This week in my classroom, one thing I focused specifically on was looking at the

differentiated instruction that was used. One thing that I noticed, was that when the

students were taking their weekly spelling test, three of them only did six out of the

twelve words. These are the students that struggle with testing and spelling specifically.

Most of the time, however, the teacher isn’t the one using the differentiated instruction.

Usually, another adult will come into the classroom to pull out one or two of the

struggling kids to work with them. This allows for those students to work individually with

an adult to try to catch up. Another way that the school shows differentiated instruction

is by intervention groups. Every morning at about 10:45, students are pulled out into

groups with an adult, and about 6-8 students are left in Ms. S’s classroom. The students

that go to intervention groups are usually struggling either academically, behaviorally, or

both. While the students are in intervention groups, Ms. S usually pulls a small group of

students to do a small group instruction with them. This small group instruction is

usually leading a reading group. While that is happening, the remaining students use

chrome books to go on a database called “Iready”. This program curriculum is shaped

specifically to the student. As the student progresses, so does the program. It

challenges the students, but allows the instruction to be within the student’s zone of

proximal development. This is a really nice way of using differentiated instruction

because it is meeting the needs and challenges of all the students. Overall, it appears

that Ms. S does not use a lot of differentiated instruction, but it seems that the school is

shaped to take that over. The teacher does not need to use much differentiated

instruction because of all the help coming from around the school. However, she does

make changes in her curriculum to adjust to individual student’s needs if necessary.

Should there be more mainstreaming in the classroom with the teacher using

differentiated instruction or does this method work well? I think it probably depends on

the school, and it appears to be working well for RCS.

Another thing that I found interesting from the reading was the section about

seatwork. “…students with learning disabilities, who often have trouble improving

without teacher guidance, were spending about 40% of their time on individual

seatwork” (Woolfolk 2017, pg 611). While seat work may work well for some students,

many other students have a hard time with it. I am seeing this specifically in my

classroom. Whenever the students are assigned to work on something individually,

many of them often get frustrated because they don’t know the answers which results in

them copying their neighbor’s answer, guessing, or not finishing. I think the reason that

this is happening is because the seat work is replacing the lesson instead of reviewing

the lesson. The students need more instruction than that, and then get frustrated when

they don't understand what they are supposed to be doing. I wonder if using seat work

later on after the lesson would be more beneficial for the students? It also seems that

seat work may be overused in my classroom, so what other teaching methods could be

effective in place of that?

The last thing that I noticed about this week that connected to the reading was

the way my teacher poses questions. Her questions are often convergent questions

rather than divergent questions. She usually asks a question, with one answer in mind,

which doesn’t allow for the students to think open-mindedly. This is leading to a lot more

memorization of the information instead of inviting creativity and comprehension into the

lesson. The students often think that there is only one to answer questions because this
is what they have been subconsciously taught. For example, on Thursday, she asked a

divergent question about a book we were reading. She asked “What do you think the

mouse would ask for if you had given him a cookie?” She was hoping for responses

personal to the student, but instead most students responded with answers they had

heard from the book such as “another cookie”, “a glass of milk”, or “a straw for the milk”.

This hinted to me that perhaps they are conditioned to stick to answers they have heard

before and not stray far from them because otherwise they are afraid that their answer

will be wrong.

Each week better concludes how diverse my students are from one another. In

all of our education classes we learn about how our students will be diverse learners,

but it’s hard to understand that until you experience it. I think it’s amazing looking

through a Christian perspective how different we can all be. I love seeing how God

created us all unique in our own way with our own strengths and weaknesses. I think

this gives the students an opportunity to help others according to their strengths and

weaknesses and it helps build community within the classroom. Just like as a teacher,

you need to get to know your students to identify their diversity within the class, I believe

that we, as Christians need to get to know each other to fully accept and love each

other through our differences.

References:

Woolfolk, A. (2017). Educational Psychology (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson.