Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners Transcript
Speaker 1: I am in my twelfth year of teaching and I've always had students who were designated as students with special needs or students who are designated as English language learners. I never have felt like I've done the best job at supporting them. For me, it's really important because it's over a third of my kids and I want all of my kids to grow and develop as learners. For some of them, that means something really different than what it means for someone else. For my Getting Better Together focus, I really want to work to meet the needs of my diverse learners.
Can I have a volunteer, in a loud, clear voice, read our learning target for today? I should see many hands up in the air ... Today we have four adults in the room. Myself, my co-teacher, and two paraprofessionals. What I want to do differently is maximize the adults in the room and recognize that gives us a huge advantage in helping push students further than I could as one adult by myself. Or as we could as four adults with one person teaching ...
Speaker 2: All right, everybody has their book?
Speaker 1: We are trying something new today where we're actually using stations to give kids smaller group instruction with an adult and a few of their peers ... If you're analyzing text, what are you doing? Sam?
Speaker 3: Make a claim about it.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? ... How we actually came to today, my co-teacher, Ms. [Aldebi 00:01:42] and I looked at previous work that our kids had done. We also ask kids to do kind of their own self reflection. We gave them a very short, three question survey ... We have a lot of strengths as a group and we also have some areas where we need to grow. Those are actually in three main areas. The areas we're looking for growth in are locating the piece of evidence that you want.
We started seeing some data that showed us that our students needed particular help in certain areas. We took all of that data and used it to create four different stations ... Each of you is going to move to at least two of these stations, today ... Today's lesson will focus on preparing for a text-based discussion about the book, "Wonder", by R.J. Palacio ... How do you figure out what the most important events are? ... The station that I'll be working at is, how do we identify major events in a particular section of the text? ... I'm going to give you some strategies today that will help you. We are going to use our discussion questions to locate evidence ... My co-teacher is working to help students find the piece of evidence they want.
Speaker 5: Do you agree, [Angeline 00:02:59]?
Speaker 1: Also, one of the paraprofessionals is going to be working with a group on how you use textual evidence to support an inference that you're making.
Speaker 6: Summer made the right decision 'cause she felt uncomfortable.
Speaker 7: Where's the evidence to support your claim?
Speaker 8: Oh, yeah. It's right here.
Speaker 1: The fourth group, they'll be preparing for our group discussion for the next day.
Speaker 8: She finally got used to it and she saw him for the person he is, not for how he looks.
Speaker 9: Exactly, so that's what you could write.
Speaker 1: In these small groups, we're hoping that kids will walk away with a new skill that will help them better analyze the text and find evidence to support that ... I made a little awesome book mark for you guys. When I'm trying to identify a major event, I ask myself three questions, okay? These are the three questions that can help you figure that out ... Stations one and two were for students that needed a little bit more foundation ... Okay, we're going to pick two, and I want you guys, they're all from Summer's section, to determine is it a major event, or a minor event? How do you know? You can use your questions to help you.
It's my hope that breaking things up and breaking them down will help push them. If the evidence shows me they're not quite ready, how do I break it down so that they can kind of find their entry point? ... [Deshwandee 00:04:14] is our fabulous peer tutor. Ms. Aldebi and I were talking, as were planning this lesson, around particular kids who are just really high-level readers. They're really good at making inferences and analyzing text. How do we push them? One way to do that, I think, is to get them to step into a space where they're supporting others. The more opportunities we can give kids, the better ... If this event were missing, would it have less of an impact on me as the reader?
Speaker 10: Now we know he likes to play that game.
Speaker 1: Okay, and is that-
Speaker 11: It's more of a detail than action, than, like, something that would [inaudible 00:04:50] to you.
Speaker 1: It was really awesome to have Deshwandee talk with other kids around why she thought things were major or minor events. In that sense, she was more of a model today.
Speaker 2: Let's start with this, locating the piece of evidence you want. How do you guys typically start doing that? Yasmine?
