UbDDI+B2+Chapter+4

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Abstract
What really matters in planning for student success comes down to having a decent level of clarity in the disciplines.The more powerful the curriculum the better the chances the classroom will succeed. This comes down to attitude. We (as teachers) have the right attitude when we can think to ourselves, "There are many ways I can help my students learn. My job is to find enough ways to teach and enough ways to support learning that what I teach works for each person who needs to learn the essential content." (p. 39) Included attitudes and skills that teachers have in order to help all learners include but are not limited to establishing clarity about curricular essentials, accept responsibility for learner success, develop communities of respect, etc. Notice, this does not include differentiating instruction by the means of giving less work to struggling learners while piling work on successful students. It is a must that your curriculum is based on important concepts and principles. This is more likely to engage and satisfy students. This is because students will be more able to link it to their life experiences, which will help interest grow. Being a responsible teacher is essential. What it takes is getting to know each student to better know how to teach them, map their progress, find alternate routes in teaching the material, encourage students that you are willing to work with them on things that don't work for them, and provide support and model quality work. Always keep in mind that there is never the perfect day, perfect school, perfect lesson, or perfect teacher. But, the goal is not perfection. The goal is to remain persistent and always fight for student understanding.

[|Sythesis Drew]
It seems that a most common theme for this chapter is the idea of having a strong and clear curriculum. Also, the nine attitudes and skills that a teacher should have to help all learners seemed to strike a note for our minds. Because none of these entries discussed all of the nine attitudes, I will address them for your later use: Another idea many of you reflected on was from page 56. Tomlinson and McTighe quote, "There's no such thing as the perfect lesson, the perfect day in school, or the perfect teacher. For teachers and students alike, the goal is not perfection but persistence in the pursuit of understanding important things." (p.56) Judging by the number of entries that I saw had touched this quote or paraphrased it in some way, as a collective group we found it to be very important in consideration to our careers as educators.
 * Establish clarity about curricular essentials.
 * Accept responsibility for learner success.
 * Develop communities of [|respect].
 * Build awareness of what works for each student.
 * Develop classroom management routines that contribute to success.
 * Help students become effective partners in their own success.
 * Develop flexible classroom teaching routines.
 * Expand a repertoire of [|instructional strategies].
 * Reflect on individual progress with an eye toward curricular goals and personal growth. (p. 40)

Sarah
Chapter Four presented ways for teachers to aid in student comprehension of material. A common theme among these methods was a tendency for the instructor to be attentive and aware of the needs of the individual students as well as a classroom on the whole. Without these necessary observatory skills, none of the methods presented could be sufficiently applied to a classroom and the learning environment would cease to be an effective one. From this chapter, all teachers and prospective teachers could learn a little something on page 44. Paraphrased, the first full paragraph expresses that it is not the student’s fault when they cease to comprehend, it is the teacher’s inability to teach the student effectively. This has always been my attitude towards teaching and I hope to see others adopt the same philosophy.

Ryan Snowman
This chapter goes into depth of nine attitudes and skills that teachers who teach responsively possess. The skills and attitudes range from curriculum based skills, to knowing who your students are and what works for them. Obviously, any teacher is not going to be perfect in each of these areas. The mere thought of it is impossible. However, the awareness of the skills is important, so that teachers can reflect and work on the areas that they are not strong in. The process of reflection is important and something that I will adopt in my classroom. I will always try to improve my teaching whether it is by making my units and lesson plans better, or improving my knowledge of my students. Tomlinson and McTighe really sum it up when they write that “For teachers and students alike, the goal is not perfection but persistence in the pursuit of understanding important things” (p. 56). This is very true, and I agree wholeheartedly. Perfection is not the goal, but the pursuit and the determination to learn is.

Leah
There is a greater chance of Student success if teachers are clear about curricular essentials, they take responsibility for student learning, map what works for each student, and have flexible teaching routines. I Think that keeping a journal for each class when teaching is an important step to student success. In that journal you can map: class room participation, what worked for students. It can also help keep goals in mind and develop better classroom management by reflecting on what made a certain class successful and what hindered a lesson. The sections on "Helping Students Become Effective Partners in Their Own Success" was especially interesting. I think I would try to start this from the first class by giving them the sylabus and stating what they should learn by the end of the class, and then making them brainstorm or just jot down some own personal goals for the year and for the class. That would also let me know what they may be struggling with and what areas they need my help on from the beginning.

