Angela Kanerva, MA
Pinckney Community Schools
April 26, 2008
James C. Hunter states, “We define leadership…as a skill of influencing people to work enthusiastically toward goals identified as being for the common good.” We should then consider teaching students to be very much the same. Teaching should be the skill of influencing students to work enthusiastically toward their goals. In order to create an atmosphere where students take ownership of their learning, feel a sense of accomplishment and take pride in their work moves the teacher from a manager of duties and tasks to a facilitator, fully engaged and questioning through dialogue the learning taking place within the classroom walls. As a teacher sees him or herself as the leader, they are developing life-long learners in their students. They are creating an atmosphere of self-starters in student rather than students who sit back waiting for learning to happen.
Carol Ann Tomlinson
The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners
In the book, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, Carol Ann Tomlinson lists the attributes of the differentiated classroom comparing them to the traditional classroom setting. The differentiated classroom allows for students to make interest-based learning choices offered in various choices of assignments offered. The students are actively engaged in problem solving with each other and with the teacher. The differentiated classroom also accommodates for various assessment options as on on-going part of the classroom structure. In contrast the traditional classroom is structured around the learning directed specifically by the teacher where the teacher solves the problems, teacher determines the structure for grading, usually offers one assignment for the entire class to complete, driven most often by a textbook or curriculum guide. The most challenging part of the traditional method of teaching is the standard is set by the teacher and all students most conform to that standard whether or not they are able at their learning level and irregardless of their interest in the topic and having no interest to investigate further to establish interest.
In the differentiated classroom, the job of the teacher has more to do with motivating students to learn than occupying time or entertaining students. In the differentiated classroom students and teachers work together and the students know that the teacher is concerned with their efforts. The student knows the teacher is supporting them, values them and then expects great things of them in order that they would be successful. The most exciting ideas then become the enthusiasm the teacher shares in learning and the invitation to learn then spreads around the classroom for others to experience.
Tomlinson identifies many strategies for implementing differentiation in the classroom. The style of differentiation varies for different age-groups and whether the classroom is multi-aged or not. A station set-up is a series of tables where students move from one to another based on a continuity of subject matter. All of the stations have the same topic but are presented at different levels of learning to gain mastery. A learning centers approach has a set of activities that “teach, reinforce or extend a particular skill.” An interest center although it starts with a clear set of instructions, the students are encouraged to explore the content and discover their learning. This first set of differentiation strategies are most often used in the early elementary classroom.
Some of the other types of differentiation include creating agendas, tiered activities, learning contracts, and compacting. Creating learning agendas are simply creating a list of the assignments to be completed by the students, in the order they choose, varying within the content of the lessons to be taught during that set amount of time. A tiered activity allows for variation on the ability level of the learner. All of the students focus on the same subject and skills but they approach it at varied levels. In a learning contract, the students work on schoolwork that is outlined by a teacher but meets the needs of independent learners. In compacting, students are pre-tested on subject content to determine how much of the content is already known and hopefully, rather than opting a student out of content, a student is therefore challenged within the content for deeper, richer learning.
Dr. Kathie Nunley
Layered Curriculum®: The practical solution for teachers with more than one student in their classroom.
Layered Curriculum® is set in an organizational structure for learning based on the motivation of students through choice and the development of higher level thinking skills through meaningful accountability in the classroom.
From within the Layered Curriculum®structure there are accommodations to meet the needs of many types of learners. The structure is outlined in three levels: The “C” level which is basic level of gathering information, clarifying vocabulary and laying out the basic information for a particular unit the students will be studying in school. The “B” level is set up at the next level of learning to allow students the chance to prove what they know from the “C” level by application through discovery and problem solving. The final level is the “A” where students are asked to critically think about the previous two layers as they apply to the world in which they live, ultimately being able to “take a stand”. It is within Layered Curriculum® that the teacher organizes the Multiple Intelligences of Howard Gardner with the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Below are the 9 multiple intelligences as identified by Howard Gardner:
1. Linguistic Intelligence: the
capacity to use language to express what's on your mind and to understand other
people. Any kind of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or other person for whom
language is an important stock in trade has great linguistic intelligence.
2. Logical/Mathematical Intelligence: the capacity to understand the underlying
principles of some kind of causal system, the way a scientist or a logician
does; or to manipulate numbers, quantities, and operations, the way a
mathematician does.
