Every once in a while, someone, usually a parent, will complain that teachers don't care about their gifted child or else they would provide appropriate learning experiences for them. They know that teachers don't have a lot of time, but they insist that, if they really cared, they would MAKE time for them. While I don't disagree with the idea, the fact is, it does take time - a LOT of time. It takes more time to differentiate for the gifted child than it does for the learning disabled child, and here is why.
1) No Appropriate Materials
Materials for teaching are always in short supply. Many teachers resort to buying some of their own supplies of things they find especially useful in the classroom - extra books, markers, colored pencils, rock collections for a geology unit, costumes for a social studies play, etc. Even textbooks are often in short supply. There is one set of science textbooks for 3 classrooms, or the social studies textbooks haven't been updated for 10 years. Materials to use with gifted kids are usually non-existent, unless the teacher has purchased them him/herself. This leads to several of the other problems.
2) No Appropriate Learning Objectives
The goals and learning objectives for your regular students are published and explicit (usually). There are resources to help with struggling students, both materials and people. But what about the gifted students? In my long years of teaching, both regular and substitute, I have rarely found any serious effort to address goals and learning objectives for gifted students.
Developing appropriate goals and learning objectives takes a LOT of time and expertise. That is why they have curriculum committees and textbook selection committees. How many districts have a "Gifted Student Standards" Committee? A learning goal committee for gifted students? Part of the problem is that gifted students are often widely varying in abilities and needs. Another part of the problem is that it requires not only knowledge of gifted students, but also extensive knowledge of the subject matter. This subject matter can be far beyond what most classroom teachers are familiar with. They are adept at breaking down subject matter for which they are responsible. But extending subject matter beyond what they are familiar with is far more difficult.
I have worked with a few mathematics curricula that have explicitly developed activities for "extended" learning. These activities are intended to be used with the gifted students. I have never seen them used, but at least they are there. I have rarely seen objectives for gifted students in other academic subjects.
3) Finding Appropriate Materials
Yes, the Internet is wonderful and yes, there are wonderful lessons out there. Finding those lessons takes a lot of time. Even if teachers have thought long and hard about what additional objectives they would like to have the gifted student(s) achieve, finding appropriate materials and lessons takes time.
There are a lot of bad lesson plans out there; there are a lot of good lesson plans that would be great for most kids; there are fewer lesson plans that would be great for the gifted students, but are not appropriate for everyone. Why is it important that they NOT be appropriate for everyone? Because if everyone in the class can do, enjoy, and learn from the activities, they should be part of the regular curriculum and should not be considered to be differentiation for the gifted student. Too often, activities in pull-out gifted programs turn into "fun and games for smart kids" - activities that most of the kids in the classroom could have done, but they don't get to, because they are not labeled gifted. I know, because my own pull-out classroom sometimes resembled this. There is a danger to this. The danger is that people will push to have kids participate in these fun activities, even if they don't really need gifted education. Why not? They are fun, motivating, and the results don't really matter in terms of grading or learning objectives.
4) Teaching and Presenting to Gifted Students
One parent suggested that, in the age of computers, just allowing the gifted students access to computers could keep them busy, motivated, and learning. Perhaps. Busy and motivated are especially easy. Learning? Possibly. But what are they learning? They are learning that learning is usually just fun and games. That if they have to work hard at it, it isn't as much fun, so why should they do it?
Perhaps it is simply from my own life, but even as a highly gifted child, I would not seek out difficult learning experiences. I would not challenge myself. Perhaps some gifted students do. Many will not. Many will not seek out appropriate learning experiences and may even rebel against being required to do something appropriate for their ability level. Many parents and teachers will defend this as a matter of choice. We could offer algebra to 7th graders, but if Student X, who is ready for algebra, doesn't want to take it, we will just let him stay in the regular classroom, doing work he has already mastered. Why do we let smart kids choose to not work hard? Do we let any other students opt out of difficult material?
If the objectives for the gifted students are well thought out and the materials and lessons planned, when are they presented and by whom? When does the teacher actually teach the gifted student(s)? Book groups are usually easy. The groups can be varying in size and different objectives are generally seamlessly incorporated. Math groups can sometimes be similarly arranged, though the most frequent alteration in presentation is that students actually switch classrooms for math groups, with one teacher taking the bottom group, one teacher taking the middle group, and one teacher taking the usually larger "top" group. This top group is not only usually larger than any of the other groups, but it is also not really adequate for the gifted math students. Typically, the material that is presented is just the standard curriculum that is a bit faster, so they can get ALL of the pages done, not just the bare minimum. Sometimes, it is the standard curriculum accelerated by one year.
