The
articles I had to read for this weeks differentiation blog included one about gifted students and another that discussed making the switch from higher level
suburban schools to lower ses schools. Both of the articles provide insight as to why differentiation
is so pivotal in the classroom.
The dilemma in the first article by Wilkins described how most gifted
students are not challenged enough.
Wilkins stated, “The goal of framework is to make it easier for
elementary teachers to provide challenging activities for students working
above their grade level in mathematics without having to plan a separate every”
(2006, p. 70). I think this a
great point because I think a lot of the time teachers don’t know what to do
with gifted students, and they are usually just passed along to help out other
students that are struggling.
There is also the issue that sometimes gifted students don’t know how
explain their thinking because a lot of them time they do everything so fast in
their head they can’t keep track of how they figured the problem out. Another problem Wilkins posed was that
gifted students might need extra motivation, so this is why teachers still need
to be involved and not leave the gifted students alone (2006, p. 12). Now in regards to the other article,
the teacher in this piece talked about how her methods with the gifted students
in her suburban teaching did not work well with her students in the lower ses
schools. Through her teaching, her
students complained that they were mostly angry at her for making them feel
incompetent, even though she felt like the assignments she was giving had worked
so well in the past (Robert, 2002, p. 292). She also realized that what these students needed the most
is simply confidence. One of the
most important lesson I learned from this article is the key to successful
lesson include structure, encouragement, and time. Overall, I thought the discoveries of these two articles
were extremely important. In my
placement, there is one student who I think should be considered gifted but she
is not given the extra support and challenges that she needs. However, it is tricky situation because
she is usually gone for half of the school week for her competitive gymnastics team. My MT does not have the time to give her extra support because when she is
in the classroom the student has to be focused on catching up with the rest of
the class. I think this case
pertains a lot to the parent and teacher connection. If her parents were to communicate more often when the child
is going to be out the class, then perhaps they could work something out that
would benefit the student more.
The articles I focused on this week are also about differentiation, but as it pertains to helping ELL's in mathematics. Overall, both articles touched on the misconception that ELL's have an easier time learning math because it doesn't directly focus on Language as much as other subjects might. However, because ELL's are learning how to communicate and socialize in a new language while also learning to speak and understand the more challenging academic vocabulary of that language, mathematics can be a very difficult subject for them. Some of the differentiation techniques Christy mentioned for Gifted students can also be useful for ELL's as well. Just as teachers don't want to plan separate lessons for Gifted students for each whole class lesson, it would also be challenging to do that for ELL so teachers need to know how to offer support naturally as part of the classroom environment. The Differentiating Instruction article mentioned four ways teachers can do this through mathematics learning (and in other subjects as well). Those are comprehensible input (students are able to understand the information they are hearing in reading), contextualize instruction (they are learning information through a meaningful context that can be built on), low anxiety learning environment (cooperative learning with peers who can offer support), and meaningful learning that is engaging and interesting to the learner. Van De Walle noted that, “Content for diverse learners cannot be watered down or second rate. Rather, the goal is to devise curriculum and instruction techniques so that these students can think, solve problems, and reason.” This ties in perfectly with the instruction modifications necessary for Gifted students, as Christy mentioned. Just as gifted students need work that is challenging and engaging, ELL's need the same supports. Also, Christy mentioned that Gifted students often have times verbalizing their ideas because of how quickly they process information. While ELL's may have the opposite problem when it comes to understanding information, they too need support in how they can communicate their learning.
ReplyDeleteThe articles that I read also focused on differentiation, but for students with Learning Disabilities in the area of mathematics. Like Caitlin and Chirsty have already stated, I found that differentiation of instruction can be used for students with a variety of disabilities with varying the time, procedures, etc depending on the ability of the student. The Behrend article focused on two young students, Cal (3rd grade) and Evan (2nd grade) who were LD in the area of math among others. Both boys had definite strengths and weaknesses when it came to math. Cal was very good at visualizing scenarios, but struggled to memorize facts and procedures, while Evan was good a verbal reasoning and struggled with math reasoning and computations and often guessed the answers to problems. Cal and Evan received instruction along with a few other students who had been diagnosed with LD in the area of math. Instead of reteaching basic math facts and procedures and then simply giving ample opportunity to practice, their instruction focused on and built on their prior knowledge and strengths. This instruction was run in conjunction with a research study (Carpenter 1985; Carpenter et al. 1993; Carpenter, Fennema, and Franke 1996.) that recognized children's natural ability to solve word problems by modeling relationships within the problems. This goes along with what Christy said about students needing to be confident in order to be able to be successful with academics, mainly math. If students are forced to focus on what they struggle with, they will most likely get frustrated and learn to hate math. In contrast, if students are encouraged to build on what they already know and are good at, then this can be a great motivator for students to want to know more and grow as a math learner.
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