Corinne
This chapter discusses the method of Differentiated Instruction, and how to effectively put it to use in the classroom. This chapter addressed some of my fears of being in the classroom. Mainly, how important a well developed curriculum that applies to all learning types is. However with curriculum stressed in both this chapter and the previous one, what happens if my students are not learning and extra time is needed. What happens to the well developed and planned curriculum, and then how do I decide what information to leave out and what to keep if time constraints deem that necessary? Overall, I better understood the method of Differentiated Instruction (DI) and like how it individualizes students and their needs. However some of the examples where of teachers giving different in class work and homework to students of varying level in their classes. How do you apply DI in the classroom without singling out students and making them feel less smart than the other students? I feel that it would cause the students to feel singled out in front of their peers, and adolescents tend to dislike anything that sets them apart from the group. Overall this chapter allowed me to understand DI and how to use it effectively in a classroom, and also brought up some questions that only experience in the classroom can answer.

Ryan
Something that was interesting in chapter four was that it really discussed how to use your time for curriculum and also how to use your time to be there for your students and help them become effective learners. Also in chapter four I learned that being flexible and being able to set goals for students is important, but showing their growth is important also. This information will impact me to always be there for anyone who needs help as a way to get ready to become a teacher. As a teacher this will impact me to become the best teacher I can become and to try to use half of the time to be there for my students.

Scott
It is important that we as teachers recognize that learning has more to do with the ability to organize and use skills than the retention of data. It is important that I recognize that I am directly responsible for the success or failure of a learner. Teachers should see themselves as catalysts for powerful and engaged learning. We do this by identifying to ourselves, and our class, clear goals of what students should know. We should strive to know everything about all of our students. It is important for teachers to establish high expectations for how smooth a classroom should run and we should have a large repertoire of instructional methods.

Mykayla
I am overwhelmed to think about everything that I will have to do in my classroom to make sure every student learns to his or her capacity. The nine skills (mentioned on page 40) did not seem terribly difficult. However, all the individual steps for all nine of them are daunting. I do not think that I can incorporate pre-assessments of students, as well as provide different homework tasks for different ability levels, along with teaching the students the material. All this seems impossible to do with one class of students, let alone four or five classes. I did like that the resources at the end of the chapter are available because trying to incorporate all these elements into one classroom is going to need some assistance.

Jennie
All of the nine attitudes and skills that a teacher who has a differentiated classroom are so essential. In the common sense section of this book, the authors say "There's no such thing as the perfect lesson, the perfect day in school, or the perfect teacher. For teachers and students a like, the goal is not perfection." These nine skills and attitudes help us work as close to perfection as we can get. But again, "the goal is not perfection." The goal is to help the students understand things that they will need later on in life, so that they can make connections themselves, keep learning and keep wanting to learn.

Brittany
Once the basic lesson is structured, the next task becomes presenting the material in a way that the students will be engaged to learn. Communication is very important in the teacher/student relationship. Teachers will find that students are more receptive to learn if they feel that they have a say in their education. When teachers work with students individually, the difficulty of the work can be altered to best fit the capability of the student. This results in the students being more positive and successful. After reading chapter four of //Integrating: Differentiated Instruction + Understanding by Design//, I have realized how important it is to learn about the students’ ability with the subject matter in the classroom. When I am the teacher of my own classroom, I plan on using various teaching strategies so that my students can be taught in the way that they learn best. I believe that each student deserves the right to learn in the way that they will be most successful.

