Jan 16: Diversifying Instruction

Prof. Hodde's Reflection on Week 1: (Intro, Chapter 1)

I have often wondered how many seasoned content teachers would claim whether they see their teaching as an art, or a science. Both artistic and scientific methods use many modes of inquiry to express something or explore a prediction, but they each place different values on the purposes and techniques of their disciplines. As someone who has always approached educational inquiry from an artistic view, I was impressed by the ways your literacy digs revolved not just around the various sign systems at our disposal, but also how each social literacy context, whether it be a comic book store, a preschool classroom, a child's bookshelf, or a spice drawer, develops through the sensory and felt (subjective) experience of relationships, rather than objective phenomena.  As we discussed, why else learn to communicate but to connect and make sense of meaningful relationships in the world? 

In our Discussion Web concerning whether the new literacies of the 21st Century offer an adequate cognitive challenge to students, many of you argued that the difference lies both in the choices teachers make (teach, don't facilitate!) AND in the creative choices students are guided to discover with these tools, texts and technologies. Even those of you who were worried about the challenge of meeting and measuring so many different needs, we know that youth are interested in learning in order to make impact, to participate and find real connections with peers, teachers, their classroom community, the greater world in ways that are hopefully empowering.

This Wed we will return briefly to the digs to help us transition to new material as we determine what it means to diversify and organize your content classroom to meet English Language Standards, and still support your content objectives.

Transitioning to Week 2: (Alv et al, Chapters 7 and 9)

 “Classmates with no history of rewarding exchange and no emotional investment in each other (will) appear unconcerned about future interactions.” (Laursen)

In Chapter 7, Alvermann , Swafford and Montero prompt me to ask, how might we create environments and communities in our classrooms in which children, as students and classmates, feel safe and confident about inquiring and making meaning together, even if they appear to have little common experience outside of school, or vary in their aptitudes for reading? How do we motivate students by showing them how content is “interesting, relevant, worth knowing” (p. 123)? 

The authors reveal that a term like  “differentiation” only begins to consider the differences that children bring as readers and learners. Language, culture, motivation, interests, intelligences—all influence children’s attitudes, learning styles and abilities as readers and writers, and all become clues for choices of texts (genre, content and multimodal features) as well as instructional approaches to these texts.  Recall how many ways we “read” and understood the idea of multiple literacies in our DIGS. Recall how we explored different reader roles and purposes with our Territories exercise. Depending on the context of our experience—whether we’re studying the Great Depression or retelling folk tales—we can expect many layers of reader response.

The word “investment” found in my opening quote is a word we often relate to economics, but as teachers we are responsible for deciding why content teaching is worth the investment of our time, and our students' time—why are these disciplines worth discussion? This question is important because rather than just assume what the standards give us, we need to model why we are intrinsically motivated to teach, and hopefully why our students might be motivated to learn. As Chap 9 helps you determine possible ways to organize your classroom and inspire students to use content language, we will focus on several aspects of this organizational process in class, especially how your decisions can engage student “talk” that supports reading and writing processes, and the language of content standards. 

We will be having some fun with a few content simulations and kinesthetic movement this Wed, so wear comfortable clothing-if you can help it, don’t wear heels!


Week 2 GLOSSARY OF TERMS: Chapters 7 & 9
Intrinsic Motivation: the idea that we are engaged for personal fulfillment, not external/extrinsic prompts (candy, grades). In the case of Ethnomathematics (122) or building community via the Family Photography or Storytelling Project (132), students are given some choice, control, challenge and collaborative experience in weighing multiple perspectives as well as identifying what is important about their individual/ cultural approach. This allows for flow between informal and formal learning modes as well as academic / cultural goals. 


Differentiation: An instructional decision-making approach that asks teachers to consider the diverse abilities, experiences, needs of students, including learning styles, multiple intelligences (we'll explore week 3!) language proficiency, prior knowledge and readiness.  It requires teachers to think about intrinsic motivation, such as a menu of options for students to approach and achieve in the learning process. NOTE: In this class, we will extend our sense of differentiation to include a diverse use of learning modes, contexts and texts, offering many points of view, cultural origins that respect and broaden student understandings. 

Language Routines (LR's): LR's refer to the different ways teachers and students organize meaning-making and participate in language use throughout the learning cycle.  Common routines mentioned in your cross-curricular reading include Read Alouds, Learning Centers, Silent Sustained Reading, Guided Reading, Minilessons, Shared Reading, Buddy Reading, Reading / Writing Workshop, Author's Chair.  In our national standards for English Language Arts (see inside flap of Alvermann, Swafford and Montero), which drive both the purpose for training content reading/ writing teachers as well as Common Core standards for 2014, these routines need to consider ways to model learning processes and strategies, expose students to varied content texts (print and nonprint) and gradually release them to independent inquiry.