Introduction Every day I come into contact with 165 students. These students represent different races, cultures, lifestyles, languages and walks of life. They have different interests, styles of learning and knowledge they bring to the learning. As their English teacher, I am faced with the task of differentiating for each of my students’ needs. The differentiating that I do begins with identifying standards, determining was to provide the best differentiated instruction, and creating assessments that connect the standards to the assessment task. According to Tonya R. Moon (2005), “allowing for multiple approaches to content, process, and product from an instructional standpoint also allows for multiple approaches from an …show more content…
This assessment will show me what should be covered during instruction. At the beginning of this unit, a second diagnostic will be given to determine students’ beliefs and attitudes toward the election process. The assessment will cover question about whether students and their parents vote. The assessment will also ask questions about how the campaign ads influence them, their families and those in their community. I decided to give students this diagnostic because I want to know more about how they view voting. Many of my students don’t understand the election process and don’t care too. Including this subject and assessment in the unit, helps make this an unit that is authentic and engaging. Authenticity “addresses the fundamental issue of student motivation by presenting meaningful real-world performance goals achieved through purposeful learning” (McTighe, 2010, p. 282). Many of my students are or will be eligible to vote in the November election. Having students think about the election process and how they will be influenced can influence them to take a more active role in their community. This assessment will be used to determine what should be discussed and taught when it comes to persuasive writing and contributing to society. Ongoing Assessments Once that instruction has begun, ongoing assessments
Within the classroom their needs to be a variety of assessment strategies as not all learners will be able to express their knowledge to the best of their ability in some forms of assessment.
In order to develop a connection to an issue, it is necessary to be informed about how certain issues affect a student’s everyday life. This would constitute as one of the topics that would be discussed in the mandatory elections class. Additionally, the student’s would be informed about the election process, educated about the stances each candidate takes, and become knowledgeable about the main issues that are taking place around us and knowledgeable about the issues that the
Assessment is essential as the information gathered is how the students are progressing to the learning outcomes and performance standards. Upon completing this artifact, it is recognized how assessments impact how instruction should be delivered, and recognizing that all students will learn differently. As an educator, flexibility and adapting to the diverse learning environment is necessary to ensure all students are grasping the material. Realizing there are those who do not test well and trying to find ways to assess those skills through class discussions or group work while encouraging the students and praising them for their efforts. Designing and creating unique ways to ensure all students are learning the material and meeting the objectives and goals set forth in the lesson plan. It is the responsibility of an educator to develop goals that will reinforce lesson plans, lectures, and instruction. Those students who have an IEP modifications will be made based on their IEP recommendations. For ESL/ELL students in the class, modifications will be made on a case by case as recommending to ensure the students are successfully meeting their learning goals to their fullest
Students from the Political Communication class at John Brown University realized a simulation of a campaign to bring people voting and observing how students responses to the
Halloween is approaching, and we all know what that means: a lot of scary stuff. As of right now though, there’s only one thing that scares me more than ghosts, goblins, and eating too much sugar, it’s who is going to win this presidential election. Living in Canada I honestly couldn’t care less about the United States and who becomes President. It’s all one giant farce and comes down to the two biggest morons ever seen running, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. With the way this is going, a dog would be better suited for President. No, seriously, I think a dog is by far smarter than any human, including these two dunces. However, this is getting out of hand, and because I like to go to the US for vacations, not only am I concerned about this; I am also horrified with the outcome.
Instead of simply adding more avenues of information for students, it makes more theoretical sense to make these classes active. Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977) would argue that in order to gain benefits of habitual voting, they would need to rehearse the practice of voting. Given that many High-school students cannot vote, it would be up to the civics classes to simulate the experience of voting in a tangible way for the students to receive benefits.
