Differentiated Instruction

http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/differentiatingstrategies.html

This is a wonderful website for teachers to use as a resource.  There is a comprehensive list for teachers to reference to get ideas about how to differentiate their lessons.  Sometimes I think that teachers know that they should be differentiating but they just don’t know how to do it.  This website is a place to go to see “oh this is my lesson and this would be a great way to differentiate for these students.”

There is also a great link on this webpage to technology resources for differentiating instruction.  A lot of us have smartboards in our classrooms and we should be using that technology to benefit all of the learners.

Good resource to look at and keep ourselves accountable while we are teaching!

Observing a Resource Classroom

After observing Martin in the reading resource classroom, I have a much better understanding of what goes on when he leaves the whole group setting. Something that I think was most remarkable was how much more lively Martin was in this setting than I had ever seen him in the second grade classroom. He still exhibited a lot of the same distracting behaviors and he still needed a lot of guidance in beginning his activities but the difference was that the teacher was able to call on Martin more frequently than his second grade teacher is able to in the whole group instruction. In this setting Martin is given far more attention than he can get from the second grade teacher who is teaching twenty one children and he is given the time he needs to answer his questions. In the second grade classroom, there is not a lot of extra time to wait for Martin to answer a question, the class has to keep moving at a steady pace in order to be on time for the next activity or lesson. In the pull out situation, the resource teacher could wait for Martin without feeling the pressure of having twenty other impatient second graders sitting in the room. Martin is probably completely unaware of this situation but it appears that he is more at ease in this smaller setting where he is given plenty of time to complete his work and receiving appropriate scaffolding.
When we watched “Peter’s Story” in class I distinctly remember the teacher saying that she got to a point where she had to hold Peter to some higher standards, seemingly the same standards that she held for the rest of her third grade students. I was impressed with the pull out classroom and the resource teacher in the sense that she held this group of students accountable for their behavior just like in a homeroom classroom. The children had to focus, this was not just a time to be free from class work. If they were not paying attention, the teacher got their attention and called on them as if they were sitting in their normal classroom. If the students were not following directions, the teacher did not hesitate to correct them. In my mind I could see how it would be easy to let this slide because the teacher is working with a group of six children with various degrees of disabilities. It could get to the point where if the worse thing that was happening was that the students were not following directions, then that could just be looked over. The point is that it was obvious that the teacher cared about their learning. Just like the teacher in “Peter’s story,” the children with disabilities are capable learners and they are to be held to that standard.

Reflection on Peter’s Film

Watching the film about Peter was an emotional roller coaster for me.  There were times that I was speechless and apauled and there were times when I was so impressed and delighted.  On Thursday when asked to stand on a spectrum and define where I stood on the topic on inclusion, I found myself leaning somewhere in the middle and towards full inclusion.  There is a young boy with autism in my classroom and I cannot imagine what it would be like for him if he had to spend his entire school day in a separate classroom, secluded from the rest of the second graders.  Not only is he learning how to socialize with children and being held to the standards that all second graders are held to, the other students in the class are reaching out to him and making sure that he is always on task with all of his supplies.  It is amazing how the teacher has not assigned anyone to be his “buddy” and yet all the students around him have taken it upon themselves to be his special friends.  At the same time, after watching Peter’s film, it would be a long and hard school year if a child like Peter came into my classroom.

I was honestly shocked at the beginning of the film with the amount of aggression that Peter showed towards the rest of his classmates.  There was no controlling him!  As a teacher, I cannot imagine dealing with that everyday.  I would imagine it would be so upsetting because Peter is just a child and yet at the same time, the violence would be out of control.  My heart would also go out to the other students because not only was their learning environment constantly disrupted, their feeling were hurt and the idea of school being a safe place probably was not the case for many of those third graders.  I would hate to think that students would begin to associate school with fear, frustration, and constant uncomfortableness.

It was remarkable to watch the rest of the students throughout the film.  At the beginning, they had every right to be scared and upset.  The children were scared in school.  Personally, I think the interventions came too late in the classroom.  The teacher was a little in over her head, just like any other classroom teacher would be.  After the students were given some coping skills for the situation, they really seemed to take charge and run with it.  I especially liked some of the word choice that they used such as “Peter I don’t like it when you do that.”  These kind of sentences made Peter’s incidents more personal and I am thinking it was easier for him to understand that what he was doing was wrong when he was told it in that manner.  I think it ended up being a beautiful picture of how students of all ability levels can cross those differences to help each other out and become friends.

I cannot imagine what the experience would have been like, being in Peter’s class.  As a student, I think it ended up being positive because they certainly learned some life skills that not everyone is exposed to but at the same time I think it came at a high cost in the beginning.  I imagine that the teacher had many breakdowns throughout the year but in the end she said that she would certainly do it again.  The process as a whole seemed to bring out more good than bad.

I would have liked to have heard more from the parents perspectives, Peter’s parents and the other children’s parents.  I know that if my child came home saying that a classmate tried to strangle him or her that day, I would be beside myself.  As a compassionate human being, at the same time, I want my child to be tolerant of all people and I want him or her to believe that everyone deserves a chance to learn.  If I were Peter’s parent, I think I would have had a hard time imposing my, unintentionally, violent child on the rest of his classmates and this single teacher.  I think that if this were a case today, parents would be pulling their children out of that class so fast!

I had never seen anything like this film in real life.  It really made me think about what I believe and what I think I would be able to handle and I still have not come to any strong conclusions.  I am just filled with mixed emotions at this point.  I would like to think that I will be equipped to handle whatever comes my way but at the same time, I also hope that I will know when it all just becomes too much.