One of the challenges for helping students to succeed academically is to make lesson activities which are engaging and can connect with their interests, identity and values. During her presentation at Teaching Works, Sleeter (2018) states:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid who actually doesn’t want to learn and doesn’t want to be challenged. But I’ve seen a whole lot of kids who are bored and don’t want do very well in school because they see school as being, “This isn’t our space, it’s somebody else’s space.”
Sleeter argues that students will become disengaged with their learning unless the lesson content or the lesson unit’s big ideas can reflect student values or their ethnic cultures. I agree with Sleeter’s argument that when students are bored, they will not engage in their learning which results in poor academic performance.
During my practicum I taught a diverse kindergarten class where various factors affected student engagement. One of those factors was the difficulty level of the learning task. Sleeter suggests that students want to be challenged but I found when an activity is too challenging this also causes students to disengage. Moreover, when given a choice between an easy task or a hard one, I found that some students were not willing to challenge themselves. Building a growth mindset in our students would help them face such challenges but I feel this social emotional learning requires year-round practice and reinforcement.
As I became familiar with my students’ abilities, I tried to differentiate the lesson worksheets to ensure the challenge level matched the students’ proficiency levels. However, this was a very time-consuming task and it significantly increased my workload when creating the worksheets. Having multiple versions of the worksheets added complexity to the transitions as it required me to hand out activities based on group level and special cases for individuals. Some students even recognized that their peers had different sheets, and protested, “Why is his paper different?” This differentiation then became a problem of fairness. Why did she get to trace the words with dotted lines but I have to write them?
At the start of practicum, most of my students could not write small letters well. When writing their names, nearly all the students used only capital letters. I asked one student to write his name using the proper capital and lower-case letters and he protested, “I can’t! It is too hard!” I reassured him he could do it, as his name only had only three letters. The reason for his protest was because writing the small letter “a” is more challenging than writing a capital “A.” It is understandable when kindergartners are still honing their fine motor skills. Writing small letters is based on drawing circle and sticks rather than primarily sticks found in capital letters. To help the class improve their writing skills, I added a weekly writing centre to practice writing small letters, starting with small “a.”
Sleeter (2018) suggests that schools need to reflect student cultures and values to help them stay invested in their learning. At the primary level, I agree lessons should connect with students’ interests and daily lives while also introducing them to diversity. We should celebrate diversity and allow all minority groups to have a voice. In my practicum class, despite most students having First Nations ancestry, many students did not know the story behind the Nisg̱a’a New Year event Hobiyee. We discussed this special event in class, and during our art block, students colored a First Nations design of the oolichan moon. For the Nisg̱a’a , when the moon is crescent shaped with its ends pointing upwards like a bowl or spoon and a star positioned above it, they believe it will be a plentiful harvest for the year. Prior to the start of my practicum, the class had learned of the Korean Lunar New Year festival, so when we talked about Hobiyee, we could refer to their previous lessons concerning different New Year’s festivals.
Connecting learning to student interests is part of the BCTC’s Standard Three, “Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development” (2019). Following this standard, instructional design and materials should reflect the individual needs and interests of students. Kids in kindergarten are learning how to be social and are working on emotional self-regulation. Some of the boys in class love superheroes, so when I taught about social emotional learning, I reminded them that superheroes always try to be kind. I read a book to the class called SUPERBUNS! by Diane Kredensor, and explained that everyone has the superpower to be kind. Connecting lessons and social emotional learning to students’ interests helps them to integrate their learning with their familiar world. Regardless of the grade level, I think it is essential to listen and find these personal connections and interests of my students and include them in lessons. To accomplish this, I intend to create safe and trusting relationships with my students and their guardians. I hope to exchange information regularly with their guardian about their child’s interests and learning progression. Additionally, whenever I design lessons with classroom discussions, I will make time for my students to share their personal stories of community connections and life experiences. Doing this during my practicum, I witnessed how my students became enthusiastic to share in our discussions. It was exciting to see an ASD student speak up in class for the first time and proclaim, “Mr. Georges, I love pepperoni pizza too!”
References
BC Teachers’ Council (BCTC). (2019). Professional Standards for BC Educators. Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to- grade- 12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for- educators/edu_standards_poster- 11x17.pdf
Sleeter, C. (2018). Designing lessons for a culturally relevant curriculum.
Presentation at Teaching Works, University of Michigan. Retrieved from
https://vimeo.com/252907375