Thursday, April 9, 2009
James
On page 41, the author discusses a scenario with James. James was a great kid who didn't make any trouble at school, but his parents were going to pull him out to home school him because he was not getting what they felt he needed at school. Come to find out, James started his "real work" once he got home. He was writing a textbook about Human Anatomy and Physiology. The teacher compacted his curriculum and allowed for him to work on his "real work" at school. Can you see this working in your classroom? Do you think you have any kids that would qualify or benefit from this type of compacting?
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Yes, I can see this happening in a gifted classroom environment.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I think James is a casualty of a school structure that does not provide adequate communication to teachers as children move through the grade levels.
Here are some of my concerns and questions:
Why didn't James's prior teacher communicate to the new teacher of his interests and giftedness. Each year teachers are given an entirely new batch of children, all of them strangers. They have no personal histories, no test scores, no information at all. For many teachers it can take at least a semester or more to assess the strengths and weaknesses in each child. How was this teacher to know that James was not being challenged?
If James demonstrated his abilities during the first quarter, why did it take the threat of his parents to remove him before the teacher referred him for testing? Again, James is a victim of the limitations of human ability. There is only so much time in the day and teachers are required to meet the academic needs of many children. Because James was able to function above expectation, I am sure the teacher focused her energies on those students who needed more help.
After James' parents contacted the teacher, the teacher then completed the assessments to determine his ability. When did the teacher find time with 20 to 25 other students in the classroom to perform such detailed assessments? What assessments would tell her which grade level objectives he had already mastered and which ones he still needed to learn. We currently have no methods in place to perform such detailed assessments at the beginning of the school year. What is needed is some method of tracking academic performance (an academic history) based on learned objectives.
While I think what this teacher did to meet the needs of one student is commendable, it overwhelms me to think it might need to be done with every student. Balancing the limitations teachers face with the individualized needs of every student is an extremely complex and difficult goal to achieve in our current educational environments.
Okay -- let me see if I can answer these.
ReplyDeleteRegarding communication -- now that we have established that there was a breakdown, how can we improve it? Can you imagine if we met each year with the previous years teachers about each individual student? Also what about pre-conceived notions about some kiddos that had a teacher conflict the year prior? I agree that we need something and based on this mornings meeting, I'm wondering if our answer is the e-portfolio.
I so get the limitations of being human. We all get overwhelmed! I think that the best response to this is do what you can when you can and constantly try to improve. I think that as we get better technology, this will help as well.
What to do with everyone else. -- In chapter 3 it gives great recommendations, such as having the rest of the class work on extension activities from the prior lesson covered.
Meeting every students needs: I think that with school reform this is going to be a necessity, not a luxury. And once again, I think technology in the clasroom will help with this.
What do you think?
Technology will always be a challenge with many students at once, but it is helpful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for voicing out loud what I have been feeling recently. The scope seems so mind boggling large at times, (meeting the needs of the brilliant) that I have to constantly remind myself of baby steps.
I think that state assessments and/or grade achievement test should be given at the beginning of the year. Then the teacher would know who has already mastered the grade level work--those kids could do something else.
ReplyDelete...and maybe if the teacher had just asked James would have volunteered the info.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree that standardized tests are a great way to know what you are going to teach, but I wonder if the test is already given at the end of the year, what is the difference of using it at the beginning of the following year as a starting point of what they know? It's too bad that the test doesn't show exactly where their holes in learning are.
ReplyDeleteBTW, after I posted last night I thought maybe I'd jumped into a 'private' conversation! oops!
ReplyDeleteI probably wasn't clear-- for example--they would take the 5th grade end of the year at the beginning of 5th grade--the test given the previous spring would show mastery of the 4th grade material. We are using MAP tests now, a change from ITBS--the teacher does have access to a skill by skill analysis--but I doubt if you could assume mastery based on that information.. I'll continue to dream! Thanks for letting me pop into your book discussion--I've known Winebrenner's work for years.
Welcome to our book study . . . and I agree that some type of current grade level assessment would be great, but it needs to be automatically graded for quick data recovery.
ReplyDeleteMy bigger concern is how would you test on such a wide variety of objectives. For my 7th grade language arts class (1st semester only) I have to cover over 147 objectives in 18 weeks. The average master level college class usually only has 10 to 15 objectives.
It would be easier to pre-test based on instructional units (i.e. grammar, elements of fiction, parts or types of poetry). While exceptionally gifted student might have a depth of knowledge to pass the entire curriculum, I doubt many typical gifted students would have a handle on ALL the objectives.
BTW our book study is on “Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom,” by Susan Winebrenner.