Today we looked at how to accommodate different learning styles as well as differing student abilities. What can you do to facilitate the learning of special ed students and ELL students. Every teacher faces this situation in the classroom and has to prepare for differentiated instruction. Special ed students need more attention; they may need simplified instructions; they may need modeling in personal way. If they have physical disabilities, they may need special seating or other physical accommodations.
Ell students have language issues and will need vocabulary pages and similar exercises for them to understand what is expected of them. They may need intervention in their native language to aid understanding.
The gifted student has his own issues. He may get bored if his intellect is not challenged. The teacher has to provide more open-ended work; work that requires reflective, creative thinking.
We also learned about how to keep students on task. We developed a formative assessment checklist for the student to remain focused on the objectives of the lesson. As the student progresses, he checks off that portion of the list and rates himself on how he did or didn't do. This is a self-assessment, and one hopes the student takes it seriously to gauge his participation and learning. A self assessment can help the special ed and ELL student remain on task as long as the language is accessible.
As to myself, all these ideas are new and useful. A checklist is a great idea to keep students focused. Adding a time component will make them reach a goal in a timely fashion and not fall behind.
There are two major drawbacks that I foresee: having the time to prepare these checklists, and what consequences to give the student who does not keep in step with the checklist - and therefore, with the rest of the class.
1 comment:
It is true on the supplementary lessons (or altered) not only will benefit the ELL or Special Needs Students, but the rest of the class. The checklist you said might be a drawback might not be so, for it will assist you in keeping the students on task. If the work is done, as strenuous as it may be, it will make the rest of the unit flow. This is the advantage. Hopefully, the stressing of grading will prohibit the students from misbehaving. Like finding alternative ways of teaching lessons, we (unfortunately) have to think of alternatives in reprimanding student behaviors. If we have been consistent with addressing such concerns, this may not be an issue.
One solution (if you will), might be to do an informal (or formal) questioning of students after each lesson or whenever you see fit. If they are not on task, require they stay after-school and finish the work.
If we do the hard work at the beginning it will only make things easier for us on the long run.
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