Week Fourteen

Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners

(This completed document due on Weebly and BB prior to midnight
November 19)
NOTE: Your group’s Voice Thread presentation of your learning is
due in class on November 19

Before Reading:
In your observations and experiences in the classroom, who are the students
who struggle to read and learn your content? Why do you think these students
have difficulty?

Students that struggle in the classroom and with my content area include ELL students as well
as exceptional learners. These students are often lacking the general understanding needed to
complete mainstream coursework, as well as the resources that could assist in this participation.
There are students who struggle within mainstream course as well, due to lack of student
engagement. In many mainstream courses the difficulty in maintaining student engagement lay
in the presentation of the educator, which is often not directorial or animated in the presentation.
ELL and exceptional learners often struggle from the lack of additional support and resources.

Why does it matter how we label struggling readers? What strategies are most and least
effective in meeting the needs of diverse students in the classroom?

It matters how we label struggling readers, since it can affect their personal outlook on their
education, as well as the transparency required to administer proper interventions. The
strategies that are most effective within the classroom include advanced organizers, as well as
the high yield strategies of Robert Marzano. Some of the least effective strategies in the
classroom are mostly of personal opinion, but lay mostly in the elements of direct instruction.

During Reading (Chapter 3):

Write two key points from your reading for each:

Culturally relevant pedagogy:

1. Culturally relevant pedagogy focuses on the individual student
making it difficult to also incorporate the whole class. It seems to be a
very large reaching topic which can we affected in many ways for the
better or worse.
2. Culturally relevant pedagogy is something that I think may be
impossible in the classroom unless there is no diversity present. If
you tailor the lesson to fit one student then you might make it more
difficult for other students to also fit in and understand the lesson.
This makes culturally relevant pedagogy a very slippery slope for
teachers.

Supporting the linguistic differences in today’s schools:

1. Supporting the linguistic differences in today’s schools is
somewhat of a new concept in the picture of American schooling.
Now that students of all languages are in the same schools, teachers
and staff are responsible for making sure all students can understand
the material and grow their English language skills. Structure is one
of the most important things when talking about students with
different languages and skills. It is the first action in order to help the
students learn.
2. Supporting the linguistic differences in today’s schools is more
important than it has been in the last half a century. With an influx of
Spanish and Chinese speaking American’s it is the job of teachers
and schools to teach these children English. This wave of different
languages has not been seen since the days of Italian and German
immigration into the country. That being said, the goal of schools and
teachers should be to develop the student’s English skills as fast as
possible in order for those students to catch up with their English
speaking counterparts.

In Class November 14

Use the template below to guide your inquiry process on diverse learners:

I-Search Research Paper

An I-Search paper allows students to investigate something that interests them,
or something they need to know more about. An I-Search paper is written in first
person and is a personal story of the research.
The audience for your research will be the other learners in the class and the
instructor.
In discipline groups of 3 or 4, consider the readers who struggle to learn in your
discipline.
What do you already know about meeting the literacy needs of these students?
What question do you have that you would like to investigate? Consider the
issues of motivation, engagement, material selection, and strategy instruction.

Create a Know/Question chart with your team to identify the focus of your
research.

List all the things you know about List all the questions you have about
meeting the literacy needs of diverse meeting the literacy needs of diverse
learners in your classroom learners in your classroom

ELL students require additional What can be done to help make

resources and interventions.
General student need to have some
form of entertainment in order to help How can we boost engagement in
them connect with the content.
Diverse learners means a diverse
approach to content delivery.
History a more engaging subject for
ELL students?
historical content for mainstream
learners?
How can we construct an environment
that incorporates all levels of student
abilities?

How can educators assist special

education students in taking a larger
 role and constructing some degree of
self-efficacy?

In what ways can literacy impact the

future growth of the individual
student?

Once you have completed your chart, identify two or three questions you would
like to investigate.
1. What can be done to help make History a more engaging subject for ELL
students?