Drew
So much is true in this chapter. As a future teacher, I agree that curriculum should be made accessible for each and every student. I really hope to master this. It does seem very common in school that struggling learners are given less while advanced learners are given a heftier work load. As a student, I was always one with the latter. From my experience working in the special education department at Sabattus Middle School, I would have to back up the statements made. The work load was lacking and the instructions were not differentiated outside of being on a mostly one-on-one level. It seems that, for instance, when using the backwards design model, it would be impossible to have unclear goals while maintaining differentiated instructions. The production of multiple versions of “fog” seems like a great way to describe the outcome of an uncertain set of goals. Such is also true that a student could be receiving A letter grades in a class and still not growing. As I read, I feel there is a common theme of the problem I would like to refer to as “the teacher complex”—maintaining growth and learning by using differentiated instructions the right way while at the same time following state and national standards.

Tim
This chapter really hits home on a lot of key points when it comes to comprehension in the classroom. The chapter starts right off by saying that teachers must begin to teach for understanding, which is a definite must in any school system. The chapter continues on going through a multitude of different ways to help aid students in comprehension. The scenarios that ultimately followed each new strategy helped paint a better picture of the situation and gave me a better understanding of what the book was saying. This chapter will definitely impact my classroom because it goes through so many different ways that I can use to make sure students remain up to par with what I am trying to teach. The part of the chapter that will impact me the most was towards the end when the authors talk about the goal of teaching and learning to not be perfection, but instead to be continued effort to pursue the understanding the important things.

Kirsten
I felt this chapter essentially provided a list of tools for a teacher to use, either for herself in gathering information about her students and how they learn or tools for the teacher to provide for the students to use with themselves. Everyone of the major points listed at the beginning of the chapter (starting with establishing "clarity about curricular essentials," and ending with reflecting on individual progress with an eye toward curricular goals and personal growth." pg. 40) were necessary for the others to exist. You cannot, for example, expect students to take responsibility for their learning if you don't have effective classroom management, and you don't have the oppurtunity to find more instructional strategies if you don't have flexible routines. I think the essential thought put forward by this chapter is that teachers need to be willing to know their students and work not just facts and ideas into their plans, but actual people (the students). When we sit down to create a unit or assessment or lesson plan, we need not just consider what the school needs/wants us to convey to our students, but what they need to know and find ways to help them know it.

Jordan
This chapter offers a vast variety of information in order to create a classroom focused around the student: focusing on key points of curriculum, providing learner variance in lessons, developing solid frameworks, making goals that belong to everyone, and creating communities of success are all aspects that need to be considered when planning for successful students. I was astounded at the amount of variables that go into a student’s success and that a focus was on student’s crafting their own success. As I thought more about it, a student needs to feel responsible for their own learning environment and this made me realize something: a teacher is there to guide learning, not preach it. As a student, I was always the student that did not struggle. I found myself productive, happy, and comfortable in almost any classroom that I was put in. What I have come to realize now is that I may have gotten an “A”, but I am not sure that I was successful. Some of my “framework” is not as strong as I would like it to be and I feel that my teachers did not work hard enough to make goals that belonged to everyone, however, they did find ways of varying their techniques. My lack of honest success as a student has influenced me as a teacher to work hard to create a successful student environment that incorporates many of the aspects that were mentioned in this chapter.

Cara
A teacher is responsible for the learning of many different students. Because of this, a teacher must get to know a student in order to find different approaches to teaching a lesson to ensure that each student is getting an equal education and is learning. I liked that the authors suggested that a teacher show a student what good work looks like and how to get there. I can remember being in high school and not knowing what the teacher expected our end results of a project to be. If the teacher had been clear about what good work looks like, I feel that I would have done better. Being clear, holding oneself responsible for each student’s learning, and knowing how the class should look are all important when teaching.

Rachel
In addition to understanding what needs to be taught and what students need to know, all the information needs to be presented in an interesting and engaging way. As a future teacher, I believe that the combination of these two ideas will greatly increase the success of my students. Chapter four lists nine characteristics of teachers who teach to all different learners. The more successful that a teacher is at modeling these qualities, the more successful the student will be. One way to demonstrate these characteristics is to challenge all students equally. This idea is reiterated in the book, Fires in the Bathroom. Only motivating the students who are already successful will not help the students who really need it. This is also a good lesson on respect and treating students (and all people) fairly and equally.