Dr. Meers,
I also use pairing or teams with good success, but occasionally the stronger member may not be as strong as they perceive themselves to be. What methods can I use to get the team back on track without loosing or causing too much damage to the stronger team members ego?
Jim
Hi Kane,
You are using an excellent example of peer tutoring. The think, pair, share model does just what you said, let's both parties benefit from the learning process. I have found that after a number of these sessions, many of my slower students work hard to gain some information that will enable them to help someone else. They want to share their expertise as well. Everyone wins.
Gary
Hi Kane,
This is a very challenging question, because there are so many different components to the type of learning difficulty the students may manifest. There are 6 major areas of learning disability with the two most common being dyslexia (reading-language processing deficiencies) and dyscalculia (numeric processing deficiencies). The first step is to identify the exact processing difficulties the student has and what supports have been given previously. If the student had an IEP in high school, there will be a complete listing of supports and helps that were given during the high school years. The student can either secure a copy of the IEP or give permission for you to contact the school and get this information. I use this method all the time, since it saves time and I don't to reinvent the wheel to discover what support I can give the student.
Examples of supports or helps, might be longer test time, notetakers, recorded lectures, etc. My experience in working with LD students, is through the use of white space between paragraphs, drawing boxes around important information, and giving practice examples prior to doing the work really helps them. In addition, there are a number of assessments you can administer to assess the student's reading or math ability.
If you have a particular situation in mind I will be glad to share this information with you.
You need to be aware of the type and kind of medication the student is taking as well. The most common is Ritalin or Adderall. These medicines have certain side effects that may dictate how the student reacts during certain times of the day or evening.
As adults, ADD and/or LD individuals will typically have developed coping strategies that enable them to function in society. Set down in a interview session and simply ask what needs to students have and how can you best meet their needs. I believe you will find that they can give you a very clear picture of what their support needs are. The most common things will involve adapting and modifying the delivery process.
One thing to make sure with students with ADD is that they have been diagnoses as having ADD/ADHD by a medical professional. We are constantly having students claim they have ADD/ADHD because they don't want to set through the class or attend to the course requirements. Once you know for sure they have been diagnosed you can proceed with your accommodation of their learning needs. With this group a key factor is the elimination of distractions as much as is possible. Individuals with ADD tend to be withdrawn and not to engage in the learning process, while the person with ADHD will be distracted easily and bounce around a lot. Short instructional sessions with breaks will aid them greatly.
Hope this gives you an overall picture of what these students are facing as they enter the classroom. If you have any further questions please let me know.
Gary
Hi Kane,
Well said. To teach effectively, you have to know your students. By looking at their needs, unique characteristics, and career goals you can develop an effective way of reaching them. In the career college setting, it is a challenge because most of the students are nontraditional students so they bring to the classroom backgrounds that force the instructor to work very hard to meet their learning needs.
I find this challenge exciting. It helps me to keep my problem solving skills honed as I approach each student and each class. I trust that you find this challenge exciting and rewarding as well.
Gary
In my computer classes where there are different levels of competency, I try to partner-up my stronger students with my weaker students. This helps both students. The weaker students is receiving more personal attention and the stronger student is learning by showing, which I believe is very important.
This may be jumping ahead, but are there techniques used to help students with learning disabilities, such as, ADD?
Pam, in my computer classes where there are different levels of competency, I try to partner-up my stronger students with my weaker students. This helps both students. The weaker students is receiving more personal attention and the stronger student is learning by showing, which I believe is very important.
An understanding of learner characteristics is the key to an effective planning process. Students have different needs that should be addressed. In order to maximize the students learning process it only makes sense that we understand how they learn best. The teacher of course cannot plan properly unless he/she can prepare for the correct learning environment. So understanding learner characteristics helps the teacher by being prepared.
Hi Glenn,
You did an excellent job of capturing what an instructor needs to do to develop the rapport and retention need for student success. Your steps of sequence are such that it is a slow comprehensive relation building process. I commend you for this.
I want to reinforce the key point of your whole response. By early intervention and planning you reduce the frustrations that will come later if this planning is not done. The early inclusion of students in the rapport development process moves their educational commitment and progress greatly.
Keep up the good work.
Gary
As a program director and instructor, I have the opportunity to gain a through appreciation of each student's characteristics before entering a classroom to teach. An array of information about each student is gathered by reviewing their placement on entrance examinations and their successes or failures in other classes including preparatory classes. I evaluate their transcripts if they are transfer students. I review their past reasons for absences, collaborate with other instructors concerning problematic students, and pay attention to other recorded indicators such as age, race, gender, disability, and employment records.