If, instead, the teacher is trying to differentiate for the students that are particularly gifted in social studies or science, it is much more difficult. Typically, what will happen is that there will be projects for these subjects. But designing projects that include both the regular curriculum and the learning objectives for the gifted students is difficult. Instead, what usually seems to happen is that teachers hope that students will seek their own level in their projects. The objectives and learning standards are vague enough so that they can be construed to be applicable to all ability levels.
5) Assessing Gifted Students
This shouldn't be a difficult problem, but it often engenders great debate. Should the gifted students be given As just because they have, indeed, mastered the regular curriculum? Or should they be graded on the goals and objectives that were developed for them? On what is a grade to be based? Should it be what would be expected of any age student who attempts the given material or should the age of the student be taken into consideration?
6) School Support Personnel
When asked to differentiate for struggling students, a teacher will generally have many different people in the school to turn to for help. There are literacy specialists, behavior specialists, language learning specialists, learning disability teachers, math specialists, aides, and a number of other people who come to help, both at the school and the district level. When teachers need to differentiate for gifted students, there are rarely people who are designated to help them. There used to be a few gifted specialists, but these are rapidly disappearing from most schools. I worked as a gifted specialist at a middle school. I was hired for 7 hours a week. When the specialists are rarely there and are not considered significant members of the staff, teachers cease to rely on them - or to even know how to use them.
Conclusion:
Differentiating for gifted students is actually HARDER than differentiating for struggling students. There are probably other reasons than just those outlined above. I know this won't satisfy the parent whose child needs something more and isn't getting it. It shouldn't. But we have to support different ways of helping teachers take care of gifted students. Blaming them for not differentiating for their gifted students doesn't mean that they can.
Showing posts with label teaching_techniques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching_techniques. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Monday, December 02, 2013
Interview Question I Won't Ever Ask
At the end of those canned questions that they ask you at an interview, they also usually ask the canned question: Do you have any questions for us? I have some stock questions I generally ask, but there is one question I wish I could ask, but have never had the courage to actually do so.
Most of the people who have read other posts on this blog know that, while I think differentiation for gifted students is a good idea, I think that it isn't a good strategy for gifted educators to tout it as a GIFTED strategy. Teachers just aren't doing it. They may have been trained to do it; they may think they are doing it; but if they are, it isn't having much visible effect.
So here is the interview question: if you truly believe in differentiation, why are there still learning disabilities teachers, reading support teachers, math support teachers, BD teachers, ESL teachers, ELL teachers, etc.? If we accept that these students need more support than the regular classroom teacher can offer, why do we assume that s/he can offer enough support for gifted students? Why is it that the only outlier students with different needs that don't have special teachers are usually the gifted students?
And, no, extending the curriculum isn't easy for teachers. It requires going beyond what they regularly teach, finding resources and materials that they don't normally use.
Most of the people who have read other posts on this blog know that, while I think differentiation for gifted students is a good idea, I think that it isn't a good strategy for gifted educators to tout it as a GIFTED strategy. Teachers just aren't doing it. They may have been trained to do it; they may think they are doing it; but if they are, it isn't having much visible effect.
So here is the interview question: if you truly believe in differentiation, why are there still learning disabilities teachers, reading support teachers, math support teachers, BD teachers, ESL teachers, ELL teachers, etc.? If we accept that these students need more support than the regular classroom teacher can offer, why do we assume that s/he can offer enough support for gifted students? Why is it that the only outlier students with different needs that don't have special teachers are usually the gifted students?
And, no, extending the curriculum isn't easy for teachers. It requires going beyond what they regularly teach, finding resources and materials that they don't normally use.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Talking and Attention
This is a somewhat rambling post, where I am thinking about kids' talking and issues regarding attention.
The class I subbed for yesterday had book buddies, so I had a chance to talk to another teacher while the older kids ( my class) read to and with the younger ones (her class). Somewhere in our conversation, the topic turned to the differences over the years in the kids in classes. Both of us observed that kids now seem to have tremendous difficulty really LISTENING. She said that they seem to feel the need for constant noise around them - music, activity, talking to themselves. I hadn't noticed it in this way, but I do notice that kids seem to talk nearly continuously. And, although I have posted on this topic before, I am still wondering WHY. Why do kids feel the need to talk so much at school? Is it something we are doing - or not doing - as teachers? Is it the nature of school? Is it natural and only now becoming so much in evidence, because there are so many students in the classroom or because the consequences of constant chatter aren't enough to deter it?
First of all, let me say that even the students seem to be aware that they cannot do some of their work well when people around them are talking all of the time. This seems to be more apparent in subjects where the nature of the work is completely independent effort, e.g., writing. But even knowing this, kids who feel the desire to talk don't or can't inhibit their talking if they themselves feel the desire to do so. They know that if someone else talks, they get distracted, but if they talk, they seem to feel it is needed or justifiable.
Further interesting examples of this are often seen in the computer labs. Kids are working independently on projects or simply different choices of math games. They are chattering constantly. In spite of the fact that each student is most interested in their own activity, they are talking to other students all of the time. And the other students sometimes are listening. I know there have been many studies that show that people can't actually multi-task - that they are actually just switching focus back and forth, but students seem to be faster at it than the studies would seem to point out. Are kids better/faster at switching focus? Does it depend on the level of focus necessary?
I know I can think of other things when I am swimming. I know that I can do fractions in different number bases while I swim. But, one thing I can't do when I swim is focus on a word-intensive task at the same time that I am swimming. I can think about topics using words, but I can't create word-related things while swimming, i.e., I can't work on the lyrics to a song that I am writing. So the depth of focus does matter - at least to me.
The other part of the problem is hearing what is said. I have noticed that many students require multiple repetition of simple directions, e.g., "Open your books to page 81." Some, like me, are very visually oriented and will not need further assistance if the page number is also posted on the board. Others seem to ignore both verbal and visual presentations and need multiple references to them both before they can complete the task. It is as though they have to go through several layers of attention. First they have to be aware that they are being asked to stop whatever they are currently doing. That takes several attempts. Then they have to be aware that they are being asked to do something else. Then they need to shift their attention to thinking about what they are being asked to do. But then the attention seems to shift back to their previous task and they have to think about what they were doing and what they need to do to end that. They have now completely forgotten about p. 81 in the book and need several more reminders in order to get back to that. This sequence seems to be repeated for some students every time there is a new directive given. And, all of the while, some of them are still talking.
Quite a while ago, I read an article telling college professors not to lecture so much and to break up lectures into smaller chunks. I can't actually imaging lecturing to students the way I was lectured to when I was in college. Most of the classes I had were around 50 or 60 minutes and the teacher would lecture for a large part of the time. In recent years, lectures have gotten much shorter and have been augmented with discussions, demonstrations, working of problems, etc. Even the MOOCs (online courses) that I have taken have been broken up into videos that last between 6 and 18 minutes (at most). Most are around 10 to 12 minutes long.
What has happened to our attention spans? What has happened to the depth of our attention?
Many things to think about.
The class I subbed for yesterday had book buddies, so I had a chance to talk to another teacher while the older kids ( my class) read to and with the younger ones (her class). Somewhere in our conversation, the topic turned to the differences over the years in the kids in classes. Both of us observed that kids now seem to have tremendous difficulty really LISTENING. She said that they seem to feel the need for constant noise around them - music, activity, talking to themselves. I hadn't noticed it in this way, but I do notice that kids seem to talk nearly continuously. And, although I have posted on this topic before, I am still wondering WHY. Why do kids feel the need to talk so much at school? Is it something we are doing - or not doing - as teachers? Is it the nature of school? Is it natural and only now becoming so much in evidence, because there are so many students in the classroom or because the consequences of constant chatter aren't enough to deter it?
First of all, let me say that even the students seem to be aware that they cannot do some of their work well when people around them are talking all of the time. This seems to be more apparent in subjects where the nature of the work is completely independent effort, e.g., writing. But even knowing this, kids who feel the desire to talk don't or can't inhibit their talking if they themselves feel the desire to do so. They know that if someone else talks, they get distracted, but if they talk, they seem to feel it is needed or justifiable.
Further interesting examples of this are often seen in the computer labs. Kids are working independently on projects or simply different choices of math games. They are chattering constantly. In spite of the fact that each student is most interested in their own activity, they are talking to other students all of the time. And the other students sometimes are listening. I know there have been many studies that show that people can't actually multi-task - that they are actually just switching focus back and forth, but students seem to be faster at it than the studies would seem to point out. Are kids better/faster at switching focus? Does it depend on the level of focus necessary?
I know I can think of other things when I am swimming. I know that I can do fractions in different number bases while I swim. But, one thing I can't do when I swim is focus on a word-intensive task at the same time that I am swimming. I can think about topics using words, but I can't create word-related things while swimming, i.e., I can't work on the lyrics to a song that I am writing. So the depth of focus does matter - at least to me.
