Hallmark #1 in differentiation is creating a strong link between assessment and instruction. As a teacher, I need to preassess my students in order to understand their needs, base my lessons on the information I gather from the preassessment, and then continually assess their learning in a variety of ways to determine their progress.
Student profile and interest surveys as shown in the text Fulfilling the Promise will provide me with vital information to use when designing appropriate lessons to meet the needs of my new students. Important information about individual students can be gathered from these student surveys. Reading a student profile and interest survey is like reading the informational label attached to a new plant at the garden store. These labels help the gardener decide the type of soil, water conditions, and sun exposure necessary to keep the plant thriving. Strengths and weaknesses are noted and fertilizing instructions are included. Without reading the label for hydrangeas, a person would never know how very amazing that plant can be. By changing the ph level of the soil, the hydrangea can produce blooms in a variety of colors - both pink as well as blue. Students are like this, if the teacher never learns a student is passionate about a certain topic, that passion can never be used to engage the learner in a meaningful way. A hidden talent of a student might remain “undiscovered” by the teacher. Keeping the students’ “informational label” handy and referring to it often will enable the teacher to tap into the students’ hidden beauty.
As I am very interested in teaching kindergarten, I believe it would be necessary to modify the “student Profile Survey” to include simpler words and illustrations as well as provide a smile, frown, or neutral face for the students to indicate their preferences. For the “Student Interest Survey” I would make it a take-home family project which would include a space for an adult helper to write the words along with a space for the student to make small illustrations. For kindergarten, I would alter the text to ask questions concerning preschool experiences they may have had. I would use these inventories to begin to develop my understanding of each student and include interesting topics and engaging teaching methods to meet the needs of my students. Like a gardener, I would have an idea about what would help my students to flourish in the classroom.
Looking through the “File of Inventories/Pre-assessments” included on blackboard, I noticed a large variety of assessments tools that can be used to assess general as well as specific areas of content. I noticed there were options for students to check boxes, respond with short answers, draw pictures, or give longer explanations. Some of the ideas were designed to help me as a teacher, bringing to mind some of the many criteria I should be looking for as I assess the abilities of my students in different content areas. Some of the ideas were designed for me to record my own observations. Some of the ideas were actual assessments that I could use as-is, or modify to assess my own students. From looking through this file of inventories/pre-assessments, it is very clear there is a strong link between assessment and instruction. If I am to be successful like a gardener in a beautiful garden, I must learn all I can about my students, use my knowledge about them to design instruction that will be beneficial for them, and then assess to see if they gained that knowledge. The overall theme of differentiation is getting to know my students, where they are, how they got there, and then using that knowledge to help get them to move higher in their understanding.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Week Two
Question #1: What is differentiation? To me, differentiation means a teacher needs to get to know and understand each individual student in the classroom. Students come into a classroom with varying abilities, interests, personalities, and weaknesses. It is important for a teacher to understand where each student is and where they have come from in order to know how to design lesson plans that will meet their needs. With this information a teacher needs to make the necessary accommodations in what they teach and how they teach it in order to maximize the learning that takes place for each and every one of the students. Teachers need to be comfortable with the core curriculum they are required to teach so that they can be flexible in the manner in which they present this information to the students. In a nutshell, differentiation means becoming aware of the needs of individual students and presenting lessons and information in a variety of ways in order to help each student reach their fullest potential.
Question 2a: I will relate my current understanding of differentiation to my flower garden. My garden began as an idea sketched on a piece of graph paper. Hours and hours were spent tilling, raking, and removing the rocks that infested the soil. A sprinkling system was meticulously added to provide my garden with the necessary water. Foundational items such as walkways, curbing, and rocks were added and finally, I searched out and found wondrous varies of species to go in my garden. My budget could only afford the smallest size of these plants, so it was necessary to allow adequate space between each plant for room to grow. Although the plants, trees, and flowers are all very different from one another, they come together to make a beautiful garden.