Yasmine: If they're talking about a certain character, I would go to their part.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 14: I use the hint that they give me.
Speaker 2: What's the hint that you're talking about? What part.
Speaker 14: It's talking about Summer, so I go back into the chapter of Summer.
Speaker 1: For my station, I was facilitating locating evidence. The question was about a certain chapter in the book, I was just asking them, how do you know to look in this particular chapter? Or, how do you know that this is what's going to happen? ... Let's talk about what you guys mentioned before. You say you use hints from the question. We're using what we know about the narrator. Who's the narrator that we're talking about in discussion question number two?
Speaker 15: Summer.
Speaker 1: Summer, okay. Let's turn to Summer's section in our book. Where is the evidence that tells us what the plague is? Yasmine?
Yasmine: Okay, I found evidence in paragraph three, sentence two.
Speaker 1: Very nice.
Yasmine: It says: Apparently, this is a game that's been going on since the beginning of the end. The plague, it's a game that they play.
Speaker 1: Very nice, so that's the first piece of evidence ... I think it went well. Our students picked up on what we were looking for. They just needed the extra push as to how we're going to be locating it and getting those questions going for them to figure out where to start ... We are going to transition. Make sure you have everything you need, and then if you don't remember, you can look up at our station paper. Take your things to your second station.
Speaker 7: Now, we discuss questions number two, and they're finding the evidence.
Speaker 1: All right ... There's some students that could have benefited from hitting every station, but just with the way that our day was structured and the time, we gave them the opportunity to go to two.
Speaker 16: Anyone who accidentally touches August has to wash their hands or use sanitizer within thirty seconds, or they will get the plague. I think it's a major event.
Speaker 1: Why?
Yasmine: Because pretty much, they're being mean to him because of how he looks, of his face.
Speaker 1: Okay. If that event were missing, would it be harder to understand the book or feel less complete?
Yasmine: Yes.
Speaker 16: Yes, it would. Because you wouldn't understand why people didn't want to touch him.
Speaker 1: Okay. Bring yourself back to your original seat. We're going to give you three minutes to reflect ... What is one strategy that you learned, or practiced, today? ... Today, we were really intentional about taking the time for kids to reflect and then to respond to each other. When I walked around as students were writing their closing reflections, it was powerful to see that we took some first steps, today ... Were you not reading the questions closely, before? You were just ... what were you doing?
Speaker 17: Reading it, and then not looking for the evidence for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, and so what are you going to do now, or what's different?
Speaker 17: Use the words in the question to help me cite evidence.
Speaker 1: Okay ... We will see in the discussion tomorrow, are they able to actually cite textual evidence that supports an analysis that's accurate.
Yasmine: I learned that if the discussion or anything gives, like, says something about any character, you go back to the book and go to their part of the text.
Speaker 1: What I'm hearing is you use clues from the discussion question to go back and find your evidence. Very nice ... I think it was really insightful to hear certain kids share a reflection, and then others connect to that.
Speaker 18: I have something like that, where it said textual evidence to support my ideas. When I was re-reading it to find the evidence, I remembered the scene that was happening in that part.
Speaker 1: Thank you. You had a connection to what [Anasia 00:09:00] was saying. Okay ... It's beneficial in seeing, like, "Hey, you did learn a new strategy. Now I know I can push you in that area or help you develop additional strategies to use as you move forward" ... Can you sign, thank you, to your partner, please? Ms. Aldebi, Ms. JoAnn, Ms. Elaine, are we good? ... I think I'd make a number of changes to what happened today. One of the key changes is actually creating a space and carving out more time to prepare everybody who was in some sort of teaching role.
Another change would be thinking about our peer tutors. What would be helpful is to kind of even have a class discussion with them around, how do you think we can grow this so that more of us have the opportunity to step into that role? You know, tapping into that bank of resources when we're moving into a lesson or stations that could use that support ... You're saying it would feel incomplete if this was missing. Why?
