Appropriate Levels of Instruction

Perhaps the most difficult problems of classroom

organization is dealing with:

•The fact that student come into class with different level of prior
knowledge
•Motivation
•With different learning rates
Appropriate Levels of Instruction
Teaching a class of 30 students (or even a class of 10) is
fundamentally different from one-to-one tutoring :

Because of the inevitability of student-to-student differences that affect the

success of instruction

Teachers can always be sure that if they teach one lesson to the whole
class, some student will learn the material much more quickly than others

In facts, some students might not learn the lesson at all;

Might lack prerequisite skills
Adequate time
Appropriate Levels of Instruction
However, some of these solutions create problems of their own that could
be more serious than ones they are meant to solve.

For example:
A teacher might give all students materials that are appropriate to their
individual needs
Allow students to work at their own rates

This solves the problem of providing appropriate levels of instruction but

creates serious new problems of managing the activities of 20 or 30
students doing 30 different things
 Incentive
This incentive, or motivation, might come from characteristics of
the tasks themselves

For examples:

The interests value of the material being learned

From characteristics of students
Students curiosity
Students positive orientation toward learning
Rewards provided by the teacher or school
Grades
Certificates
 Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison once wrote that “ genius is one per cent inspiration
and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”
The same could probably be said of learning.
Learning is work
This is not true that students must exert themselves to pay
attention, to conscientiously perform the tasks required of them,
and to study; and students must somehow be motivated to do
these things.
 Incentive
If students want to know something, they will be motivated to exert
the necessary effort to learn it
This is why there are students who can:
rattle off names,
batting averages,
number of home runs
And all sorts of other information about every player

BUT CAN’T NAME:

50 states
Or perform basic multiplication
 Untracking
For many years, educators and researchers have challenged the
use of between-class ability groups at all levels

The National Governors’ Association recommended moving away

from traditional ability grouping practices, and a number of guides
to untracking and examples of successful untracking have been
published
Untracking is a focus on having students in mixed-ability groups
and holding them to high standards but providing many ways for
students to reach those standards.
Yet the road to untracking is far from easy, especially in middle
schools and high school
Untracking requires changes in thinking about children’s
potentials, not only changes in school or classroom practices
Between-Class Ability Grouping
This between-class ability grouping can take many forms

For examples:
In some high schools there might be college preparatory and
general tracks that divides students on the basis of measured
ability

In some junior high and middle schools, students are assigned to

one class by general ability, and they then stay with that class,
moving from teacher to teacher

In others junior high and middle schools and high schools, students
are grouped separately by ability for each subject, so a student
might be in a high-performing math class and an average-
performing science class
Research on Between-Class Ability Grouping

Researchers have found that although ability grouping might have

slight benefits for students who are assigned to high-track
classes, these benefits are balanced by loses for students who are
assigned to low-track classes.

The primary purpose of ability grouping is to reduce the range of

student performance levels that teachers must deal with so that
they adapt instruction to the needs of a well-defined group.

Furthermore, concentrating low-achieving students in low-track

classes seems to be harmful because it exposes them to too few
positive role models
Research on Between-Class Ability Grouping

Studies have found that teachers actually do not make many

adaptations to the needs of students in low-ability groups.

Several studies have found that the quality of instruction is low-

track classes than in middle –or high-track classes

For example,
Teachers of low-track classes are less enthusiastic
Are less organized
Teach more facts
Teach fewer concept
Research on Between-Class Ability Grouping

Schafer and Olexa, interviewed one non-college –prep girl who

said that she carried her general-track books upside down to
avoid being humiliated while walking down the hall

One student described in an interview how he felt when ho went to

junior high school and found out that he was in the basic track:

Stating that it changed:

Our ideas
Our thinking
The way we thought about each other
And turned us to enemies toward each others,
By Anne Wheelock
Research on Between-Class Ability Grouping

A study by Yonezawa, Wells, and Serna (2002) found that even in

high schools in which students are theoretically given “free
choice” of academic levels, African American and Latino students
disproportionately ended up in low-levels classes

The creation of grouping that are so often associated with social

class and race is impossible to justify in light of the lack of
evidence that such grouping are educationally necessary.

Although individual teachers can rarely set policies on

between-class ability grouping , it is useful for all educators
to know that research does not support this practice at any
grade level, and tracking should be avoided whenever possible.
Research on Between-Class Ability Grouping

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OFSgVQjdN
What are some ways of individualizing
instruction?

Studies of one adult=one student tutoring find substantial positive

effects of tutoring on student achievement
One major reason for the effectiveness of tutoring is that the tutor
can provide Individualized instruction, tailoring instruction
precisely to a student’s needs
Individualized instruction, or programmed instruction methods, in
which students worked at their own level and pace.
 Peer Tutoring
Student can help another learn
In peer tutoring, one student teaches another.

Two principal types of Peer tutoring:

Cross-age tutoring, in which the tutor is several years older than the
student being taught
Same-age tutoring, in which a student tutors a classmate
 Adult Tutoring
One-to-one adult-to-child tutoring is one of the most effective
instructional strategies known, and it essentially solves the problem
of appropriate levels of instruction.
It is often possible, on a small scale, to provide adult tutors for
students who are having problems learning in the regular class
setting.
Tutoring is an excellent use of school aides
Research has found few achievement benefits of classroom aides
unless they are doing one-to-one tutoring