Gardens require a lot of work – weeding, pruning, fertilizing, and tilling. Some of my plants require stabilization from the wild Spanish Fork winds. Some plants have had to be carefully transplanted as I reconfigured my plans. Some plants need a lot of water, while others require very little. Daylilies love sun, while bleeding-hearts wilt under its scorching heat. Care needs to be taken as I place each plant; I do not what the tall plants blocking the shorter one. Each plant needs to be placed strategically to show off its best features. They need to get along well with their neighbors. If gardening is so much work, why do I do it? I do it because I like hard work and I like seeing the end result of a beauty garden.
As much as I love gardening, I am still only an amateur, continually working to improve my abilities to care for my garden and help it reach its beautiful potential. After each cold and dormant winter, hope always pushes its way out of the ground as my bulbs begin to emerge with the heat of the spring sun.
This metaphor makes sense to me because I love both children and flower gardens. The individual plants, trees, and flowers in my garden are like the individual students I will have in my future classroom.
My future classroom began sixteen years ago as a faraway and possibly unreachable dream, but a dream none the less. While my children were young, I would volunteer in their classrooms. I would watch and gather ideas from excellent teachers that I hope to one day incorporate into my own classroom. Just like a gardener, I would weed and prune out the ideas and examples which I found to be contrary to the ideal I had envisioned in my mind of what a great teacher would be. For the past several years, I have been building a foundation on which to build my classroom through gaining a bachelors degree in elementary education. Soon, I will be blessed with a room full of eager children who are waiting for me, the teacher, to give them what they need to flourish. Each student will be as different and varied as each plant I have placed in my garden. They will all have different needs which I will need to be aware of and keep in mind as I help each student reach their maximum potential.
As I prepare to become a teacher, I know that I am an amateur. I will need to continually seek learning and guidance as I strive to meet the needs of the students I will have the privilege to teach. Teaching will require a lot of hard work, but I am sure if I put forth the necessary effort required to meet the needs of each of my students to help them “blossom” it will all be worth it. As I stand back and take a look at how far each of my students has come during the school year, I know the hard work will definitely pay off.
Question 2a: I will relate my current understanding of differentiation to my flower garden. My garden began as an idea sketched on a piece of graph paper. Hours and hours were spent tilling, raking, and removing the rocks that infested the soil. A sprinkling system was meticulously added to provide my garden with the necessary water. Foundational items such as walkways, curbing, and rocks were added and finally, I searched out and found wondrous varies of species to go in my garden. My budget could only afford the smallest size of these plants, so it was necessary to allow adequate space between each plant for room to grow. Although the plants, trees, and flowers are all very different from one another, they come together to make a beautiful garden.
Gardens require a lot of work – weeding, pruning, fertilizing, and tilling. Some of my plants require stabilization from the wild Spanish Fork winds. Some plants have had to be carefully transplanted as I reconfigured my plans. Some plants need a lot of water, while others require very little. Daylilies love sun, while bleeding-hearts wilt under its scorching heat. Care needs to be taken as I place each plant; I do not what the tall plants blocking the shorter one. Each plant needs to be placed strategically to show off its best features. They need to get along well with their neighbors. If gardening is so much work, why do I do it? I do it because I like hard work and I like seeing the end result of a beauty garden.
As much as I love gardening, I am still only an amateur, continually working to improve my abilities to care for my garden and help it reach its beautiful potential. After each cold and dormant winter, hope always pushes its way out of the ground as my bulbs begin to emerge with the heat of the spring sun.
This metaphor makes sense to me because I love both children and flower gardens. The individual plants, trees, and flowers in my garden are like the individual students I will have in my future classroom.
My future classroom began sixteen years ago as a faraway and possibly unreachable dream, but a dream none the less. While my children were young, I would volunteer in their classrooms. I would watch and gather ideas from excellent teachers that I hope to one day incorporate into my own classroom. Just like a gardener, I would weed and prune out the ideas and examples which I found to be contrary to the ideal I had envisioned in my mind of what a great teacher would be. For the past several years, I have been building a foundation on which to build my classroom through gaining a bachelors degree in elementary education. Soon, I will be blessed with a room full of eager children who are waiting for me, the teacher, to give them what they need to flourish. Each student will be as different and varied as each plant I have placed in my garden. They will all have different needs which I will need to be aware of and keep in mind as I help each student reach their maximum potential.
