cleared up the three different types of differentiation. I also liked its explanation of learning profile differentiation as ensuring that a student has a way of “coming at” materials and ideas that match his preferred way of learning.

One thing I would like to discuss in class is the idea of curriculum compacting. In theory I think it is a good idea but I’m not sure how you would be able to implement it in a large class. I also think it might be difficult to implement in an early elementary classroom, though I think it would work well in an upper elementary or middle school classroom. I also wondered about the idea of using varied texts. Tomlinson suggests asking the district for three small sets of three different texts. We discussed in class how many teachers choose to completely disregard school curriculum, but since this is so closely related to the budget, I’m not sure how easy it would be without district support. Magazines, brochures and newsletters however would be easy for teachers to collect on their own.

Remember these:

I do have a little knowledge about the idea of learning contracts. The alternative high school in Wenatchee works solely through learning contracts. The teacher and student draw it up and then the student works almost completely independently out of a book or on pre-determined projects. Obviously in elementary school this would have more guidance, which I think is appropriate. From what I saw the learning contracts at this school were mainly pacing guides so the student could attain the credits as quickly or slowly as they wanted. It depends solely on their motivation. It was easy to tell if they were dedicated to their work and easier to tell if they weren't  To me it seemed like the students who weren’t as dedicated didn’t get much out of it.

The McMackin and Witherell article was of the most interest to me because it was one of the first to mention how English Language Learners are effected by differentiation. This article says that by 2030 about 40 percent of children will come from homes where English is not the native language. This is already the case in Wenatchee where the population is nearly 50/50 Caucasian and Hispanic. The demographics of a school district definitely impacts many factors including differentiation. I believe diversity of some sort is so essential in the classroom to bring different ideas and teach students about different types of families and cultures. What are some of the ways you have seen ELL students involved in differentiation? How have you see other cultures involved in the classroom?

Differentiating Reading Instruction

 The textbook readings this week had many points in common.

1.      The importance of constant, quality assessment

2.      Develop varied ways students can explore their learning

3.      Teach up.

4.      Clue in to your student’s interests.

5.      Share responsibility of learning with students

The readings were all important, but somewhat repetitive since they all seemed to cite each other’s research. My favorite of the textbooks so far is the Tomlinson text. Not only do I like the way the information is presented (I find it quite a bit easier to read) but I also like that it seems to delve more into the emotional effects of outside lives on the learning and behavior of  children. “Some kids come at the world with their dukes up. Life is a fight for them in part because the belligerence that surrounds them spawns belligerence in them,”(Tomlinson, p. 14).

The readings this week continued my questions about the difference between learning profiles and learning styles. Chapter 1 of Tomlinson discussed the difference between today’s differentiation and that of the 1970’s, “at least we understood that students have different learning profiles.” The Robb text also discusses Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences as the research base for differentiated instruction, which makes me wonder what exactly is the difference between multiple intelligences and learning styles? I can understand that different people have higher aptitudes in different areas (literacy, music, art, mathematics etc.) but does this effect or shape how they learn?

Another part of the readings this week that I was unsure about was the idea of tiering. Though all of the readings talked about it, I was confused by all the research jargon. While reading this week I also wondered how teachers can differentiate when they have a very rigid or strict curriculum guide set by their district or school. I like the idea Robb suggested when differentiating reading in a high school English class, three different books about the same topic at different levels, but is that realistic in every district? On a personal note, I thought it was a little interesting she completely disregarded To Kill A Mockingbird, that was one of the only high school curriculum books I really loved when I was in school.

I would also like to learn more about RTI. I attended some RTI meetings during my student teaching where the kindergarten team, vice principal, special education teacher and school counselor discussed individual students they were concerned about. Their concerns spanned from the student’s reading and complex thinking abilities to social problems and home life. So it wasn't until I read about it in these textbooks that I realized it was related to differentiated instruction.

One thing I liked about the readings this week was the discussion of the teaching to the lowest, middle and highest learners. Their points about advanced learners and struggling learns in particular were very important for teachers and all school employees to consider. I saw a lot of my own views of school in the “trappings of advanced learners”. Particularly about advanced learners becoming perfectionists (Tomlinson, p. 11). I know a lot of my friends that I grew up with and attended elementary school with also consider themselves to be perfectionists, sometimes to their own detriment. I think we wouldn't continue to put so much pressure on ourselves through school and as adults if our teachers had done more to support well-being rather than encouraging competition.  

