In the chapter that we read for this week, there were some useful tips that could be used when you have high performance students in your classroom. However, these strategies can also be used with struggling learners with a little modification.
The first strategy discussed was ongoing assessment. Ongoing assessments are important for every classroom. They allow the teacher to see where the students' comprehension level is. Pre-assessments provide a starting point for teachers to use. They can effectively see where more time needs to be spent on the material and where the gaps are in information. If all the students are proficient in one area, then the teacher can spend less time on this topic. But pre-assessments can also clue the teacher into things like: who can read the textbook well and who struggles with reading the textbook? A post-assessment can let teachers know not only how well the students understood the information but they also can tell teachers what teaching strategies worked well and which ones didn't. If students all did really well on one topic, it is important for the teacher to note what he/she did that day that made the information stick with the students. Post assessments can be done using exit cards, quick quizzes, or journal entries.
Another strategy that is used in Think-Pair-Share. The teacher poses an open-ended question. Then, students think about the question and spend a couple of minutes writing down their thoughts. Students then pair up and share their ideas with each other. This could be modified to use with struggling learners by pairing them with a higher performing learner. The higher performance learner could help the struggling learner to see things from a different perspective. Also, the student might respond better to another student's assistance rather than the teacher's. The teacher then calls the class back together for a class-wide discussion. During this discussion, it is important that the teacher ensures that every student participates, even the struggling ones. If they are called on, the teacher should give them an appropriate time to think and answer before just giving away the answer or calling on someone else.
Lecturing with graphic organizers is another strategy that can be beneficial to all types of learners. If the teacher hands out a graphic organizer before beginning to lecture, then students know where the lecture is headed. When completing a graphic organizer lecture, teachers should pause and take breaks and have students summarize key ideas. That way, if a struggling learner missed something, he/she will have another opportunity to get the information.
Another useful strategy is to break students into small groups based on the areas where they need more assistance. Then, the teacher can spend time with each small group and work on the areas where the students are weak or have learning gaps. This can help struggling learners because it targets the specific areas where they are having trouble.
Complex instruction can also be used. This is group work but the teacher ensures that all group members are contributing equally. This can be helpful with struggling learners because they still know that there are expectations for them to contribute to their group, but they do not need to know all of the information because their group members can help them out as well.
All of these strategies will be useful when trying to adapt a classroom to a wide-range of performance learning.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Meeting the Needs of ELL Students
It is believed that information is stored in memory in two different ways. In words (linguistic) and in images (nonlinguistic). Imagery is expressed as mental pictures or physical sensations, such as smell, taste, touch, kinesthetic association, and sound. These tools are useful for all learners in a classroom, but they prove to be especially useful for English Language Learners. They tap into students' natural tendency for visual image processing, and this in turn helps them create relevance to material and increases their ability to recall the information later. Here are a few techniques for using nonlinguistic teaching strategies:
1. Using graphic organizers - These combine the linguistic and nonlinguistic forms of information. Students can visually see a connection with the notes that they are taking because the organizer draws patterns and makes connections for them. There are six types of graphic organizers that can be used: descriptive, time sequence, process/cause-effect, episode, generalization/principle, and concept.
2. Make physical models or manipulatives - These are concrete representations of academic content or concepts. It is important that students gain the appropriate information from using the models. Sometimes, students are more enthralled by the actual novelty of the model and having something to play with rather than a learning tool.
3. Generate mental pictures - This helps students make sense of the information from their own perspective and store in their learning for later use. Teachers can facilitate the construction of mental pictures by providing details that appeal to the students' senses.
4. Create pictures, illustrations, and pictographs - Pictographs are pictures that use symbols to represent information. Using pictures and pictographs allows students to learn the information in a personalized manner. This will help them recall more information.
5. Engage in kinesthetic activities - When students engage in physical activity associated with knowledge, they create a mental picture of them doing the physical activity. The physical sensations create more neural networks in their brains and this helps the information stay there longer.
The article that I read is called, "Minn. Superintendent Pioneered ELL Reforms." In it, they discuss how one superintendent, who describes herself as a second language learner, dismantled the TESOL program. This program used to isolate ELL students from their peers and they were taught in a separate classroom. Now, her ELL students are in mainstream classes with an aide that works closely with the teacher to provide support for the ELL student. She said that teaching students English first without teaching them content was not successful because too many of them were not getting to the content. With the addition of nonlinguistic activities and organizers in the regular classroom, ELL students will be able to better understand the content without having to have a full grasp on the English language first. They can learn both content and the language at the same time so that they do not fall behind.
1. Using graphic organizers - These combine the linguistic and nonlinguistic forms of information. Students can visually see a connection with the notes that they are taking because the organizer draws patterns and makes connections for them. There are six types of graphic organizers that can be used: descriptive, time sequence, process/cause-effect, episode, generalization/principle, and concept.
2. Make physical models or manipulatives - These are concrete representations of academic content or concepts. It is important that students gain the appropriate information from using the models. Sometimes, students are more enthralled by the actual novelty of the model and having something to play with rather than a learning tool.
3. Generate mental pictures - This helps students make sense of the information from their own perspective and store in their learning for later use. Teachers can facilitate the construction of mental pictures by providing details that appeal to the students' senses.
