Happy Summer EVERYONE! I'm so glad to be on summer break. I can't express how happy I am. I kind of miss teaching a little bit. JUST little bit, as well as my kids that I've taught this year. They're all growing up and going to be older next year. I hope that their behavior improve greatly so they send their teacher up the wall. lolol
This evening I want us to focus on diverse learners in the classroom. Just to start off our discussion forum tonight, what are some common issues teacher's encounter when dealing with diverse students? What are some ways that teachers can teach special needs students?
Diverse learners are defined to be those students who are at risk of academic failure and need special attention and understanding during their learning process. These students often have a diverse intellectual ability, social and emotional background, language proficiency, racial background, cultural background and physical attributes. Certain circumstances such as these present students with the opportunity to prepare for living in a global environment. I believe that students need to know how to cooperate with people that have differences at an early age. This builds their ability to be sociable and also allows them to make new friends, which fulfills a childhood desire of wanting to be accepted by peers.
Along with diverse learners, being able to identify at risk students and being able to help them is essential to their benefit both mentally and academically. Most "at risk' students demonstrate poor reading skills and lost of motivation. These students often react in a negative manner, such as not accepting instructions, rebellious, fearful, and frustrated. In order to proceed in helping an "at risk student," teachers must remain a positive attitude. However, proven data has shown that many "at risk" students have not remained under that category after they've graduated form high school and college, due to tailored instruction and close monitoring of academic improvement.
Targeted instruction emphasizes content area literacy development influenced by receptive and expressive language skills. Targeted instruction was designed to help develop ELLs academically. Teachers must make content information more accessible to students that provide adequate language support for ELLs. ELLs also need targeted instruction due to their distinct learner profiles. ELLs come to the U.S. with varying levels of first or native language, proficiency, different degrees of formal education experience, and a distinct understanding of what school and its related routines and behaviors.
Spencer! Happy summer to you as well! Enjoy the break my friend!
ReplyDeleteI liked how you pointed out that ELLs have varying degrees of proficiency with their first language and this needs to be taken into consideration when assisting these students. I think many times it may be overlooked that ELLs students are still becoming fluent and understanding the inner workings of their first language- think if a 6yr old American child moved to China and had to learn Chinese. '
As for how deal with diverse learners in a classroom and also assist students with special needs, for me splitting students into small groups and then differentiating instruction works pretty well in my class. Our classes are small (usually no more than 8 children) but the levels of functioning of these kids are so diverse and vary from a student going to inclusion classes almost all day to a student who is 8yrs old, still in diapers, nonverbal, and has the cognitive level of a 3 yr old. I quickly discovered there are very few opportunities during the day where I would be able to provide a single teaching experience that would equally benefit all the students in my class at once. The solution was to break off the class into smaller groups based on cognitive functioning levels, while each group would cover the same material (eg. life cycle of a butterfly) the way they would cover this material would be different. One group might read a nonfiction book and do a work sheet, another might watch a video and then do an activity on the promethean board, and a third group might be read the very hungry caterpillar book then interact with stuffed animals from the book and asked to put them in order. I think the key factor is being able to provide some flexibility in your lesson so that gifted learners are not bored and struggling learners are not left behind.
I mentioned the same point in my blog, that some students may still be learning their first language when they are thrown into learning a second language. This would obviously be difficult. I had trouble learning Spanish when I was in high school, even after speaking and writing English for 13 years prior.
ReplyDeleteI really liked reading Jennifer's comment on your post as she talks about her first-hand experience with special education. I liked the differentiation of her lessons with the life cycle of a butterfly. When I was in high school, I had a field experience and I taught this lesson using pasta. We used orzo, shell, spiral, and bow tie noodles. It was a lot of fun!
Spencer, when you reread your passage, "Diverse learners are defined to be those students who are at risk of academic failure and need special attention and understanding during their learning process. These students often have a diverse intellectual ability, social and emotional background, language proficiency, racial background, cultural background and physical attributes." does it worry you at all? Do you agree with it?
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