Laura was a newly admitted high school chemistry instructor who struggled to meet the students’ individual needs because of the wide diversity in the level of knowledge. The teacher experienced a problem keeping all the students engaged in the curriculum process and learning style (Lakes, 2016). She felt some schoolchildren were academically ahead of others, which challenged her to benefit equally from the learning process. Some pupils were already aware of the concepts before she had taught the lessons. In contrast, other students struggled to gain the knowledge that she taught.
The pupils’ diversity challenged the setting of lesson objectives and choosing in-class activities to conduct. It also affected informal and informal evaluations of administration to the schoolchildren. It was hard for the tutor to determine readiness, learning interest, and style to help each student. Having such diverse students made it harder for the teacher to accurately assess their knowledge (Newkirk-Turner & Johnson, 2018).
It made it harder for Laura to find the most suitable way to use for learning. It was difficult for Laura to plan her lesson effectively and thus resorted to seeking help from Rick, a science teacher at Virginia, to perform instructional differentiation (Lakes, 2016). She felt she was not responsive enough to the pupils’ diverse needs and thought Rick could offer realistic ways to handle her learners. Competency assessment is more straightforward in a class where all schoolchildren show equal skills than with intellectual diversity.
In the Skype video call with Rick, Laura explained the diversity challenge she faces in her classroom. After Laura consulted with Rick, her mode of instructional differential developed. Rick advised her that, before the lesson began, she should assess the status of schoolchildren’s competence (Lakes, 2016). He urged her to ensure the evaluation was accurate, as making a teaching decision based on false assessment would not benefit. He instructed her to administer a questionnaire to pupils before starting the lesson to ascertain their competency. Rick recommended the use of exit slips to assess the schoolchildren who were struggling.
The science teacher encouraged her to change the mode of learning based on the student’s needs. Rick showed Laura the methods she could use to divide the class into groups to promote education. Rick requested Laura to demonstrate practically the strategies she could practically use to handle the diverse learners. The assessment must be continuous to monitor the schoolchildren’s progress. Rick emphasized the groups must be dynamic, and Laura resolved to follow Rick’s advice to develop her teaching sessions.
A teacher should ensure that the evaluation conducted is based on the concepts she is teaching. Rick encouraged her to use pupils’ tearing and scaffolding approaches to determine their capability levels (Lakes, 2016). A tutor who responds to diversity increases the likelihood of the students understanding the concept taught (Goedhart et al., 2019). The Skype video call enabled Laura to adopt a different instruction model to match the learners’ needs. She effectively planned the lesson and used practical activities like exit slips and dividing the schoolchildren into groups based on their abilities.
Laura increased the number of in-class activities to improve the student’s understanding of the concepts. She divided the class into groups to test the students at different levels, such as conducting informal assessments where learners were given similar questions but varied in complexity. Laura’s mixed method benefitted the pupils as they could come together and share the basic concepts. It aimed at ensuring each school child benefits from the lessons to ensure everyone understood the basic concepts.
References
Goedhart, N. S., Blignaut-van Westrhenen, N., Moser, C., & Zweekhorst, M. B. M. (2019). The flipped classroom: Supporting a diverse group of students in their learning. Learning Environments Research, 22(2), 297–310. Web.
Lakes, L. R. (2016). New teacher survival guide differentiating instruction. YouTube. Web.
Newkirk-Turner, B. L., & Johnson, V. E. (2018). Curriculum-based language assessment with culturally and linguistically diverse students in the context of mathematics. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 49(2), 189–196. Web.