Chapters 8-10

As I was reading about the differentiation and how to plan based on their interests I found myself thinking that this makes perfects sense. If a child has a particular interest then that child is more likely to be invested in learning more about it which is critical. It is ironic that this chapter came up this around this time because I had a student recently who looked very uninterested and not paying attention to the lesson on dictionaries. I told her that it was very important that she learned how to use the dictionary. She looked right at me and said, "Yeah, to you." It hit me that moment that this child, maybe more, did not understand WHY we were learning this and how it connected to her life. When I heard this I explained to her what the uses of a dictionary and how it connects to her life. I posed her questions asking what she would do if she did not know what a word meant or if she did not know how to spell something. Once I was able to make some connections to her life she did pay a little bit more attention to the lesson and was able to answer questions when she was called on in class. I think I took for granted that the children probably did not care what an entry word or a guide word was or for that matter why would they even want to learn about the dictionary.

I like the section about the different forms of expression because I can understand the teacher's frustration of always seeing the same basic ways of demonstrating knowledge. If the teacher is tired of seeing the same thing over and over you know the students are probably tired of doing the same things over and over as well. I love how the teacher suggested using different forms of drama and art. I could also see having the students write a song or a rap to present to the class in order to show that they understand the information. The important thing to do is to allow student choice and not say you all have to do the same thing. You must take the interests of the students into mind. Not all students are going to enjoy writing a song or doing a dramatic reproduction of something. The options still need to be there for students who may prefer to do more of a writing response versus one of the more artsy responses. The teacher also has to be unbiased and not to judge based on whether she/he likes the musical responses better versus the writing responses. The teacher needs to set up a rubric that can be fair to all students.