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?
The equalizer analogy made sense to me because I was able to see that parts of a whole could be changed to meet individual needs. That means I do not have to have a different lesson for every student.
ReplyDeleteI did not really understand what compacting meant. Is it that the student can "test out" of some lesson in order that we may advance him ahead of his peers? What do we do with the student that is so far ahead of the class that he could probably just go into the next grade?
I really like the idea of learning contracts, but I think unfortunately it will not work for the smalls. Third grade is probably the lowest grade this will work in, just based on my experiences. Too bad. If we could get the young ones interested in their own learning (at an early age) that would make it so much easier for teacher and student in the future.
I agree with Debbie's questions and comments. You emphasis on ELL was interesting to me. To answer your question, I thought that I would be an ELL teacher but ended up going in a different direction. When I was student teaching, I had a Japanese and a Chinese student in my English class. My cooperating teacher had no idea what to do with them. Since I speak Japanese, I started annotating stories and class materials with notes in Japanese, picking on key vocabulary and concepts. As the year wore on, I annotated less and less as they required. (I don't speak Chinese, but my knowledge of Kanji and a really good dictionary allowed me to fake it for the Chinese student) This type of scaffolding is doable in places like Wenatchee with a 50/50 population. Are there many teachers down there that are bilingual? Full disclosure: I am absolutely against English only legislation as I think many teachers are who have worked with ELL students.
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ReplyDeleteHelping ELLs in our classroom only increases in importance as our country becomes a more globally minded place. I really haven't seen a lot of good differentiation for ELL students in early grades. I've seem many ELL students just become a serious behavior problem because they are so unengaged in the learning process. Eric's idea of having annotated stories in their language is really cool! I think that teachers with no knowledge of the ELL's first language could still have materials available for the child in both languages. And, in early grades, I think it is so important to have students share their language with the class. Langauge is so playful and we should all relish the opportunity to learn more about a new language and culture!
Hi there
ReplyDeleteI have a situation we can discuss. A couple years back I was working in a classroom where the teacher would call the 3 ELL students to a table in the back during silent reading time and she would work through a much lower level story. The teacher would talk through vocabulary, ask the students to supply the vocab word in thier native language, she would try and pronounce the word in thier language, and then she would say both the English and non english version of the word for the duration of the story. After she would work through letter/sound correlation in writing by having the 3 ELL students spell and say words from the story. I thought this was really neat, and the students really enjoyed the time. Are there positives to this group work? Are there negatives? How does this connect to DI? Kinda seems like a slam dunk, but I may be wrong.
See you soon