The home-school connection

These past days we have been talking in class about the importance of involving parents in their child's learning process.

Nowadays, some dramatic situations happen between teachers and parents:

And also between children and parents at home:

It is very clear that these problems must be solved by creating a....

(home-school connection)

During our lessons we have concluded that there are some important reasons for home-school connection:

- It helps parents feel involved and informed

- Children can keep on learning out of the class.

- Students feel proud of their learnings by showing their work.

- Teachers can be aware about children's family background.

- Parents and Teachers are partners in children's education, is an invitation to participate.

- Synergy among teachers and parents.

- Showing develops memory.

So, it is very important to create a home-school connection because children can benefit tremendously if we connect their most important two worlds. Researches show that children whose parents and teachers are involved in their learning process have more possibilities to succeed.

"Good communication between parents and teachers has many benefits. When parents and teachers share information, children learn more and parents and teachers feel more supported. Good communication can help create positive feelings between teachers and parents" (Kreider, Mayer & Vaughan, 1999).

But, what can we do as teachers to support the home-school connection? 

It's pretty easy today, we have lots of resources and ways to communicate with our students' parents. As Theresa Zanatta mentions in her article, we have to create classroom routines to keep parents involved, such as sending home hands-on student-made learning tools; so that the students can feel proud of their learnings by showing and parents feel informed regularly, and know what their children are doing at school. 

Also the students' individual portfolios are very useful to keep their learning organized, clear and accesible. They can do one for every term and then bring it home to show to their parents all what they have been doing. Parents can see their children's progress, improvement and also their difficulties in order to promt them for their work but also to be aware of their weakness and be able to help them to solve their learning difficulties.

To conclude, I would like to remind that nowadays, teachers have lots of tools to keep on communicating with parents like Internet, it is very easy for example to create a classroom blog to show what it is happening in class or to send them information by e-mails. For instance, I have found a printable newsletter to send the parents with tips and advices and which helps creating a home-school connection since parents feel supported with their children education: newsletter home-school connection

Meeting individual needs

After reading Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold's article on individual needs, I can reflect on some points about differentiating instruction.

As I have written about this topic in the previous entry, I will not talk again about the definition of differentiated instuction, but I will reflect on some interesting ideas from the article "Meeting individual needs with young learners".

First, as it is said by the authors, differentiation is desirable but unfortunately, sometimes is not feasible. This means that, a big number of teachers want to recognize the differences among the students and cater for all these differences, but it is not as easy as it seems to be. In several countries, teachers find important hindrances when they try to sustain differentiation such as the size of the class, prescribed textbooks, lack of time or rigid curricula.

Fortunately, there are still a quantity of teachers that try to approach their teaching methodology to differentiation using strategies like:

- Differentiated resource materials: worksheets, books or videos between other materials, that can be leveled for every student.

- Whole-group activities: focused on practical work in which students can give their best but also taking in account their different interests. 

- Small group activities: all groups rotate through different activities and the teacher can be a guide.

- Projects: they enable children to pursue their own interests while they are learning.

- Student and teacher interactions: are the base of differentiated instruction since the teacher has to connect to every child in order to personalize the teaching methodology to the students' characteristics and needs.

- Computer supported learning:can help to match students abilities and interests to the learning process.

- Multiple intelligences: Gardner's theory is a guide to set a differentiated instruction because helps teachers recognizing every students' learning style. So, the teacher can cater for all the learning styles in order to reach every student.

I have found a picture which explains this last idea, it shows how to help every student depending on their learning style:

To conclude this reflection I will say that although it can be very difficult to differenciate our instruction as teachers, but it is necessary to connect to all students' needs. If we want to be effective teachers this is our main challenge.




 



In this link you can find 7 facts about differentiated instruction, which are very useful for teachers

Differentiated instruction

To begin with, I will stick a picture that shows why should we differentiate the instruction as teachers, depending on the students:

Nowadays, classrooms are becoming more diverse and we cannot avoid this fact, we can't expect the students to learn the same contents since they have different backgrounds, abilities, experiences and interests.

According to all that we have been talking in class, differentiated instruction is the way of teaching which tries to cater for all the different students, with their different backgrounds, ways of learning, interests and knowledge.

 

As Carol Anne Tomlinson mentions, there are three ways to deal with students' differences: ignoring them, separating kids or, the less common way, keeping all kids together but attending their different needs, interests or ways of learning. The first two options have no good results because a big quantity of students are not attended when they are considered "different". The last option is the one with good results for all the students of a class because it implies the same possibilities of learning for all of them.

So, as future teachers, what do we need to do to be effective with differentiation?

Tomlinson says that, first of all, the teacher has to connect with all the students, to talk to them in order to be conscious of their needs. Then, it is very important to create a community sense between the students, every one has its differences but all of them work together in the same direction. Finally, the third point is about the quality of the contents selected by the teacher. Teachers need to design catchy activities to reach every student but selecting important information to be taught.

In addition, teachers have to bear in mind that the principles of a differentiated instruction are:

- Creating respectful tasks, every student needs to work equally, with important tasks depending on their needs.
- Flexible grouping, thins means that students won't be divided arbitrarily. Groups will change constantly and students will be mixed with same interest peers and mixed interest peers; similar or varied readiness students.
- Teaching up, which is starting with what we consider to be high-end curriculum and expectations.

I have found a good graphic which explains very clear the different instruction characteristics:

To sum up, as future teachers we have to take in account the fact that as the world is changing, our students are becoming more and more diverse. Because of that, we have to design strategies to reach all the students, we can call it differentiation or whatever, but we have to cater for all the differences in the classroom.

 

A child-centered activity

This week, we have been talking about the importance of designing child-centered activities, between others, in order to "do" a different instruction.

So, as yesterday was Halloween, I will explain an example of this kind of activities related to this special day in english-spoken countries.

The activity is for a 4th grade class in wich the students are reviewing the food unit.
The teacher will ask the pupils to think about a "scary dish" to prepare at home with their parents and they will bring it to class, the following day, with its recipe.

Every student will explain his peers what ingredients do they need to prepare his dish. They will also explain how to prepare the dish, using vocabulary like "mix", "cut",etc.

Finally, the teacher will give all the students a copy of each recipe and they will make a "book of scary dishes".

At the end, they can taste all the dishes!

This activity is child-centered because all the students can explain their recipes using their own level of English, they can choose what to say and how to do it according to their level. With this activity, they also have something to show and share with their peers, which make the students feel useful and important.