4. Create pictures, illustrations, and pictographs - Pictographs are pictures that use symbols to represent information. Using pictures and pictographs allows students to learn the information in a personalized manner. This will help them recall more information.
5. Engage in kinesthetic activities - When students engage in physical activity associated with knowledge, they create a mental picture of them doing the physical activity. The physical sensations create more neural networks in their brains and this helps the information stay there longer.
The article that I read is called, "Minn. Superintendent Pioneered ELL Reforms." In it, they discuss how one superintendent, who describes herself as a second language learner, dismantled the TESOL program. This program used to isolate ELL students from their peers and they were taught in a separate classroom. Now, her ELL students are in mainstream classes with an aide that works closely with the teacher to provide support for the ELL student. She said that teaching students English first without teaching them content was not successful because too many of them were not getting to the content. With the addition of nonlinguistic activities and organizers in the regular classroom, ELL students will be able to better understand the content without having to have a full grasp on the English language first. They can learn both content and the language at the same time so that they do not fall behind.
Classroom Environment and Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning is an important tool to use in any classroom. It can be used in all grade levels and in all subject areas. In a world that is relying more and more on a collaborative work environment, it is important that students gain the valuable skills necessary to succeed in a collaborative environment. According to the book, there are two essential components to make cooperative learning successful. The first is positive interdependence. Positive interdependence emphasizes that all the students in the group are in this together and one person's success does not come at the expense of another student's success. Teachers must also ensure that the workload of each individual is reasonable and equal to the other team member's. The other key element for cooperative learning is individual accountability. This refers to the need for each member of the team to receive feedback on how his or her personal efforts have helped the team reach their goal. Teachers can use assessments to determine the contributions that each group member made to the group and the overall product. It is important to keep the group sizes small (no more than five) and to use cooperative learning consistently and systematically.
Cooperative learning would support a classroom like the one described in the Tomlinson article. Cooperative learning has shown to increase motivation because students develop a sense of obligation to their group and a strong kinship to their peers that leads to greater motivation and increased achievement. When teachers, like the one described in the article, use positive interdependence and individual accountability, students learn to be more responsible for their own learning as well as helping other students in the group learn as well. They also gain the ability to demonstrate what they know, understand, and are able to do. In small groups, students have the chance to process information at a slower pace as opposed to a lecture where all of the information is sort of thrown at them while the teacher hopes that they will understand and remember all of it. The teacher in the Tomlinson article ensured that each student was learning the material. She catered the curriculum to each student. Instead of focusing on labels, she focused on different interests and needs. Instead of focusing on deficits, she focused on strengths and how she could use those strengths in her classroom. I think that she would probably use cooperative learning in her classroom because it would help to build a better sense of classroom environment and the students would be held accountable to themselves, their peers, and the teacher.
The article that I read was titled, "A Tip for Teaching Tenacity and Teamwork." This article gives teachers a valuable teaching tool for when students are working in groups. Each group gets two plastic cups, one green one and one red one. When the students need help, they put the red cup on the middle of the group and when they are doing fine on their own, they leave the green cup showing. Not only does this allow the teacher to see when students need help, but the article also discusses how this technique helps develop self-determination and collaboration. At first, one student might be more likely to give up and change cups to signal for help, but other students in the group will usually protest and then help the student solve the issue within their group. This ties into the chapter that we read because it talks about how students can learn from each other and cooperative learning helps build a collaborative environment where students are willing to help everyone in their group succeed.
Cooperative learning would support a classroom like the one described in the Tomlinson article. Cooperative learning has shown to increase motivation because students develop a sense of obligation to their group and a strong kinship to their peers that leads to greater motivation and increased achievement. When teachers, like the one described in the article, use positive interdependence and individual accountability, students learn to be more responsible for their own learning as well as helping other students in the group learn as well. They also gain the ability to demonstrate what they know, understand, and are able to do. In small groups, students have the chance to process information at a slower pace as opposed to a lecture where all of the information is sort of thrown at them while the teacher hopes that they will understand and remember all of it. The teacher in the Tomlinson article ensured that each student was learning the material. She catered the curriculum to each student. Instead of focusing on labels, she focused on different interests and needs. Instead of focusing on deficits, she focused on strengths and how she could use those strengths in her classroom. I think that she would probably use cooperative learning in her classroom because it would help to build a better sense of classroom environment and the students would be held accountable to themselves, their peers, and the teacher.
The article that I read was titled, "A Tip for Teaching Tenacity and Teamwork." This article gives teachers a valuable teaching tool for when students are working in groups. Each group gets two plastic cups, one green one and one red one. When the students need help, they put the red cup on the middle of the group and when they are doing fine on their own, they leave the green cup showing. Not only does this allow the teacher to see when students need help, but the article also discusses how this technique helps develop self-determination and collaboration. At first, one student might be more likely to give up and change cups to signal for help, but other students in the group will usually protest and then help the student solve the issue within their group. This ties into the chapter that we read because it talks about how students can learn from each other and cooperative learning helps build a collaborative environment where students are willing to help everyone in their group succeed.
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