Robb, L. (2008). Differentiating reading instruction: How to teach reading to meet the needs of each student. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Tomlinson, C. (2005). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms. (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Walpole, S., & McKenna, M. (2009). How to plan differentiated reading instruction: Resources for grades k-3. New York, NY: Guilford.

Changing Paradigms, Learning Styles, Art and Harry Potter

First I’m going to start with the video. I have always loved this video because it points out facts that are so often overlooked, particularly about ADHD in schools and school design. My view on ADHD diagnosis in young children is that they are behaving as young boys and girls do, with the addition of the fast-paced, instant gratification giving society we currently live in, it may make them want to sit still or pay attention for shorter amounts of time. I think the diagnosis is partially laziness on the part of the parents, teachers and other important adults in the child’s life. As the video points out, I don’t think that ADHD is completely made up, but I think it is widely over diagnosed. Looking at members of myself and members of mine own family, we often like to joke we are stricken with Larsen Adult ADD. We all have a hard time sitting still and focusing on one thing for long periods of time, unless it is a book. My dad was kicked out of kindergarten for being too wild, I can only imagine today that his pediatrician may have suggested a Ritalin prescription.

My other favorite part of the video is its discussion of school design, particularly when it discusses how schools were built to be like factories. The class I originally watched this in, a T&L class whose name I can’t quite remember, we went on to discuss how schools architecture then went on to be built to resemble prisons and are now built to look like malls. I always got a kick out of this because the same person who designed my high school, Wenatchee High School, also designed Chelan County Jail. The whole building which had between 2000 and 2200 students during my time there had a handful of windows in the classrooms. My friends and I were always excited when we got our new schedules and found out one of our rooms had a window. Even though the windows were often placed in the back corner of the room, away from the white board. My junior year they remodeled the front of the school and added a big window façade (go figure) and a new common area and a very small outdoor eating area we referred to as “The Cage” because it was cement on all sides and instead of having open air pillars there were metal grates to keep students in. Very bizarre, yet somehow appropriate with the design of the rest of the school.

This is the new front of the school circa 2007.

Now onto the readings. The Stahl piece, Different Strokes for Different Folks: A Critique of Learning Styles was interesting because it cited so much research that invalidated information that is often shoved down our throat in Human Development and T&L classes. I distinctly remember studying Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences for tests and having to identify for class which of the intelligences I fall under. As a teacher we are taught to incorporate many different kinds of activities into any given lesson: hands on, physical movement, art, manipulatives, drama etc. While I think the incorporation of these different activities is just good practice to get all students involved and excited about the lesson, it’s interesting to know this may not necessarily impact their learning or retention of information solely because there are different options. Although this is where I question the research against learning styles because if a child is more involved and excited about their learning, aren’t they more likely to retain it? Or is it just a fun activity that then exits their brain as quickly as a boring kill and drill exercise. I found the Smagorinsky article to contradict the idea that students do not learn more or gain more out of a lesson if they enjoy it more or make personal connections to it. “Without this process of personal examples to enrich school understandings, academic knowledge is hollow and difficult to construct meaning for,”(p.199). I did appreciate Stahl’s explanation of the learning styles as “Gardner’s attempt to expand the notion of what we think is intelligent behavior to people who are skilled in music, or dance or even in interpersonal relations,”(Stahl, 1999). This is at least one part of Gardner’s work that I find to be truly important, if he at all helped legitimize the arts as part of a school curriculum.

The Smagorinsky article on Vygotsky was my favorite this week because it gave some historical background that I had never considered before and was so relatable to practical application in the classroom. Something we have all dealt with either in school or in our adult lives is being shut down by another person mid-sentence. This never feels good no matter what age you are and it seems to happen in K-12 classes all the time, whether it is from a lack of time to have a real discussion or a power trip on the part of the teacher/student. I think Vygotsky is completely right in his idea that the feeling of inferiority that stems from this repeatedly happening is more debilitating than any actual learning disability a student may have.

