When my daughter was in primary school her principal told me that no kids was teased or bullied because he or she was smart. I was too stunned to contradict him. Really. Kids will select any difference as a rallying point for teasing. As a bright child I was teased about my smarts, especially in elementary school. That some deny this happens is disturbing because it can deny a key feature of some children's experiences. Trudy H. Saunders's article, "Dare to be Different: How Teachers Can Eliminate Social Stigmatism While Differentiating Instruction," in the August edition of Teaching for High Potential, tackles the concept of stigmatization due to ability.
Before talking about what works in terms of differentiation, she talks about what doesn't- extra work and peer tutoring during academic time. It made me angry when I was looking at how my district worked with high ability kids and a parent stepped up to talk about how great his daughter's teacher was- she sent home the work at her level so that the child could do it with mom and dad during her free time. My nephew's teachers had him write longer reports- not different in any way other than increasing the length requirement. I talked with one parent whose child got to teach the struggling kids in class- this was a 2nd grader. How is that child really helping those struggling learners? How is it expanding his learning? My daughter talked about being paired up with a struggling learner on a regular basis because then the work would get done- yes, my daughter did it all. None of these showcase any skill in meeting individual student needs. They mostly constitute busy work.
So what should be done? Differentiation is a tool that Carol Ann Tomlinson promotes to meet the needs of diverse learners. I caution anyone against using one strategy for all kids, but done well, differentiation does meet the needs of most kids. Done well is the key term here. Saunders points out the consequences of poorly executed differentiation: academic stagnation, boredom and hiding. When my daughter's eighth grade English class tackled To Kill a Mockingbird over the course of three and a half months my daughter was not just bored and not challenged, but not learning. She read the book in under a week and then had to dabble through the curriculum with the class. Yes this was challenging reading for most of her classmates, but no allowances were made for her. A big move of CCSS has been close reading of challenging material. She was expected to annotate material, especially things that were confusing. When there is nothing there that you struggled with, forced annotation makes a student want to never read again. She could have been given a separate charge that required a deeper level of understanding. Parallel reading, research in lieu of work comparative character analysis all would have been ways to increase the challenge and maybe provided some learning opportunities.
To do differentiation well, Saunders makes a few suggestions: flexible grouping, learning stations, learning contracts and tiered lessons. A common myth is that gifted kids don't like group work. The real truth is they don't like group work where they have to do all the work if they want a good grade. They thrive on group work with their academic peers. Homogeneous classes, intentional clusters and pull out enrichments are all strategies to meet their need for cognitive challenge. Interestingly we have no trouble having varsity sports teams where the best players are with JV, modified and club teams for other levels. We would scream blaspheme if someone were to suggest a no cut everyone play rule for football, but that is totally what we do in academics. We grow in a skill set when the work is just right and our peers are there. Gifted kids also like interest based groups. This provides a central idea around which ideas can develop. Learning to work with diverse is important, and pulls our struggling students up, but too much destroys the educational opportunities of our brightest students.
Learning stations are common in elementary classes but far less prevalent as students get older. Stations can require that students work on material at their individual level with particular materials, be highly individualized, like computer based instruction, or enable students to stay longer at stations where they need extra help or show extra interest. They can be combined with contracts or tiers to meet student needs. I read about one teacher who had three levels of material at each station- and coded them with skiing terms for level of difficulty. Anyone could attempt material from higher levels but some students were required to work at certain levels to meet their needs. This could mean there were readings at different reading levels, higher level thinking questions at some levels, more or less nice to know information at some levels.
We need to teach our gifted kids to be proud of their skills. They need to learn how to work with challenges. They need to not try and hide their success because it leads to more boring work, constantly being paired up with struggling learners or teasing. Teachers first need to be aware of the stigmatization that these kids experience, then they need to figure out how to meet the needs of these difficult to educate kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment