For my third blog I thought I would tackle a bit of a tougher issue, troublesome kids in the classroom. I got thinking about this issue after my group in EDUC 8P19 had to present a case study where the main subject is the victim of neglect at home and has their mom eventually show up to the school drunk where she goes on to tell the teacher that she doesn't really care much about seeing her son's work. It made me really wonder how I'd help the student in my classroom if I had that same situation happen to me when I become a teacher. It's easy to talk about doing the right thing when we're looking at it from the point of view of students, but it's definitely harder to deal with when you know you're trying to work to improve the student's behaviour after years of neglect from a bad parent and possibly bad teachers as well.
One idea that stood out to me when we were talking about how to deal with students like this was breaking the cycle of discouragement. From a young age many students who are neglected at home or in other ways disadvantaged get stuck in a cycle where they do poorly in school which leads to poor self-esteem, which then leads to them believing that they're dumb or otherwise incapable of improving themselves. Negative consequences for bad marks just reinforce this and lead to kids giving up on the idea of school before they see what they're capable of doing.
I saw this a few times when I did my placement at a poorer school in St. Catharines. Some kids would rather not try instead of risk trying a task and potentially failing at it. Their self-esteem is so low that they don't believe they can do even some simple tasks that they think it's just better to not even try. Then when they get a bad mark because they didn't try very hard it just reinforces their assumption that they're dumb. This isn't helped by the culture of some kids who think it's cool to not try hard in school and to slack off instead. Bullying can be a huge factor in this as well because if their peers are telling them that they're dumb, they might believe them and not only will they not want to learn, but they won't want to come to school either. But it's up to us as teachers to give students the tools they need to break out of this cycle of discouragement.
In thesetwo articles they show how we can do this by reinforcing all of the positive traits that we see in those students that struggle in our classrooms. If they're good in English but bad in math, a teacher can look for the strategies they use to help them succeed in English class and help them adapt those strategies to math or other subjects where they're struggling a bit more. This also relates to the idea of a fixed mindset that we've looked at in EDUC 4P19. Give kids the confidence that they can improve on their abilities instead of letting them get fixed on the idea that they're "dumb" or "can't do math" and we'll see an improvement in our students both inside and outside the classroom.
Thanks for reading!
Dylan Maguire
References
Conrath, J. (2012, October 7). Working with Discouraged or Defeated Learners. Retrieved November 18, 2015. Ellis, J., Hart, S. & Small-McGinley, J. (In Press). Encouraging the discouraged: Students’ views for elementary classrooms. Analytic Teaching, 22(1), 2001
For this week’s blog post I’m going to talk about something
that’s been mentioned a lot in our EDUC 4P19 course, the idea of a flipped
classroom. What is a flipped classrom? For those of you who don’t know, a
flipped classroom is one where the usual order of doing business is reversed.
That means that instead of having a teacher at the front of the class lecturing
for the whole time and then sending kids home with homework, they do the
opposite. Often the teacher will record a lecture or assign readings to be done at home so that when students get to class they
have the knowledge that they need in order to do projects, assignments, or
participate in class discussions about the materials that they read.
The
positives of a flipped classroom for students are that they can learn at their
own pace, taking time to reflect on what they are reading instead of being
forced to absorb information as fast as the teacher conveys it without much of
a chance to slow down if they don’t understand certain concepts. For teachers
it offers a chance to more effectively use class time to help students who may
struggle with the material that they read at home. Students who understood the
material can use the class time to work on assignments while the teacher is
free to give help to students that need it. Overall it allows for a much more inquisitive and student-driven classroom instead of the traditional teacher-driven learning.
On the other
hand, the flipped classroom isn’t perfect and there are downsides to its usage.
First of all is the fact that in a traditional classroom setting you know that
every student is hearing the material you’re teaching and you can see if any of
them aren’t paying attention. When they’re supposed to do the learning at home
by themselves it’s possible that they will just decide not to do it and then
show up to class completely unprepared for the day’s assignments. This would
especially be a problem to kids that come from lower-income households and
might not have parents or siblings around to help them or to encourage them to
get the work done in order to be prepared for class. It also means more prep work for teachers because they need to record their lectures and have them ready for the students to view each night.
So by looking at the positive and negative traits of a flipped classroom, the real question becomes whether or not we think it or a traditional classroom is more effective. While I can see in articles like this one that there are strong positives to the flipped classroom approach, in my opinion I think it should be used along with a traditional classroom setting to make sure that students who learn better in classic lecture. When I was searching for different opinions on how well flipped classrooms work I did find this, a story of how a teacher who was very enthusiastic about trying a flipped approach found that a lot of students and even their parents didn't like it and preferred the way she used to teach. In the end what ended up working best for her was combining the approaches which meant a more blended approach where students can sometime be assigned videos or readings to do at home but where she would also give lectures to help simplify some of the concepts they might not have understood as well. Sometimes new learning strategies can be overwhelming for students and in this case, I think the best way to go is a blended approach that uses the best of both of these strategies to maximize learning.