Prior to reading this article I didn’t realize that Vygotsky was such an art enthusiast or his background in literature. I loved his emphasis on meta-experience and imagination, particularly “Thus, a person does not simply think about art, or respond emotionally to it, but has emotional reactions that when reflected upon, enable a person to consider more profoundly the depths of the human experience,”(Smagorinsky, p. 195). I love art and plan to widely incorporate it in my classroom, whether it is art projects or students learning about different famous artists. I also think art is a great way to incorporate different cultures into the classroom and let kids practice creativity and fine motor skills in a safe space, which Vygotsky goes on to discuss as mentioned later in the article. My own love of art started when I was very little and my grandma brought me a children’s book based around Degas paintings from her trip to Paris. These are a few of the books I have purchased to build my art library:

 

I found this article drawing a lot of similarities to the video, especially when it discusses how not all children are represented in their own schools which may be “dedicated to the values of the white middle class,”(Smagorinsky, p. 196). The article goes on to further discuss cultural inclusion in the classroom through different art forms such as hip hop which of course made me think of this:

The questions I drew from this article were:

1. What are ways to include more exploratory thought in elementary school classrooms
2. How does the slant toward standardized testing impact student’s ability to use exploratory thought?
3. How do you currently or plan to incorporate student's cultures into your classroom?

I found the Davila and Patrick article to be a whole lot of “No Duh!!” information. I was almost tempted to throw in “Oh Really?! With Seth and Amy”. Of course a kid is going to want to read the Harry Potter series or Captain Underpants instead of a Newberry award winner with a boring name. I did find it interesting (and completely reflected in my own life) when it was mentioned in the article that Harry Potter readers, “especially those that read all seven books in the series, were more passionate about reading than non-Potter readers in the study,”(p. 202). I read the Sorcerer’s Stone in the third grade after my mom randomly picked it up and thus began my life-long love of Harry Potter. Many of the books in the series were often released on my birthday so that made them extra special to me as I anxiously waited for the mailperson to bring me my favorite birthday present (which I would then start reading and barely stop for meals until I finished). I think the Harry Potter series is one of the big reasons my love of reading really took off and I think this is the same for many others my age and continues for the young children that are still discovering it. 

Finally, the Santangelo, Knotts, Clemmer and Mitchell article was very informative on parts of differentiated instruction that I did not previously understand. Though DI was emphasized in my undergraduate career I never heard the different types: content, process, and product, until this class. The best piece of advice I found from this article was Tomlinson’s edict on differentiation:

“We would differentiate better if we always expect too much of kids, rather than expect too little. When in doubt, teach up. I’ve never met a kid who couldn’t do more than I thought he or she could. Under the right circumstances, every kid can do more than we believe l we compliment them by giving them something that’s a little too hard and by helping them get there…”(p. 202).

I also loved their point that group activities need to be organized in a way that every child is able to have a prominent role and make a contribution that matters beyond jobs like “timekeeper” (You always knew the kids in the group that wanted that job just wanted to check out, even as a child). This article goes on to discuss learning profiles. Which a part of me is a little confused what the difference is between learning profile and learning style. What’s the difference? Is learning profile just made up of preferences for an optimal learning environment? But do those preferences make a difference when it comes down to the amount of learning going on?

So in conclusion most of my burning questions are coming from learning styles. I hope we read more on this in the future. While I understand that the research behind learning styles is completely lacking accountability, how similar is it to learning preferences or profiles or any of the other language these other articles used? I agree that learning styles may be a big piece of teacher folklore, but I think it is important to consider children’s “preferences” so that they feel at home in the classroom.

What is literacy differentiation? Why would we do it?

It is quite amazing how much differentiated instruction has changed yet also stayed the same based on these three articles. From what I remember of literacy instruction from elementary school, my fourth and fifth grade teachers offered us some great opportunities to read and study independently. I remember doing literature circles, book clubs and presentations to the class in many different forms including art projects, acting out scenes from the book and straight presentations. Lorraine Goldman’s article reminded me of a program from fourth grade called Ringo or Reading Bingo

It was a bingo sheet filled with different genres of books pretty similar to the one seen above. Whenever we got a “bingo” we could pick a prize. For those competitive type-A students who love to read like me, it was a great challenge for me to see how many cards I could go through. Funny enough, I still have my Ringo trophy in the garage. Looking back on my fourth/fifth grade class now (our teacher looped with us) almost all of us went on to take almost exclusively Honors classes in high school and had a high amount of support at home. Our teacher was able to differentiate projects and assignments to our interests but we all had relatively the same level of high literacy ability.