The other part of the problem is hearing what is said. I have noticed that many students require multiple repetition of simple directions, e.g., "Open your books to page 81." Some, like me, are very visually oriented and will not need further assistance if the page number is also posted on the board. Others seem to ignore both verbal and visual presentations and need multiple references to them both before they can complete the task. It is as though they have to go through several layers of attention. First they have to be aware that they are being asked to stop whatever they are currently doing. That takes several attempts. Then they have to be aware that they are being asked to do something else. Then they need to shift their attention to thinking about what they are being asked to do. But then the attention seems to shift back to their previous task and they have to think about what they were doing and what they need to do to end that. They have now completely forgotten about p. 81 in the book and need several more reminders in order to get back to that. This sequence seems to be repeated for some students every time there is a new directive given. And, all of the while, some of them are still talking.
Quite a while ago, I read an article telling college professors not to lecture so much and to break up lectures into smaller chunks. I can't actually imaging lecturing to students the way I was lectured to when I was in college. Most of the classes I had were around 50 or 60 minutes and the teacher would lecture for a large part of the time. In recent years, lectures have gotten much shorter and have been augmented with discussions, demonstrations, working of problems, etc. Even the MOOCs (online courses) that I have taken have been broken up into videos that last between 6 and 18 minutes (at most). Most are around 10 to 12 minutes long.
What has happened to our attention spans? What has happened to the depth of our attention?
Many things to think about.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Good Things I See When Subbing
Sometimes when I am subbing, I see techniques that I think are really useful - or I even come up with things myself that prove effective. One thing that is always of interest to me is how the teachers manage attendance and lunch count - mundane, yes, but good techniques can really make the start of the day easier. Of course, they do depend on the age of the students.
One 6th grade teacher I have subbed for had a bulletin board devoted to student locations. At the beginning of the day, there were three different colored tags (with names on them) in the student's pocket, one for attendance, one for hot lunch, and a third for specials. As the student passed the bulletin board coming in the room (or as part of the getting ready routine), the student would pull his or her attendance tag and put it in a basket. If s/he was planning on getting a hot lunch, the lunch tag was also pulled out of the pocket and put in another basket. If there were two choices for lunch, there would be two baskets. When a student left the room to go to a special class - reading, band, gifted, speech, etc., the specials tag would be pulled out and placed in the appropriate out of the room envelop (also on the board). The teacher also had job assignments on the next bulletin board, so a student would take the lunch count and attendance. At the end of the day, it was the job of one of the students to return all tags to the proper pocket. As much as possible, this teacher tried to train the students to do routine chores in the class.
Other teachers have used clothes pins, magnets attached to popsicle sticks, or labels with velcro. When the child leaves the room, s/he moves his/her token and places it on/in the appropriate "gone" location.
Other things that I saw today that worked well: student desks arranged in a double horseshoe. Most of the desks were in the outer "shoe", which actually was shaped like 3 sides of a square. A smaller number of desks were in the inner rectangle. There was walking room between the two shapes. This made passing out and collecting papers very quick. And all of the students could easily see the front of the room and the teacher. Most of them could also see each other - which is nice for discussion purposes. Negatives - sometime neighbors didn't get along; and two students couldn't sit next to anyone, so had to be situated away from the group. I am not sure how to avoid this.
One 6th grade teacher I have subbed for had a bulletin board devoted to student locations. At the beginning of the day, there were three different colored tags (with names on them) in the student's pocket, one for attendance, one for hot lunch, and a third for specials. As the student passed the bulletin board coming in the room (or as part of the getting ready routine), the student would pull his or her attendance tag and put it in a basket. If s/he was planning on getting a hot lunch, the lunch tag was also pulled out of the pocket and put in another basket. If there were two choices for lunch, there would be two baskets. When a student left the room to go to a special class - reading, band, gifted, speech, etc., the specials tag would be pulled out and placed in the appropriate out of the room envelop (also on the board). The teacher also had job assignments on the next bulletin board, so a student would take the lunch count and attendance. At the end of the day, it was the job of one of the students to return all tags to the proper pocket. As much as possible, this teacher tried to train the students to do routine chores in the class.
Other teachers have used clothes pins, magnets attached to popsicle sticks, or labels with velcro. When the child leaves the room, s/he moves his/her token and places it on/in the appropriate "gone" location.
Other things that I saw today that worked well: student desks arranged in a double horseshoe. Most of the desks were in the outer "shoe", which actually was shaped like 3 sides of a square. A smaller number of desks were in the inner rectangle. There was walking room between the two shapes. This made passing out and collecting papers very quick. And all of the students could easily see the front of the room and the teacher. Most of them could also see each other - which is nice for discussion purposes. Negatives - sometime neighbors didn't get along; and two students couldn't sit next to anyone, so had to be situated away from the group. I am not sure how to avoid this.
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