Low-SES Students And Their Strategies: Case Study

What effect did your teaching strategies have in terms of promoting student learning and keeping your students meaningfully engaged? (APS 5.A–C)

As a math teacher, I answer the following question at least once a week: “Am I going to use this in my life?” The first thing that comes to my mind is: “You will use math to pay your taxes, take your car to a mechanic, compare the number of hours worked and your paycheck”, among others. “When a topic connects to what students like to do, engagement deepens as they willingly spend time thinking, dialoguing, and creating ideas in meaningful ways. Making learning contextual to real-world experiences is a key learning technique with differentiating for student interests.” (McCarthy, 2014). Knowing the interests of my students is essential for them in order to master the material being covered in class. In addition, this gives me the opportunity to create a differentiating classroom. A few months ago I talked with the administration in my school and I let them know that my desire is that students have the opportunity to go to college or university to complete a degree,

Education will always be the primary source of student’s success in the workforce, community, nationwide and globally. Teachers carry the weight of ensuring students are learning what is required to become productive members of society. As a teacher, the success of my students is the most important goal. There are so many pedagogies, philosophies, strategies, and materials teachers are able to use to be productive in the classroom. Every teacher has their own preferred

By tailoring lessons designed to fit each student I am able to better help them understand what they are learning. For instance, having a child very interested in kinesthetic or auditory styles of learning I can easily integrate academics while also stimulating a passion for lifelong learning.

Over the past 15 years, the number of ELL and ESL students has rapidly increased to nearly 5 million. These students come in significantly below those of their peers in nearly every aspect of academic performance. In order to ensure that these students’ needs are being met, you must have a significant amount of coordination and collaboration throughout the educational system. Under the law, each school district must show that the entire student body as a whole is meeting the same academic standards. These subgroups (ESL and ELL students) must be meeting the state proficiency goal as well.

Education need to be valued at an early age in the home and schools. As an advocate, I think daily on how an impact I made on young children and families (Scott, p.6 2005). I can share ideas and experiences on how they relate to our students in the classroom, for an examples, an enjoyable fieldtrip, story time, or creative arts. Sharing with prospective students about experiences in the classroom could be very impressive. As the author stated others will want to be a part of what you are doing because you are having such fun (Scott, p.8

The U.S. Department of Education provides supplemental funding to local school districts to meet the needs of at-risk and low-income students. This funding is known as Title 1 funding and the schools that receive a portion of this funding are referred to as Title 1 schools. Teachers in Title 1 schools encounter students facing life struggles that many of us cannot imagine. Encouraging these students to focus in school can be difficult, but it is essential to overcome the challenge in order for students to achieve academically. Finding ways to engage Title 1 students can be a daunting task due to the fact that they face daily struggles just to survive. However, teachers must use student motivation techniques to engage these students. These techniques will assist in the students’ success in the classroom. “In education, student engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education” (Hidden Curriculum, 2014).

Teachers must hold high expectations for all of their students and recognize that all learners seek challenge, purpose, and affirmation. Students naturally want to learn and teachers must expect them to respond with investment, persistence, an opportunity to display their accomplishments and personal reflection. (Woolfolk, 2011). Teachers must connect new content with the knowledge scaffolding a student already possesses, in a way that encourages focused and engaged learning.

Values and attitude: All activities engage students to interact with the lesson, make informed perceptions and ask questions.

Evans points out that creating a caring, and trusting classroom is one of the most important factors to being a successful teacher. He goes on to say that in order to achieve this you must make yourself present to consistently be there to support your students. Secondly, a teacher should get to know his student by inquiring about their activities outside of school, a teacher must learn all that there is to know about his student. By knowing students interests outside of school a teacher can apply some of those things into classroom activities. This is called using intrinsic motivation, which is defined as doing something because it is fun, or because it is the right thing to do.

Hope you are doing well. It's been awhile since we've last spoke. I was a freshman at USD and you helped me a lot throughout my first year before you went on to USC.

For this assignment, I chose principle number six. Principle six states, “Engage others socially, emotionally, and intellectually (“SEI”).” I value this principle because I learned that children cannot maximize a learning opportunity without being engaged socially, emotionally and intellectually. These three components are inextricably linked; thus, you can’t have one without the other. Without engaging students socially, emotionally, and intellectually, learning is less effective. Therefore, I value this principle because it reminds me that, as a future teacher, I need to create or choose activities that will engage students socially, emotionally, and intellectually. I should not just choose an activity because it is “cute” or seems “fun.”

As a teacher, I want my classroom to be a progressive classroom. I want all my students, including ELLs, to learn by doing and learn by experiences. I want to build my curriculum based on my student’s experiences, interests, and encourage my students to work together cooperatively. My

students in relation to teaching and learning. First, I discovered their love and need of hands-on experiences. Every day that my students participated in a learning experiment, every student was involved and excited to see the results of the experiment. They constantly wanted to be the, “lucky volunteer”, and in their culminating project, I had students name their favorite part of the entire unit, and all 22 students mentioned one of the six experiments they participated in. Second, I discovered the power of student directed learning. Half way through the unit I began placing students who showed great understanding of the topics with students who had more difficulty understanding the topics of the unit. On these days, based on the conversations I observed between students, the students really enjoyed this opportunity of, “being the teacher” and their classmates enjoyed the experience of learning from a classmate. According to Adam Fletcher, an author with a focus in K-12 literature, states, “When students prepare to teach other students, learning suddenly involves active thinking about material, analysis and selection of main ideas, and processing the concepts into one’s own thoughts and words” (2016). Third, I discovered who they are as learners and what best suites them as individuals. Based on the formal and informal formative assessments the students took throughout the unit,

An effective classroom is the key to students’ learning. In my future classroom, I want to apply these theories and keys to effective teaching in order to be a successful teacher. I feel it is important for a teacher to have that connection with their students, as well as the satisfaction received when their students understand and enjoy the material. I want my future classroom to be a comfortable environment for learning, and draw them into a world of learning. I plan on teaching the upper elementary and middle level grades. As a teacher, I will use my