I connected with Lorraine Goldman’s article because she was focused on giving her students opportunity and letting them take charge of their learning to some extent. While I understand this will be a different level of independence between secondary and elementary education, I think this is a great way for students to get excited about what they are learning. I also agreed with her overall philosophy about the attitude in her classroom: “The youngsters' re-sponse was an indication of the truth in what psychologists tell us about people-that they often conform to others' conception of them. My attitude toward the students was one of expecting intelligent, thoughtful, mature work, and usually most of them produced such work,”(Goldman, p. 238). I think a positive attitude may be one of the keys to keeping classroom harmony and is an important part of differentiated instruction.

While Goldman did not give a real definition of differentiated instruction, rather just showed how she used it in practice, Bett’s on the other hand provided a definition. I really agree with Bett’s definition, “differentiated instruction then places a premium on individual differences, gives every child an equal opportunity to learn, promotes personality development and social adjustment, and fosters the development of desirable attitudes by giving the child practice on when as well as how to use language skills,”(p. 713). I was surprised by the number of levels included in his article. While this information is from 1954 it sounds eerily similar to some things I have heard from current teaching practices that are occurring mostly because of No Child Left Behind. It’s legislature like this that somewhat unknowingly discourages differentiated instruction so that teachers. How can we as teachers compensate for the “teach to the test” lessons that may be mandatory parts of school curriculum?

The article by Harry Baker was disturbing at its worst but also had some points that are somewhat relevant today. Some things I noticed that are not appropriate for modern day educational philosophy is that he always refers to the teachers as she and he paints all “categories” of children with a very sweeping brush with some very bizarre assumptions thrown into his research. Overall I think his claims about the mental abilities of “bright students” were the most accurate. Particularly when it comes to their possession of “desirable powers of self-criticism”(p. 138). As someone who got high standardized test scores throughout my K-12 education and attended Honors and AP classes, self-criticism is something I have struggled with myself, along with many of my classmates. Students should have the metacognitive skills to examine their thought processes and the quality of their work but there is also a point where it becomes unattainable perfectionism. This is something that has always been somewhat inherent in my personality but I think it was at times somewhat encouraged in “bright classes” particularly in high school.

Some points from the Adam’s and Brown list of characteristics of bright students that I agreed with included 14. They often have the home advantages of superior cultural conditions and 22. They occasionally tantalize teachers and prove to be a source of worry to them, because they are so keen that they surpass the teacher in mental activity (p. 138). There may have been a few moments in high school when I may have been that antagonizing student. But there were also points on that list were completely ridiculous including that bright children are generally above the average in physical growth and exceed others in strength, speed, and muscular coordination (Baker, p. 140). While this assumption may be true if Baker had prefaced that students may be more likely to be considered bright if they were put in kindergarten at a later age and therefore may be bigger than their five year old or newly six year old peers. A question I had from reading this selection was based on Baker’s mention of bright students being able to do many tasks at once. Considering the technological age we live in where we are often multi-tasking, would more children be considered “bright” now than in 1936? This video was just posted on a magazine site I love to read, mainly because the little girl is so cute and excited to see her dad's face on the television screen. According to the blurb with the video on Jezebel, she is a little younger than three years old.

Another point from Baker’s article that I drew parallels with our modern age was his assumption that “slow” children tire relatively easily and have short spans of attention (p. 146). It seems as if even adult attention spans are growing shorter now because we live in such a culture of instant satisfaction based around technology. This point made me wonder if more children would be considered slow now than in 1936 because of their attention spans?  I just found this website by typing attention span into Google so I can’t be sure how accurate its statistic are, but if they are anything close to accurate humans now have shorter attention spans than fish.

Attention Span Statistics

Overall I think his most disturbing comment throughout the whole article was about the quality of teaching for all students. “Relatively, bright pupils profit most and the slow pupils least from superior teaching,”(p. 146). Based on his assumptions the majority of children would probably fall in his average to slow categories in the present day. Thankfully we don’t look at student’s ability this concretely today (except for on standardized tests). All students deserve a teacher who not only has studied education and teaches to the best of their ability, but also one who loves working with students and provides a grounding and positive influence in their life.