As I prepare to become a teacher, I know that I am an amateur. I will need to continually seek learning and guidance as I strive to meet the needs of the students I will have the privilege to teach. Teaching will require a lot of hard work, but I am sure if I put forth the necessary effort required to meet the needs of each of my students to help them “blossom” it will all be worth it. As I stand back and take a look at how far each of my students has come during the school year, I know the hard work will definitely pay off.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Week One
Hi, I am a senior in the elementary education program at UVU. I am married with four children. I enjoy being outdoors, spending time with my family, reading good books, and riding bikes. My favorite food is homemade macaroni and cheese and I like all the colors of the rainbow. Here are some other interesting things about me.
1. I have a lot of favorite children’s books. So many in fact, it depends on the time of day which book I would say is my favorite. At this very moment, one of my all time favorites is Owen by Kevin Henkes. This story tells the story of a little mouse named Owen who has a favorite blanket he takes everywhere and a nosey neighbor who sticks her nose in Owen’s business. It tells of the lengths the parents go to get Owen to stop carrying his blanket with him. When it is time for Owen to go to school his mother comes up with a perfectly satisfactory way for everyone to be happy about the blanket. I love this book because Henkes makes the reader understand how important the blanket is to Owen and how his concerned mother makes everything all right in the end. It is heart warming. I highly recommend it.
2. As strange as it may seem, my favorite T.V. shows include Masterpiece Theater, 60 minutes, and the evening news on channel 5. I probably could be considered a news addict because if it is at all possible, I like to make dinner each evening between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. so that I can watch the local and national news while I make dinner. I love Masterpiece Theater and am looking forward to this Sunday as the second season of Cranford is beginning. Tune in if you want to see excellent entertainment!
3. I collect Children’s books and have done so since practically the beginning of time. My main collection is paperback scholastic books, but I do have some hard cover books and am now working on my big book collection. I have more books than I should ever admit and I categorize them by type. For example, I organize books by themes such as apples, weather, etc. I keep my favorite authors altogether such as Henkes and DePaulo. I keep series of books together like Clifford, Froggy, and Authur. My newest addition to the collection is the hardback copies of the Caldecott Medal winning books. My oldest daughter has been giving me a new Caldecott Medal book complete with gold sticker on special occasions.
4. I keep writer’s notebooks to remind me of things I find interesting. One day, I might like to try and write children’s books and I plan on using the things that I record in my many notebooks as ideas in my books. In addition to my writer’s notebooks, I try to write in a personal journal so that there will be a story of who I am for future generations.
5. If I had to be a sponsor of an after-school group my first choice would be ecology, my second choice would be art or music appreciation, and my third choice would be a book club.
6. Besides a pottery class I took during summer in grade school, the only art lessons I have had were tole painting classes I took while I lived in Idaho. I would never consider myself an artist but I feel confident in my ability to create different types of art. I am pretty crafty and enjoy creating things with paper, scissors, and glue. I think this is partly why I think being a teacher will be so much fun.
7. As a little girl I took private piano lessons for about three or four years. When my younger sister drove my mother batty about not wanting to practice anymore, she let us quit. At the time, I was happy to be finished with all the practicing; however, now I regret that I did not continue with lessons or at least practice occasionally. I am only able to play very easy piano pieces after a great deal of practice.
8. As a little girl, I took classical ballet lessons. I had dreamed of being a dancer in the Nutcracker. My favorite part of dance was wearing pink tights, a pink leotard, and tiny pink ballet shoes. I can remember standing at the bar in front of a big mirror doing warm ups to live piano music. After my family moved, my parents were not able to drive me to the dance studio anymore and the dance studios near our new home were not the same. I missed my friends and my teachers and I lost interest in dancing.