Compared to traditional classrooms, differentiated instruction considers the diversity of all learners, utilizes assessments to design instruction, and utilizes their learning style and interest during lessons. Differentiation methods may include learning contracts, tiered activities, and choice boards (Tomlinson, 2001). Recently, I observed a teacher include differentiation within her lesson. The strategy used was to allow students to pick one of two books to read. Initially, the class had been assigned to read Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. However, as the class progressed through the reading activity some students struggled with reading the book. As a result, the teacher introduced an alternate book, Among the Hidden that students
Research on differentiation emphasizes that including a variation of instruction can meet the needs of students with different learning needs in this classroom. This is echoed in Carol Tomlinson's research, she states the benefits of differentiation instruction in the following statement, "It promotes high-level and powerful curriculum for all students, but varies the level of teacher support, task complexity, pacing, and avenues to learning based on student readiness, interests, and learning profile." (Tomlinson, 2000, pg. 25) The use of differentiated instruction will allow me to reach the needs of the different learners in my classroom, which include students who need to a further challenged, struggling readers, 504 students, and students with multiple learning styles. For the students who need an additional challenge, they may need differentiated questioning that promotes higher orders of thinking, challenging texts or documents, or assignments that allow them to demonstrate multiple skills. Students who struggle with reading comprehension may need simplified texts, additional time on reading assignments, or tools such as graphic organizers or guided notes to assist them during reading assignments. For the 504 students in my class may benefit from additional supports in the form of graphic organizers and assignments that incorporate technology. For the students who have multiple learning styles, it is important for me to use different supports and tasks to meet the needs of these students. Howard Gardner's theory on multiple intelligences supports my incorporation of various learning styles in my instruction. The theory emphasizes eight different intelligences in which students learn and that teachers should incorporate many of the intelligences in instruction. According to research, “Teachers should structure the presentation of material in a
The line between teaching history and current events is often blurred within the field of Social Studies, but every four years comes the Presidential Election. This is a current event that cannot be ignored given the amount of media attention and personal debates that occur from the national election. Given these facts, it is nearly impossible not to teach about the ongoing election within school classrooms. After reading Students learn about candidates, issues, civics it is clear that many different approaches are used to inform students about the presidential election, if the election is even discussed within the classroom. The methods used for teaching the presidential election varies across grade levels, some lessons are multidisciplinary, while others focus on Americans civic duties.
Each year, our staff chooses a curricular focus. Each staff member signs up to share their ideas and lesson samples with staff members. For example, last year our focus was on vocabulary instruction. Each teacher was assigned a different staff meeting to bring ideas and share their strategies with staff members. While this year's focus has been determined, I will suggest making differentiation a focus for next year's staff meetings. My rationale for this suggestion will come from the survey results listed in Appendix A. Some survey questions were answered without one educator designating a level 4 usage. These areas included knowing students' learning preferences, adjusting pace of instruction based on student need, allowing choice topics to motivate students, and using tiered assignments (Appendix A). The results of this survey indicate that differentiation is a topic we need to be discussing openly and addressing. While many teachers may feel overwhelmed by current changes taking place in our district, Heacox (2009) reminds us that we can slowly implement changes by choosing one new differentiation strategy over a grading period (pg. 165). This would allow teachers to make changes without feeling overwhelmed in overhauling their current curriculum. Furthermore, one demographic may suggest why some of our survey results were so low. Many of our teachers have been teaching the same course and same curriculum for many years. All participants surveyed have been teaching for fifteen or more years because our staff only has two novice teachers - one including myself - who have each been teaching for five years. It can be easy for teachers to become comfortable with curriculum - especially when so many changes happen every year at the building, district, state, and national levels - and continue
I. Open with Impact: College students believe they don’t need to vote and find it a waste of time since our “votes” don’t matter or don’t change anything.
But one of the biggest issue that includes politics is should politics even affect college? Many have different opinion about the topic, but what over rules the opinions is the facts. College Republicans? College Democrats? These groups are more than likely to be found on campus, which means more opportunities to become more involved in a person’s college experiences. For many politically active campus, it’s often a who’s who of politicians that come to speak. These speeches often include information about finding out what kind of party they are want to be affiliated with in their future. These speeches show young students the pro and cons of all parties, which a United States citizen can be a part of. The speeches are also not bias of one group or another making it easier for students to make their own choice (Niche, 2014).
You know what irritates me more than anything? illiterate people trying to pass off as being literate. Why try to be something you're not? Why try to convince people you're this great writer when in fact you aren't? What I don't understand is why bother joining a writing site when you can't write? I get people make mistakes, but is it that hard that you can't use spell check? or you can't find a website that will tell you if you've made a mistake and need to fix it?
The importance of this survey was for people to understand the level of student involvement in politics, as well as how different situations and restrictions can affect their political views. Unequal opportunities among students around the country have resulted in a misrepresentation of American citizens, particularly, minority groups. This can be seen through education systems in communities around the country,
Research is different from other forms of persuasive writing in that it relies on facts that have been acknowledged by the individual’s peers as truths regardless of what they believe in. When writing a research paper, your peers must be able to understand your reasoning that can be supported by varied forms of data such as figures, tables, images, etc. Your success is dependent on allowing your peers to validate your reasoning, and you being able to evaluate your findings.