Standard 1.3 - Students with Diverse Linguistic, Religious and Socioeconomic Backgrounds.
Proficient Design and implement teaching strategies that are responsive to the learning strengths and needs of students form diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.
As a teacher it is important for me to recognise the needs of all the students within my class and most importantly how they are different from one another. Research suggest that students are more likely to engage with learning tasks when their basic needs are meet. For example, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs suggests that the student’s physiological needs, including breathing, sleep, food and water, are the first needs of students that need to be met. For some students their home life may not allow these needs to be met so for them to be successful at school these need to be attended to first before curriculum is taught.
Example 1: Understanding how students learn best in your class is also important. Throughout my units of work, I aim to include activities that cater for the different learning styles of the students in my class. This year in the Reception class I have aimed to incorporate many visual, musical/auditory, kinaesthetic/physical and social activities as these are the ones that best suit the students in my class.
Visual – As the students are younger and their vocabulary is often smaller visuals (pictures and videos) often help the students in my class understand what the teacher is trying to explain. It often also helps them engage in the explicit instruction part of the lesson. Musical/Auditory – Jingles and songs that are repetitive often help students remember the content. For example, we often listen to a song about the days of the week and students are now more confident in identifying the days. Kinaesthetic/Physical – I have a class that is mostly boys who are very active therefore using and including activities where they have to get up and move helps with their engagement. Social – Using activities that allow for group work and discussion allows students to share their knowledge, think about other perspectives and develop their oral language skills.
Below is a section of a unit plan with annotations that highlight the different learning styles used with in that week of maths lessons.
Example 2: When filling out a One Student Plan for a student with identified learning needs, designing teaching strategies and accommodations is an important part as they are designed to support the student reach their goals.
The One Student Plan below is for a student who has a language diagnosis. The goals and strategies/accommodations in the plan were created using my knowledge of the child and report from the school speech pathologist. The school speech pathologist provided me with some strategies and accommodations that can be used in the classroom to support this student. I used these and adapted them to suit the student and our classroom.
One of the strategies that was suggested was the used of a visual timetable for the student. I designed a visual timetable that suited the needs of our class and the student and this timetable can now be found on his desk. A picture of this timetable is to the right.
Other strategies that were identified as supports for this student and that have been implemented within the class include: - Chunking tasks. - Explicitly teaching topic vocabulary. - Checking in at the beginning of lessons to ensure the task is understood. A copy of the strategies and accommodations for this One Student Plan can be found below.