2. What affect can literacy have on the future growth of students?

3. How can we construct an environment that incorporates all levels of student
abilities?
For background building, your group should read one of the three articles found
in the Week 14 folder. Add notes to this document from your selected article:
●
Diverse Learners Note Taking guide
In your I-Search groups discuss the key issues and major points the author(s)
make regarding diverse learners. Include this information in the note taking
sections below. Include the name of your selected article from the three in Week
14 folder; include the names of the members of your group. Your group should
add a section as needed. (The first one is incomplete and provided as a partial
example)
Nudging fledging teen readers from the nest
(group members: Seth Schreffler, Matthew Maloney, and Scott Holland)

● 4 different stages of readers

o Emerging readers
o Developing readers
 ▪ Typically vocalize while stringing together ideas
▪ Corrects own mistakes
o Transitional readers
▪ Monitors own reading/ corrects mistakes
▪ Uses metacognitive strategies (self-pacing)
▪ Self-evaluates
o Mature readers
▪ Refines literary skills and procedures
▪ Develops rapidly
▪ Interested in work related tasks
▪ Increase in decoding skills
● Fluency of mature readers
o Provide content slightly out of reach of understanding (zone of
proximal development) Ie. foldouts, print text, imagery
o accurate and automatic word recognition
● Round robin-popcorn reading
o Redirect the reader’s attention from the meaning of the text to the
decoding of that text
o Keep working memory focused on specific task.
o Practice to increase proficiency and develop skill
● Ways to incorporate reading as an assessment
o Ensure reading is conducted in accordance with an enjoyed activity
o Do not call randomly and carefully exercise round robin reading
due to perpetuating of poor habits.
o Can quantify data through analyzing (WCPM) word corrections per
minute.
● Strategies:
o Read aloud/ Rehearsal
▪ Initial text exposure
▪ Rehearsal
▪ Performance of material
o Plays
▪ Practice
▪ Analysis of vocabulary
▪ Performance
 o Readers Theatre
▪ Choose selection of text
▪ Perform “cold reading”
▪ Execute practices performance
o Poetry
▪ Find or have students write poems
▪ Review draft/ make edits (if written)
▪ Peers can share poems written by each other
▪ Emotional reading/ acting out poem
● Additional Notes
o Encourage the asking of questions
o Set and agree on ground rules for class/ activity
o Prepare content in advance
o Have students plan own reading
o Encourage independent practice/silent reading
o In the grown-up world, there are no round robins.

Watch each of the presentations and take notes. Finally, respond to the prompt at
the bottom of the page for “After class.”

Inquiry Question Notes from Presentation

How do I keep the content fun and
engaging in the classroom?
How can I balance different
academic levels of children in my
Make sure that you keep the
material fresh for the students. This
means that students should have
an active part in the learning
process making every class a
different experience for both the
teacher and the student. This is
even truer with more diverse sets of
learners.
The teacher’s classroom should be
set up to promote the learning of all
classroom?
How can teachers make their
classroom more ELL compliant?
What’s in it for the teachers?
students involved. This means that
all students should be able to do
work that meets their level of
knowledge. Students that have high
knowledge of the topic might not
have access to more advanced
programs in the school which
makes the responsibility of their
learning the teacher’s problem.
Some of the ways to advance these
students in things like reading and
discussion in the classroom. This
gets these students active in the
learning process while still
developing or polishing their skills.
When in a state like Arizona,
teachers are almost certain to have
an ELL student in their class
depending on the schools location.
That being said, it is not a hard task
to make sure the ELL students are
involved in the learning process.
Teachers should make sure to
break down things more than they
normally would in order to make
sure all of the class is on board.
Things to break down may include
vocabulary and sentence structure.
Although this may sound bad, a lot
of teachers may not want to take on
students of different backgrounds or
reading level. This is due to the
misconception that it would make
their classes harder to teach. The
biggest difference these classes
have to others in teachers may
have to be more specific and break
down a couple of more things
 compared to normal which results
in minimal effort by the teacher
themselves. This minimal effort by
the teachers could help many of the
students in their class become
better readers.

After Class

After going through the inquiry process and viewing all of the presentations respond to
the following prompt. What are the specific needs of diverse learners in your content
area, especially struggling readers, and what are some strategies you can use to
differentiate to meet their learning needs?

Struggling readers in history can have a hard time in terms of the types of words/vocabulary
used in the subject. The English that is used in many historical writings tends to be far different
from today’s English using different words and sentence structures. This makes it very difficult
for students to comprehend what the reading is actually say all together much less in an
historical setting. If teachers can develop the students’ knowledge of these words then teachers
count on more of their students understanding the reading material.