Speaker 16: Because the raiders feel like that Summer's not just anyone for ...
Speaker 1: I think for me, what it really comes down to, is it's opportunity for kids to have a small group or close to one-on-one interaction with an adult. That's really hard in schools today. In some of my classes, I'm the only teacher. In this class, where there are four of us, something that I want to continue is to figure out, how can we create more opportunities for kids to have interactions and conversations and kind of guided facilitation with other adults in the room? Then, how do we support each other as the adults in the room, to get better at that?
72 Comments
Constance Wright Apr 5, 2024 10:21am
Zina Robinson Jan 24, 2024 10:35pm
How do Ms. DeBose and her co-teacher Ms. Aldebot use data to inform their planning?
Ms. DeBose and her co-teacher Ms. Aldebot used data to inform their planning by creating four working stations for their students.
How are stations effective in meeting the needs of diverse learners?
Each station focus on the specific area in which the students need the most help according to the collected data coming from Ms. DeBose and Ms. Aldebot.
Ms. DeBose uses her co-teacher and paraprofessionals to lead the stations. How could you plan a lesson like this one if you don't have extra teachers in your classroom?
The way I would plan my classroom with stations like this and no support is by doing a rotation amongst my students. This will allow me to work with each station and also monitor them to see if they can work independently while I work with another group. Then I would bring them back together as a whole and ask frequent questions to make sure that they understand the lesson being presented.
Raymond Cornelio Oct 28, 2023 3:51am
Hi my name is Raymond and I'm on my 13th year of teaching. I currently teach at Paul Asicksik School and handle K-1 students. It's my first school year in the U.S. and still adjusting with the system of how education works here. I'm a BEED major and mostly taught 1st to 4th grade.
Avinus Calloway Oct 11, 2023 5:50pm
1. How do Ms. DeBose and her coteacher Ms. Aldebot use data to inform learning? The two teachers looks at the previous work of her students, gives three questions as a self-reflection survey to see where the students think they are in their learning, then based on the data looks at the area that needed the most growth.
2. How are stations effective in meeting needs of diverse learners? Stations were established by first looking at the data to see where the students were weak at, then they allowed those students to begin at the station that focused on foundational skills that would have to be met in order to advance to the next station. They also made sure that they were in logical sequence pertaining to the skill being targeted.
3. Ms. DeBose uses her coteacher and paraprofessional to lead stations. How could you plan a lesson like this one if you had extra teachers in your class? Having extra teachers and paraprofessionals in a classroom would be a great help, you could tier students together that are having the same learning difficulties on a skill together and give them small group help, you could also use one of them to provide enrichment to those students who are performing at the grade level, lastly having extra help in the classroom helps cut down on unwanted distractions and behavioral problems.
Sharon Green Oct 3, 2023 7:13pm
1. How do Ms DeBose and her co-teacher Ms Aldebot use data to inform their planning?
The teachers passed out different questions to the students to get them to reflect on the story they read. The questions pinpointed certain areas that the teacher wanted them to focus on. The students referred back to the text to find evidence to support their answers. I think it is a good expereince for the students to learn how and where to look for text-based answers. They learned tactics that they can take forward with them into other subjects and grades.
2. How are stations effective in meeting the needs of diverse learners?
I think that the stations gave the students the one-on-one attention and support to help them with the specific areas they were struggling with. By breaking them down into smaller groups, perhaps it gave them a bit more time to get the extra help they needed.
3. Ms DeBose uses her co-teacher and paraprofessionals to lead the stations. How could you plan a lesson like this one if you don't have extra teachers inyour classroom?
I could plan a lesson like this by grouping strong and weak students together. Each group would get a prompt that they are to focus on. If there is no one else in the classroom to assist me, I would set the timer and have the students rotate clockwise from their group to the next. I would pick a captain to explore the text, a student to do the writing, and the others to assist by helping to look for text clues,etc.
Sharon Green