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Directed Questions
Curricular Design
Directed Questions for Lesson 1:
Rationale and Requirements for Accommodations
Multiple Choice
Attention: ONLINE RESPONDING IS DISABLED
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1.
Identify and describe two reasons why secondary teachers feel pressure in today´s classrooms.
example:
Sample response:
One reason that secondary teachers feel pressure is because they are expected to teach a lot of content to students. National, state, and local assessments are public, political, and controversial to the extent that teachers feel like they must "teach to the test" and have their students do well on all assessments. This leads to the second reason teachers feel pressure-they have a lot of different learners to teach. Not just the numbers of learners, but the diversity among the learners is a challenge for teachers. For example, one classroom period in middle school or high school can have learners who are gifted and talented, average learners, and students who have disabilities in the setting. It is hard for teachers, who have not received training in how to teach-during one period-al types of learners to know how to organize and manage the content for learners who are beginning and ending at different knowledge and skill levels.
2.
Describe two of the requirements from IDEA 1997.
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Sample response:
One requirement from IDEA 1997 is that students with disabilities must be provided the opportunity to access the general education curriculum. For students that secondary general educators teach, this means that students that used to be in separate classes for content like science, social studies, etc., must now either be taught the general education grade level curriculum for those areas by the special educator, or must be taught that curriculum by the general educator. Students who are not accessing the general education curriculum have some statement on their IEP noting the curriculum they are using (like a student with severe mental retardation would probably be working on vocational and career skills instead of trigonometry or world history). The second requirement from IDEA ´97 is that at least one general education teacher must be in attendance and should be providing input during a student´s IEP meeting. That general educator would be providing input such as what types of accommodations would be necessary for that student to progress in the general education curriculum. Although only one general educator must be in attendance at the IEP meeting, all general educators who teach that student must review the IEP so they know the content and can make applicable accommodations in their general education content teaching.
3.
O´Brien (2000) described seven research-based practices for teaching social studies to students with learning disabilities. Identify and describe three of those practices in terms of how those instructional practices relate to the content area that you teach.
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Sample response:
The three practices I choose are (a) background knowledge, (b) meaningful and relevant content, and (c) real-world applications. I am interpreting these three as they apply to my tenth grade social studies class on world history. For background knowledge, it is important for me to know what types of skills and knowledge and experiences the students are brining to my classroom on day one of the course. Although I may know the courses the students have completed previously, I don´t know how well they did in those courses and I also don´t know how much of the information they remember. So reviewing previous courses´ content (I sometimes have an open discussion, and I usually give a pretest) and involving students in talking about what the world history course is about is important. Something that´s good and bad for me is that I have students from other countries. This is good because we can use these students´ countries as a way of meaningfully talking about countries other than the US. This is bad for me because sometimes these students don´t speak much English, and sometimes they do. This leads me to the second area that O´Brien referred to--meaningful and relevant content. It helps to make the world history content more meaningful and relevant for other students when they know peers in their class have come from other countries. In fact, it gives all of us an opportunity to actually learn about culture, economics, and other factors that influence how people live in other countries by having first-hand information from students in the class who lived in other countries. When I don´t have students from other countries in the class, I usually tell stories about students I´ve taught from other countries. Using real people seems to make things more meaningful and relevant for them. This lead to the third area--real-world applications. Again, when students from other countries are in my class, I find it useful to take their personal experiences and use those experiences as a springboard for talking about other curriculum content. What I try to do is link world history content to experiences students have today-whether this is experiences at school, in their community, in the state, or at whatever level I can use to make the content from world history more applicable to the students. When I use examples from today as analogies, students seem to understand the world history content better. Sometimes I find that I need to start out with an example that´s more current and applicable to the students before I even begin teaching a world history event, because then they´re better able to understand the world history event.
4.
McLaughlin, Nolet, Rhim, and Henderson (1999) provide a continuum of intellectual operations in learning. From the six operations described, target three and further describe them as they relate to your content area.
example:
Sample response:
The three operations I´m targeting are (a) reiteration, (b) summarization, and (c) illustration. The content I´m applying these operations to is eleventh grade English Literature. For reiteration, I´m expecting students to repeat almost verbatim some of the terms used in analyzing literature, like plot, character traits, and foreshadowing. When students are first learning those terms and applying them to new literature, they may be just repeating what they mean, like memorizing definitions. But when students get to the level of summarizing these terms, they can put the definitions in their own words. Summarization is a higher level than reiteration, and students who put definitions in their own words are usually indicating to me that they have a deeper understanding of the terms. For illustration, I consider that to be when students read the literature and identify the plot, character traits, and foreshadowing events on their own. I expect students to use these terms as a general rule when reading without me having to prompt them to ´find the plot´ or ´tell the character traits that make this character seem a friendly character´ or ´what happened earlier that made you think ____ was going to happen.´
5.
King-Sears (2001) describes a variety of curricular items and/or resources that can make it easier for a general educator to use that curriculum with diverse learners. Identify and describe two items that you believe are essential within a curriculum that will assist you in planning instruction for diverse learners.
example:
Two items that King-Sears described that I find generally lacking in the curriculum are the use of specific and strong verbs for curriculum standards, and the idea of building in ´conspicuous strategies´ while teaching content. For the verbs, an example standard from my sixth grade math curriculum is to ´be familiar with the properties of geometric figures.´ I find that ´be familiar with´ is not specific enough-I´d like to refine that with a stronger verb I can actually use to measure a student´s familiarity, like ´identify in writing´ or ´draw an illustration of´ or some other observable behavior. When I take weak verbs and get more specific with them, that makes it easier for me to figure out the projects and measurement/assessment tools I´m going to use. Related to that same standard, I´d really like to know what and how many properties I´m expected to teach. It´s more helpful for me (and I find it necessary to do) when things are spelled out very explicitly within my curriculum standards so that I know exactly what I´m supposed to teach. For the second item, the idea of spending time teaching word problem solving strategies and making sure the students know how to solve word problems and use a variety of strategies to solve problems is key. Most textbooks do not provide this information, and I find I need to build these into instruction. Although this takes more time at the beginning of the course, I find the time is well-spent when students begin to use the strategies on their own as they progress within the course.