Thanks for reading,
Dylan
References
Fruin, C. (2015). What To Do When Your Flipped Classroom Flops. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-10-06-what-to-do-when-your-flipped-classroom-flops
McCallum, S., Schultz, J., Sellke, K., & Spartz, J. (2015). An Examination of the Flipped Classroom Approach on College Student Academic Involvement. International Journal Of Teaching & Learning In Higher Education, 27(1), 42-55.
As a future teacher, one of my biggest concerns is thinking about how I'll be able to create lessons that engage students and allow all of them to succeed in my classroom. From personal experience it's obvious that students come to class with a wide variety of interests, learning styles, and speeds at which they learn. Through reading the course textbook for 4P19 I came across the idea of differentiated instruction. Recognizing and adapting to the many different needs and learning styles of students is the main idea that differentiated instruction aims to address. In the article "College Success: A Fresh Look at Differentiated Instruction and Other Student-Centered Strategies " the authors go in to the three main principles of differentiated instruction are challenging tasks, flexible groupings, and ongoing assessments that allow the teacher to adjust their lessons based on how well the students are responding to the assigned tasks (Leightweis, 2013). If we look at these 3 main principles we can see how they can help us to create better lesson plans that will work for all of our students.
Challenging Tasks
One of the most important ways we can foster learning is by creating lessons that are actually challenging for students. In another class, EDUC 8P19, we're learning about classroom management and part of that is the fact that students that find a lesson too easy can become bored and start acting out which not only inhibits their learning but the learning of everyone around them. On the other hand, a challenging lesson will keep students focused and help them to enjoy what they are learning. It also means adjusting my lesson for students who are struggling in the class so that it's challenging enough for them to learn, but not so hard that they give up and don't do the work.
Another way to help individual students learn better is through flexible groupings. One idea put forward by Morgan (2014) is by grouping students with similar abilities together so that they are not bored but can talk to other students that are at the same level academically as them. Talking with other students help them learn better because students have their own communication style and can often be more adept at explaining things to their peers than their teachers can. Teachers obviously try their best but I know there have been times in class where I don't really get a lesson but a friend who does understand it can explain it to me while the teacher deals with other issues.
A key feature of differentiated instruction is constantly adapting to changes in a student's ability. A student might have a strong grasp of an earlier unit that plays to their strengths but later struggle with a different concept. With ongoing assessments a teacher can see how students are progressing and whether or not they need to change up how they're teaching lessons or even change up the groups that students are in to put them with people more their level or style. The above diagram shows how this is not just a one time thing but that with each assessment I'm going to have to analyze how well my students did, find areas where my lesson can be improved, and plan a new one so that the students can do better in the future. The following video shows how a school that puts these principles into action can have far more success than just using the teacher driven model.
Edutopia. (October 3, 2011) Differentiated Instruction in the Classroom at Mesquite Elementary School Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7kcFkRgiV4
This video shows differentiated learning in an elementary setting. You can see how they realized a huge problem was that their kids were all being taught at the same level when many had different needs. Through their reteach and enrich program, students who needed to be retaught certain units had the time to do it while other students could use that time to further enrich the knowledge they already had. It also highlighted the importance of collaborating with other teachers so that you can all have better lessons. It wouldn't make sense for me to graduate from university and think that I know everything about teaching when I'll be working with people that have decades of experience in the classroom! Talking to other teachers helps you learn more about the students you're teaching, what they've learned in previous years, and how to best engage them in your class.
Despite all the evidence that suggests that differentiated instruction is a more effective way to teach, many teachers still cling to the old ways because that's what they're used to. In "Going Against the Grain: Should Differentiated Instruction be a Normal Component of Professional Development." I saw that differentiated instruction is still not the normal way of teaching in many schools. Like they say, some teachers may resist this method "as they may fear a loss of control. However, the
rewards of making a class dynamic and responsive to learners’ needs are great." (Suanrong, 2014) It's a reminder to me that when I graduate not all teachers will tailor their lessons to the needs of students and it's up to our generation to help bring these new and effective methods of teaching into today's classrooms.
Thanks for reading!
Dylan Maguire
References:
Lightweis, S. K. (2013). College Success: A Fresh Look at Differentiated Instruction and Other Student-Centered Strategies. College Quarterly, 16(3),
Morgan, H. (2014). Maximizing Student Success with Differentiated Learning. Clearing House, 87(1), 34-38. doi:10.1080/00098655.2013.832130
Suanrong, C., & Herron, S. s. (2014). Going Against the Grain: Should Differentiated Instruction be a Normal Component of Professional Development. International Journal Of Technology In Teaching & Learning, 10(1), 14-34.
