Written June 2011

 

Portfolio Writing:

Differentiating Instruction

 

Write a paper in which you discuss the various aspects of your units that accommodate learners of different styles, cultures, and learning disabilities.

 

In my units, I connect themes to make the lessons relevant to students of all cultural backgrounds. In my “Culture at a Crossroads” unit, I use To Kill a Mockingbird as a jumping off point for discussing the civil rights movement in the American South, and then connect this theme to the Alaskan Civil Rights movement. West High School is highly diverse, with a majority-minority population (40% Caucasian); my classes this year included Chinese, Korean, Samoan, Pacific Islander, Sudanese, Filipino, Hmong, Hispanic, African-American, Native Alaskan and Caucasian students. The content is relevant to all students in our classroom, regardless of their race and backgrounds, as we will be emphasizing the connections between various civil rights movements in the state and nation of their citizenship. These movements which have directly affected their lives and opportunities, and the lives and opportunities of their parents; they have directly determined who has the right to sit in the classroom; they have defined “peer groups”.

 

Similarly, in the House on Mango Street Unit I taught this year, we explored the concept of the American Dream, it’s elusive nature, and the importance of hope in immigrant literature. Students were able to relate to the issues faced by first-generation immigrants based on their own personal experiences and the experiences of their parents (70% of my English 10 class are first or second-generation immigrants). By having them complete a short writing assignment about their own immigration experiences, they were able to connect their stories to that of the narrator. Students also learned about issues faced by female immigrants and explored the evolving role of women revealed by this female author and narrator. As my class consisted of 7 females and 20 males, many of whom came from backgrounds with more constricted views of women’s roles, depicting this theme through a narrative, emotional form helped to educate my male students in the evolution of American gender-based social norms in a non-threatening manner.

 

In my Culture at a Crossroads Unit, my “characters in courage” assignment accommodated learners of many different styles and abilities. In teacher-assigned mixed groups of three, students traced one of their bodies on a large piece of construction paper to create a life-sized poster. They were given either fictional character from To Kill a Mockingbird or a non-fictional character from the Alaskan civil rights movement (Ms. Dubose, Atticus, Tom Robinson, Aunt Alexandra, Elizabeth Peratovich, Alberta Adams, and Scout). In the provided graphic organizer, students mapped out various traits of the character: Physical appearance, character traits (adjectives), profession/societal role, examples of courage in their actions, and examples of cowardice (each character has demonstrated both). In addition to this information, students also decorated their posters to make them look like the characters. Afterward, we had a class-wide discussion in which we addressed essential questions about courageousness (In what ways do these characters manifest their courage differently? Why do they manifest them differently? How do their demonstrations of cowardice reflect upon their demonstrations of courage? Is courage particular to certain times and places more than others?). This lesson utilizes five of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences, including linguistic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence.

 

This unit also involved making a variety of accommodations for students with different learning abilities. I assigned the non-fiction characters to groups with two upper-level students, as students had had less exposure to these characters and we had not reviewed them much in class. I put learning-disabled students in groups with at least one on-task helpful peer and assigned them the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird who we had discussed the most. In some cases, I provided “starter” answers or assigned fewer traits to be listed on the graphic organizer. A had a couple of learning-disabled students in my class who struggled with linguistic activities and abstract thinking, but who were very good artists and had excellent handwriting. By self-assigning roles within their groups, such as “scribe”, “illustrator”, and “text expert”, students were able to capitalize on their strengths to create collaborative projects that they were proud to present.