9. As a child, I considered myself extremely shy and I would never have considered drama classes or performing in theater productions. I would never have wanted to draw attention to myself. However, I love Broadway type shows and have attended them with my parents since I was a little girl. This past summer I had a fantastic adventure with my sister and my three daughters. We traveled to New York to see Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, and Mary Poppins. I love watching a good musical!
10. In addition to all this, I like to work in my flower garden and dream of having a garden nice enough to be featured in Better Homes and Gardens.
1. I have a lot of favorite children’s books. So many in fact, it depends on the time of day which book I would say is my favorite. At this very moment, one of my all time favorites is Owen by Kevin Henkes. This story tells the story of a little mouse named Owen who has a favorite blanket he takes everywhere and a nosey neighbor who sticks her nose in Owen’s business. It tells of the lengths the parents go to get Owen to stop carrying his blanket with him. When it is time for Owen to go to school his mother comes up with a perfectly satisfactory way for everyone to be happy about the blanket. I love this book because Henkes makes the reader understand how important the blanket is to Owen and how his concerned mother makes everything all right in the end. It is heart warming. I highly recommend it.
2. As strange as it may seem, my favorite T.V. shows include Masterpiece Theater, 60 minutes, and the evening news on channel 5. I probably could be considered a news addict because if it is at all possible, I like to make dinner each evening between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. so that I can watch the local and national news while I make dinner. I love Masterpiece Theater and am looking forward to this Sunday as the second season of Cranford is beginning. Tune in if you want to see excellent entertainment!
3. I collect Children’s books and have done so since practically the beginning of time. My main collection is paperback scholastic books, but I do have some hard cover books and am now working on my big book collection. I have more books than I should ever admit and I categorize them by type. For example, I organize books by themes such as apples, weather, etc. I keep my favorite authors altogether such as Henkes and DePaulo. I keep series of books together like Clifford, Froggy, and Authur. My newest addition to the collection is the hardback copies of the Caldecott Medal winning books. My oldest daughter has been giving me a new Caldecott Medal book complete with gold sticker on special occasions.
4. I keep writer’s notebooks to remind me of things I find interesting. One day, I might like to try and write children’s books and I plan on using the things that I record in my many notebooks as ideas in my books. In addition to my writer’s notebooks, I try to write in a personal journal so that there will be a story of who I am for future generations.
5. If I had to be a sponsor of an after-school group my first choice would be ecology, my second choice would be art or music appreciation, and my third choice would be a book club.
6. Besides a pottery class I took during summer in grade school, the only art lessons I have had were tole painting classes I took while I lived in Idaho. I would never consider myself an artist but I feel confident in my ability to create different types of art. I am pretty crafty and enjoy creating things with paper, scissors, and glue. I think this is partly why I think being a teacher will be so much fun.
7. As a little girl I took private piano lessons for about three or four years. When my younger sister drove my mother batty about not wanting to practice anymore, she let us quit. At the time, I was happy to be finished with all the practicing; however, now I regret that I did not continue with lessons or at least practice occasionally. I am only able to play very easy piano pieces after a great deal of practice.
8. As a little girl, I took classical ballet lessons. I had dreamed of being a dancer in the Nutcracker. My favorite part of dance was wearing pink tights, a pink leotard, and tiny pink ballet shoes. I can remember standing at the bar in front of a big mirror doing warm ups to live piano music. After my family moved, my parents were not able to drive me to the dance studio anymore and the dance studios near our new home were not the same. I missed my friends and my teachers and I lost interest in dancing.
9. As a child, I considered myself extremely shy and I would never have considered drama classes or performing in theater productions. I would never have wanted to draw attention to myself. However, I love Broadway type shows and have attended them with my parents since I was a little girl. This past summer I had a fantastic adventure with my sister and my three daughters. We traveled to New York to see Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, and Mary Poppins. I love watching a good musical!
10. In addition to all this, I like to work in my flower garden and dream of having a garden nice enough to be featured in Better Homes and Gardens.
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