Daily Helping:
Week 07 (February 12 - February 18):
During this 7 day period, consider how to engage all learners in your classroom. Differentiated instruction has more than one purpose and this needs to be understood and allowed to function as a catalyst which fosters student achievement. The first purpose deals with the necessity of scaffolding and structuring each lesson so that each student has the opportunity to prosper in their academic-engagment as the result of learning content at an appropriate level of rigor and relevance. The second purpose deals with the need for providing a learning environment where at level and above level students are not bored while below level students are remediated. In other words, allow differentiation to ultimately yield to an environment that is conducive to inquiry-based opportunities so that every student is able to maximize their on task engagment in a collaborative setting. Engaging all students is not an easy task to fulfill; thus, teachers need a tremendous amount of research, practice, support and patience to guide them on this noble endeavor. Teaching students is not an automatic success because a teacher stands in front of 30 kids with a desire to teach them a concept. Many factors are involved with actively helping students to master a given concept and among these are understanding relational and cognitive-related learning needs. A teacher will be successful in engaging his/her students if they prioritize relationships, rigor and relevance within the classroom environment. A student will not be interested in how much a teacher knows until such a student knows how much a teacher is interested in them personally. This is a difficult balance to find because a teacher must teach the curriculum during the school year; yet, students must not be treated like robots who exist to only receive the impartation of knowledge from a teacher who is doing his/her duty in order to collect a paycheck; it can be argued that the great challenge for teachers is to educate the whole person. The implications involved with accomplishing this greatly transends the mere ability to teach students to retain intellectual knowledge. Students will be engaged to the degree that a teacher utilizes differentiated instruction in the fulness of its purpose; Engage your students by encouraging them on a relational level and by providing the quality learnig experiences that they all deserve.
During this 7 day period, consider how to engage all learners in your classroom. Differentiated instruction has more than one purpose and this needs to be understood and allowed to function as a catalyst which fosters student achievement. The first purpose deals with the necessity of scaffolding and structuring each lesson so that each student has the opportunity to prosper in their academic-engagment as the result of learning content at an appropriate level of rigor and relevance. The second purpose deals with the need for providing a learning environment where at level and above level students are not bored while below level students are remediated. In other words, allow differentiation to ultimately yield to an environment that is conducive to inquiry-based opportunities so that every student is able to maximize their on task engagment in a collaborative setting. Engaging all students is not an easy task to fulfill; thus, teachers need a tremendous amount of research, practice, support and patience to guide them on this noble endeavor. Teaching students is not an automatic success because a teacher stands in front of 30 kids with a desire to teach them a concept. Many factors are involved with actively helping students to master a given concept and among these are understanding relational and cognitive-related learning needs. A teacher will be successful in engaging his/her students if they prioritize relationships, rigor and relevance within the classroom environment. A student will not be interested in how much a teacher knows until such a student knows how much a teacher is interested in them personally. This is a difficult balance to find because a teacher must teach the curriculum during the school year; yet, students must not be treated like robots who exist to only receive the impartation of knowledge from a teacher who is doing his/her duty in order to collect a paycheck; it can be argued that the great challenge for teachers is to educate the whole person. The implications involved with accomplishing this greatly transends the mere ability to teach students to retain intellectual knowledge. Students will be engaged to the degree that a teacher utilizes differentiated instruction in the fulness of its purpose; Engage your students by encouraging them on a relational level and by providing the quality learnig experiences that they all deserve.
© 2009-2013 J.T.A.S.P.
Last modified: January 13, 2013
