STUDENT TALK
Let's talk about student traits. There are four student traits that teachers often need to consider when ensuring effective and efficient learning.
THE FOUR TRAITS ARE...
- READINESS
- INTREST
- LEARNING PROFILE
- AFFECT
But what do these student traits mean to us??
Readiness refers to a students knowledge, understanding, and skill related to a particular sequence of learning. Let's take a quick journey back to Educational Psychology.. Remember when we talked about ZPD? Zone of Proximal Development does that ring a bell? Meaning that a student learns best when in their ZPD. Well that relates to readiness. Students learn best, and learning only occurs when a student works at a level of difficulty that is both challenging and attainable.
Interest refers to those topics or pursuits that evoke curiosity and passion in a learner. I really love where Tomlinson address this about interest,"highly effective teachers address to both developing interests and as yet undiscovered interests in their students.
Learning Profile refers to how students learn best. Learning profile refers to students learning style, intelligence preference, culture, and gender. I think it is essential for us as teachers to teach in different ways based on learning profile. Because all students learn best in different ways there is no way that we can justify teaching in just one way!
Affect has to do with how students feel about themselves. What works for one doesn't mean it will work for all! I love what Tomlinson says, " A teacher in a differentiated classroom attends to students emotions or feelings (affect) as well as to student cognition."
WHAT DO WE DO????
Here are some teacher tips that help us out
when dealing with the 4 student traits!
- Use visuals or graphic organizers while lecturing thus engaging both visual and auditory learners.
- Ask students to use manipulatives or role playing as a way of understanding a text or oral explanation thus combining kinesthetic and visual or auditory learners
- Provide taped passages of text, completely taped chapters of books, or use small group instruction to enable students with encoding difficulties to hear rather than read material that would otherwise be inaccessible.
- Provide some text or supplementary materials in a students native language, while that student learns to read and speak in english, to assist in understanding of required english materials.
It may seem overwhelming to make accommodations, and may seem like extra work for you to do these things that will help students as we are aware of the 4 student traits. But just think of how much more students are getting out of lessons, concepts, and information when you are doing these extra things to help students learn best. I can only imagine how much time it will save in the long run as students won't have to be retaught again and again because we are delivering them information in a way that they are not able to understand easily. It's really eye-opening to me to read about these strategies, and helpful hints that will help our students out so much! I am so excited to go into a classroom of my own someday, and provide students with resources that will really help them learn best!
Great discussion of student traits... and I assume that you will soon be discussion classroom elements through which we can address those student traits. I'll just toss this big idea to you right now: These student traits (readiness, learning profile, interest, affect) are what we will be calling the "FOR Whats of differentiation -- or what we can differentiate FOR. THe classroom elements (content, process, products, environment) are what we will be calling the "WHATs" of differentiation -- or WHAT we can differentiate according to the traits they need differentiated "for." Confusing now... valuable to understand soon! 5 pts.
ReplyDeleteOkay I given this some thought and I am wondering about things I can do in the classroom in order to differentiate learning opportunities. I feel like you may be able to observe affect, readiness, and learning profile more easily. Interests can change so much, what do you think about like an interest survey. It would be easy to give it to students a few times a year. Students would tell you what they are interested in learning about and then we could provide opportunities with choices in what they study.
ReplyDeleteWe should come up with one I think it would motivate students to explore and learn.
Great example of that is our learning menu for this class:)