As a teacher, I must imagine that it is very difficult to learn about all of the students in your classroom from multiple perspectives and on an individual basis. Most educational settings do not contain children from homogeneous groups. The students will differ on gender, race, language, socioeconomic status, home environment, intelligence and ability to acquire and use new skills. In our TE classes so far, we have seen just how many differences there can be. In order to learn about the diversity in my classroom, I believe I would start out by giving each student a "Who Am I?" worksheet to fill out. On this worksheet, I would ask questions such as "do you speak a different language at home?" "How old are you?" "Where you born in a different country?" "What do you do for fun?" "What is your favorite subject," etc. This would give me insight from the first day of class to who each of the students are and what they may or may not excel in when it comes to school. I believe it may also be helpful to send a similar activity home for the parents to fill out about their child. The parents of the student may be able to provide extra information that the student may be to young to understand or too shy to leave out (such as educational disabilities, previous areas where students may have struggled and prior education -- e.g. as we discussed in class, if a student was raised reading Arabic, they may struggle when being taught to read from left to right rather than right to left).
In class on Tuesday, we were shown "I am From" poems. In each poem, the author used different places, ideas, sayings, likes and dislikes to describe themselves. I believe that these poems are an excellent and fun way to get your students to open up about who they are and to shed light on their background. Not only do these poems allow students to express who they are, but it also enables them to practice writing poems and to see that there are many different types of poetry. Another way to incorporate these poems is by choosing a "Star of the Week." The students could display their poem on a poster board and include pictures of the things which they believe make them who they are or pictures of things which they enjoy. If there were students who came from different countries or if they had ancestors which were from different countries, I think it would be fun to teach the students a few words from the language of that country. I remember when I was in elementary school, we were required to do a report on a country that our ancestors had originated from. We then presented the report to the class and brought in food from that country. I believe this would be another great way to learn about who my students are and to give the students pride in teaching others about where they are from.
Another perspective which is important to know about students would be their educational background (especially if the child is an ELL), and their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to learning. In Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning, Gibbons speaks of an interaction known as IRE (Interaction, Response, Evaluation). In this interaction, the teacher asks a "display" question which will allow students to respond and demonstrate what they already know. I believe that this is a great way to learn about all of your students, because it may show where the students are having issues when it comes to learning. It may also show which students are more shy and who may need a little prodding in order to share their ideas. The Gibbons book also discusses how it is very important to speak with the parents of students, especially those students who are minorities or ELLs. If a teacher doesn't have an understanding of the background from which a student is coming from, they may write that student off as "deficient" or "handicapped" in some way, rather than taking into account cultural differences or prior education. For this reason, not only should parents be spoken to, but pre-assessments of the students should be used as well. A pre-assessment will allow the teacher to already see where a student is struggling and what needs to be worked on. Telling the students that the assessment is not for a grade will allow them to feel less stress when working on the assignment and will still provide the teacher with feedback on that student.
There are many ways to understand the diversity in the classroom and to know about my students from multiple perspectives. Doing so is vital to allowing my students to feel like they matter to me as a person and that I am their friend, not just their teacher. It will also give them a sense of security and pride in who they are and what they can accomplish.
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Elissa- Again I agree with a lot of your ideas. I had not thought of a "Who am I" worksheet but that would be an easy task that a lot of students would like to do. The parent participation part is also a great idea. The parents can easily provide a lot of insight into what kind of learner and what kind of person their child is. An activity that might be interesting for the students to do could be forming some kind of graph or chart to show the classroom diversity. This might produce a sense of pride in where each student came from and it would incorporate math, visual learning, and appreciation of diversity. I agree with the importance of the "I am From" poem. It is a fun activity that all the students can partake in no matter where they are from. Poetry is usually a hard concept for children to grasp, maybe because they are not exposed to it as much as they should be but this is another way for them to see that poetry is fun. I love the "star of the week" idea! That is such a great way to make each and every student feel special and unique. You mention how it is important to speak with the parents of children, especially those ELL learners. Sometimes getting parent participation is extremely difficult and sadly this is even so at the elementary level. How would you go about this if you have ELL students with parents who have very limited English proficiency? I really like your closing paragraph about how you want your students to feel as if they matter to you. I agree with this. I hope that my students feel safe to talk about anything including race and ethnicity or gender issues in my classroom and with me. Diversity is also very important to me and I hope that this class will continue to give me insight as to how I can incorporate diversity into my classroom. Great blog, you had a lot of good points.
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