3. Musical Rhythmic Intelligence: the capacity to think in music; to be
able to hear patterns, recognize them, and perhaps manipulate them. People who
have strong musical intelligence don't just remember music easily, they can't
get it out of their minds, it's so omnipresent.
4. Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence: the capacity to use your whole body
or parts of your body (your hands, your fingers, your arms) to solve a problem,
make something, or put on some kind of production. The most evident examples
are people in athletics or the performing arts, particularly dancing or acting.
5. Spatial Intelligence: the ability to represent the spatial world
internally in your mind -- the way a sailor or airplane pilot navigates the
large spatial world, or the way a chess player or sculptor represents a more
circumscribed spatial world. Spatial intelligence can be used in the arts or in
the sciences.
6. Naturalist Intelligence: the ability to discriminate among living
things (plants, animals) and sensitivity to other features of the natural world
(clouds, rock configurations). This ability was clearly of value in our
evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be
central in such roles as botanist or chef.
7. Intrapersonal Intelligence: having an understanding of yourself;
knowing who you are, what you can do, what you want to do, how you react to
things, which things to avoid, and which things to gravitate toward. We are
drawn to people who have a good understanding of themselves. They tend to know
what they can and can't do, and to know where to go if they need help.
8. Interpersonal Intelligence: the ability to understand other people.
It's an ability we all need, but is especially important for teachers,
clinicians, salespersons, or politicians -- anybody who deals with other
people.
9. Existential Intelligence: the ability and proclivity to pose (and
ponder) questions about life, death, and ultimate realities.”
Together, with the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy the teacher strategically thinks of how each student will have opportunity to learn in various and multiple ways and at each level growing in knowledge and depth of learning. Next it is appropriate to present Bloom’s Taxonomy.
· Knowledge: Recall data or information.
· Comprehension: Understand the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and problems. State a problem in one's own words.
· Application: Use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Applies what was learned in the classroom into novel situations in the work place.
· Analysis: Separates material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences.
· Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure.
· Evaluation: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials.
In the differentiated classroom, there are multiple opportunities to experience different learning styles for students. Students may not be particularly gifted in something like the arts, but they can still participate and maybe even find enjoyment in completing an art-type project or a theater performance for the unit, especially if it is done with their peers and of their choosing.
Assessment in the differentiated classroom is done in various ways to identify the learning that is taking place along the journey of learning in a unit. Many times in the traditional classroom, assessment takes place at the mid-point or end of the unit. In the differentiated classroom, assessment is constantly taking place. In the Layered Curriculum® classroom, oral assessment takes place from beginning to end. There are opportunities for every student to conference on even the most basic of knowledge levels. The “C” layer is designed for many opportunities for assessment through verbal conversation. Dr. Nunley identifies the reasoning behind oral defense and that is “to actually learn something from the activity.” It is not enough to complete a paper of fill-in-the-blanks and get a star on your paper for doing so. Oral defense requires thought and practice about the content of the learning taking place on the paper. It is in this type of early assessment that the teacher identifies whether the student has the correct information to progress onto the “B” and “A” layer assignments.
In the book, How to Assess Authentic Learning, Kay Burke writes that, “If teacher’s talk with and listen to students, they gather information…to help clarify thinking, assist students to think about their own learning and help achieve new levels of understanding…” Differentiated Instruction is more than offering more assignments to keep multiple people busy. It is more than separating the class into two halves of the “able” and “not-so-able”. Differentiated instruction takes pre-planning, thoughtful content assembled in a meaningful way. It requires organization and enthusiasm for the student-teacher interaction experience. To truly experience the differentiated classroom, you have to be able to “see the trees within the forest” and teach to a very specific learner, everyday for an entire school year, knowing they will go on to be life-long learners because you provided them the tools to do so.
References:
Brady, Chris and Woodward, Orrin, (2006) Launching a Leadership Revolution: Developing yourself and others through the art and science of leadership, Obstacles Press, Inc. Third Edition
Burke, Kay. (1999). How to Assess Authentic Learning. Arlington Heights, IL. Skylight Training and Publishing.
Clark, Don. Learning Domains or Bloom’s Taxonomy, taken April 27, 2008. www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
Fogarty, Robin and Bellanca, James, (1995) Multiple Intelligences, IRI/Skylight Training and Publishing, Inc. Arlington Heights, IL.
Great Performances: Educational Resources. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory, taken April 26, 2008. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html
Nunley, Kathie F. Layered Curriculum®: The practical solution for teachers with more than one student in their classroom, NH; Brains.org 2003.