Chart your Course for Differentiation

"Different Ships, Same Sea"
(qtd. by Dr. Kelly Roberts, Meredith College)

Captain's Glossary

"All Aboard": Differentiation is for ALL students; the curriculum differs it is not different.

Anchor: Keep all lessons deeply rooted in substance.

Buoy: Stay afloat! Be prepared to keep with the ebbs and flows of student achievement.

Crew: In order for differentiation to be effective, teamwork must be employed.

Crow's Nest: Teachers should stay on top of student progress; look ahead for success and challenges.

Doubloon: Offer genuine praise; give credit where credit is deserved.

League: Establish differentiation with depth and complexity; increase depth not breadth.

Treasure: Each student and team member has something to offer; use this to your advantage in this differentiated classroom.

What are my influences in teaching writing?

Technology: with instant messaging, emailing, and texting within an arm's reach, technology will have a large impact on teaching writing. Because of this digital age, Standard English is sometimes put on the back burner to make way for quick slang and abbreviations.

Prior knowledge: students will come to my classroom with conceptions and misconceptions about writing. It will be extremely important to do diagnostic screenings of my students' writing ability.

My Personal experience: it is often found that teachers teach the way they learn. My personal experience with writing will have a large impact on the manner in which I present the writing process to my students. My interactions with teachers and professors have given me numerous ideas.


MUSTS:
-conferencing with students about papers
-Writing to learn activities
-Reflection
-Connection b/w writing and reading
-Focused freewrite

I had a Lynne Truss moment...

I took the advice from Eats, Shoots and Leaves and edited a sign about upcoming fall courses. Incorrectly, the sign said "This course will examine legal and legal drug use..."

Food for Thought - Observations

For the past few weeks, the students in Mrs. Shirley’s class have been working on an out-of-class project entitled, Breakfast For Your Head: Cereal Box Book Report. For those of you unfamiliar with the cereal box project, here is project description:

Front: Design a front cover for the novel. Include the name of the book, the authors, and an original illustration.

Back: The top portion of the back needs to contain a blurb, giving information to entice and/or interest a reader to want to read the novel. This must be at least six sentences, but not vie away the whole story. The lower portion of the back must be a puzzle, activity, word game, etc which incorporate information from the book.

Side One: Make a list of “ingredients” that includes the following story elements:
- Introduction
- Rising action
- Climax
- Falling action
- Resolution

Side Two: Create a “Nutritional Facts Chart” that rate the book by giving the percentage of the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) in several categories:
- Humor
- Drama
- Suspense
- Educational value
- Vocabulary

This week, the students presented their cereal box project to the class. It was such a great experience! As I have mentioned in class, I think sharing writing helps to give students a feeling of accomplishment and ownership. I came to observe Mrs. Shirley’s class when the students were presenting a cereal box project, and I could literally feel the excitement in the room as each child went up to present. I could tell the students were very proud of their projects and were eager to share with the class. Not only were the students presenting their project, they were also reading the summary of the novel. As an observer, this helped me to see how the students respond to reading: some students gave a brief overview; some students focused on one event and glazed over the rest; others incorporated quotes from the novel. Tompkins states, “Sharing writing is a social activity that helps students develop sensitivity to audiences and confidence in themselves as authors” (95). After hearing the students share their writing, I agree wholeheartedly with that comment. As I said before, written assignments can sometime feel like a secret exchange between student and teacher – student turns it in, teacher grades it, not a word is said. By sharing writing, students can bond with other students and enhance the impact of their writing.

The Graveyard Book: After a paideia seminar in my Methods class on this book, I would really like to incorporate this novel into my classroom. The Graveyard Book is a coming-of-age story of a boy, Bod, whose family is murdered when he’s just a toddler. The boy was to be killed as well, but he managed to escape by crawling into a graveyard. In this graveyard, the story of Bod’s life unfolds as he guarded and taught by a cast of dead people.

“The Necklace”: A short story which illuminates the literary device irony. I am currently working on a mini literature lesson for this story which uses the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morrisette to enforce the concept of irony.

Because I want students to be able to see “the big picture” I would tend to create thematic units. By creating lessons based on substantial themes, students can see how literature relates to the world around them.

My 5 Steps to Integration

Purpose:
- Objectives, objectives, objectives!
- The main purpose in an interdisciplinary unit is modeling and teaching students how to learn (Wild, Mayeaux & Edmonds 95).
-Teach students to communicate effectively, to work productively, to treat others respectfully, to read critically, to persist through difficulty, and to lead democratically.

Substance:
- Do not hide behind fluffy activities with vague intentions.
- Curriculum mapping: descriptions of content, descriptions of processes/skills, assessment
- Understand standards

Connection:
-“Interdisciplinary designs are best when sensible, no strained, integration is planned and that not all disciplines need to be involved in the lesson design of a unit. If we had forced the connections, we would have created artificial lessons to justify a contrived theme” (qtd. in Wild, Mayeaux & Edmonds 88).
-Rely on deeply rooted connections not superficial “integration”

Collaboration:
-Team: Work on identifying and reflecting the connected, global concepts during team planning (Wild, Mayeaux & Edmonds 95).
-Students: encourage collaboration through active learning.

Differentiation:
-“The best education for the best, is the best education for all”
-Teach to the students, not to the test; students can achieve mastery of standards through choice, active learning, and challenge.


Works Cited:
Wild, Monique D., Amanda S. Mayeaux, and Kathryn P. Edmonds. TeamWork: Setting the Standard for Collaborative Teaching, Grades 5-9. Portland: Stenhouse, 2008.

"The Best Education for the Best is the Best Education for All"

While I was in my English Methods class the other day, I was introduced to the quote “the best education for the best is the best education for all.” After thinking for a moment, I was struck by the importance of this sentiment. When students grace the doors of my future middle school Language Arts classroom, they may already be wearing a title of “low proficiency reader” or “advanced reader”. As a teacher, it will be my job to see past these unjust labels and provide all of my students with the same tools for success. If you do not present a lower-level reader with thought provoking, complex texts, how can we expect them to be able to think and read critically? Simple texts produce simple thoughts. If teachers never attempt to provide lower-level readers with complex texts, simple thoughts will continue to cycle. In all fairness, all students must be given cognitively demanding, classic works. This quote really helped to drive home the importance of differentiation. Differentiation is for all students; the curriculum differs, but is not different. As we have discussed in class, literature circles would really help to support differentiation because students have a choice when it coming to their book selection.