Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.
As a teacher, I must always mindful that
— my approach to classroom management is pleasant, caring, respectful and fair towards students
— the student learning environment is appropriate to activity
— equity does not necessarily mean equal
(Some students need more support than others to achieve the same level of proficiency. It is important to also challenge those students who have met proficiency to have the opportunity to become extending in their learning).
- I should establish a balance in the classroom between intellectual and social goals and the expectations of society in education
EDUC- 491 Reflection:
Incorporating diversity in the classroom means learning about and celebrating different cultures. Canada is a multi-cultural nation with shared underlying values, so it is natural that our classrooms should reflect this. In my final practicum, I taught Kindergarten and tried to create an inclusive environment where individual students received the support they needed for academic success. During my time as guest teacher, I included cultural lessons about important Black inventors for Canada’s Black History Month in February, and the Nisga’a New Year event, Hoobiyee. We also discussed through song and story, the themes of diverse families for Family Day, and anti-bullying for Pink Shirt Day. It was my intention to instill the important values of mutual respect and kindness in my classroom.
Thanks to the the social emotional learning (SEL) portion of my Social Studies unit, classroom management gradually became easier, as students began to self-regulate and self-police themselves more. However, even when students know the rules, it does not mean they want to follow them, or that they are emotional able to process the skill of self-regulation. Am example of this, would be when I was handing out a mini hula hoop ring for a small-group Math centre, some kids wanted to have a specific color hoop. There were different color rings, but only one pink ring. I reminded them of the classroom rule, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset!” Despite knowing this, one girl was on the verge of tears when she missed out on getting the random pink ring. I have been promoting the SEL theme of kindness in in class, which helps to build empathy. The girl who originally picked the pink ring opted to exchange her ring with her friend and did so independently.
Being fair does not mean being equal or the same, and I had to differentiate the learning activities in my class because it had four groups of students with distinct levels of literacy and numeracy skills. Sometimes this meant I had to target the lowest level as a base and scale the difficulty up. For example, in Math, students started with decomposing and composing 5s, before moving onto 10s. Other times I needed to make distinctly different sets of worksheets or lesson materials to provide the necessary learning support. Universal Design (UDL) allows all students to succeed but unless your worksheets scale in difficulty, you will soon find that students at proficient or exceeding levels will finish early. When that happens, you will need to have an additional learning activity ready for them and that activity needs to be done independently. In my class, I had students write or draw in their journals, and if they still had time they could play some puzzles or read decodable books. Ultimately, I had to create at least two levels of lesson activities at all times and often this needed to be further differentiated to three versions for individual cases.
In my Grade 7 practicum, I would add bonus challenge questions for Math assessments to see if students could apply and build upon their knowledge. It was a low stakes assessment as it would not count against you if you failed and gave bonus marks if you succeeded. I used it as a form of discovery learning or testing critical thinking. Challenging primary students is not so easy as they mentally have not developed a growth mindset. My class often needed intrinsic rewards to challenge themselves. Only a few students were confident in themselves enough to try. To boost our students’ self-esteem it is imperative we give them chance to succeed and build on their successes. For the first two weeks, I did small groups learning centres to record and assess where my class was in terms of phonemic awareness and writing letters. Learning takes time and patience, and we need to properly assess where our students are on their learning continuum for the various subjects to help us design learning activities that are suitable for them. In the high grades, we could have students give written feedback or do self-reflection, but for kindergarten I think we must rely on emoji visual aids and that is not accurate enough for me to target student weaknesses. There was a lot of trial and error, but over time I could respond to specific needs based on students’ work. I think having one-on-one talks with the students and doing targeted detailed diagnostic assessments will help. The only problem is when can teachers do that? While I was teaching in the class, my mentor teacher took the time to do individual literacy assessments, but I wonder how it can be done otherwise in Kindergarten? Perhaps it can be done in a learning centre, but the testing environment is not quiet enough and the teacher needs to constantly scan the room for classroom management.