During student orientation or shortly thereafter, I make time for a one-on-one with each new student to match the face with the mental picture that I have formed from their record, and to start personalizing a classroom instructor/student relationship. This brief, early encounter allays many students' fears about the instructor and builds an essential rapport and mutual respect that will subsequently enhance the learning environment in the classroom. Next come the traditional student introductions on the first day of class. Properly done, this is the time to help the students get past their initial apprehension of the strangers in the classroom. I continue this personalized contact with the students by remembering and using each student's first name. This makes it much easier to praise often and insure that everyone gets to participate in class.
I have found that this robust approach to preparation makes my instructional planning comparatively a breeze. Knowing in advance the interests and abilities of the students governs my selection of materials, as well as to where to place emphasis. My selection of teaching methods - projects, research tasks, or lectures, is also influenced by the students' characteristic profile that I develop. Testing methods are sometime modified based on the students' characteristics. The result for me is a detailed syllabus and teaching plan that is tailored exactly to the students that are in a particular class.
The effect that I am striving for is to create such a challenging, exciting, and fun learning adventure, that the fears, frustrations, and other obstacles associated with learning are momentarily forgotten while in the classroom. I have also found as a result of creating this positive dynamism, students of all ages and diversity, readily seek me out either after class, in the hallway, or in my office for advise, guidance, counseling, and sometimes just listening.
Hi Pamela,
Great question that has challenged educators since the beginning of time. How do we keep everyone moving forward? The method I use is to develop case studies or challenge problems that the students can move work on while I am helping the other students. I make it very clear that these are individual challenge activities and not extra assigned work—meaning if I complete my work early I know I will just more work kind of assignments. I also break the students into teams, or use peer tutoring when this situation arises. The think, pair, share model of learning is also something I implement when this happens. All of these activities are meant to keep all of the student progressing, even though it is different for each student.
Back to the case studies, my students really like them and work very hard to complete their regular assignments so they can move to them. I continually collect and develop new ones, so I have a large collection of them available at all times. For students that are slower to acquire the knowledge or skills in one area, they see that maybe next time they may be able to complete early get to work on the case studies. I treat the case studies like a mystery, so all the students are wanting to know if their proposed solutions are the same as mine. We have a lot of fun with these studies.
Hope this helped.
Gary
Pamela,
I really appreciated your response to Ken. You gave very sound advice. This advice should make teaching easier for all of us.
Gary
Hi Pamela,
You are right on target. I bet your class is one that your students look forward to. By keeping an ongoing assessment, either formal or informal, going in your class you can adapt or modify what you are doing to help keep every student moving forward. By having a variety of instructional tools available to yourself you can quickly change what you are doing to meet that student need.
Just make sure you keep some kind of record of what you did and how successful it was to that when you teach that course again you can draw upon that method again so success will be repeated.
Gary
Hi Joseph,
You have hit upon a real key point, and that is each instructor must make the curriculum their own. Many of the colleges around the country use standardized curriculum between their programs and campuses, this helps with uniformity which is good. The problem for the instructor is how to make it their own. I have found that if we don't make the curriculum our own then teaching is very hard, but if we do then we get excited about both the content and delivery. This is how everyone benefits, students, instructors, colleges and employers.
Gary
Hi Joseph,
You have a very positive approach to your instructional setting. By developing instructional delivery in a variety of ways, that is through different delivery modes you will be appealing to the learning styles of your students. The four main categories of learning styles are viewing, listening, reading and tactile. As long as you are helping your students to work within these four areas you will be succeeding as a teacher.
The point of giving them the maximum you can give as an instructor is important because they are your customers and you want to be a part of helping them to maximize their earning potential.
Gary
Hello Again,
By using a combination of delivery systems, you will be meeting the learning styles of your students. As you mentioned students learn in four primary modes, listening, reading, viewing, and tactile. I think by offering instruction in a variety of these modes the content remains exciting and challenging for both me and the students.
By using variety, you can also see what works and doesn't work in your delivery. If you keep a notebook of these presentations and their successes you will develop a comprehensive picture of delivery options and how you can make them work best for you. I have been doing this for many years and it helps me to have many options available to me when I hit a class that is challenging for me to meet their individual learning needs.
Gary
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Dr. Meers,
How can I better ease the frustration of some of my better students, while I stop to help a student who does not understand what I am teaching in a computer class? I do try and get the question answered or problem solved asap, and that seems to help. I have some other ways also, but would like some feedback on the subject.
Thanks.
Pamela Moore
Ken,
At my school we also teach alot of adults that have worked for a long time, but sometimes don't think they need some of the classes required. There are test-out tests, and some pass them with flying colors. Others who do not are disappointed at first, but in the class they find things that they didn't know that they could do with Word or Excel. Some had only been typing or entering numbers without all the other features that could make their computer lives easier. In the end, those students are so glad they took the courses. That new knowledge also boosts their confidence like they never dreamed.
Pamela Moore
It can help in many ways, but mainly how you are going to best get your information across. It will help you know what "extra effort" you need to put into a lesson. For example, I teach word processing, beginning and intermediate. I lead the class through each exercise in the chapter, having my computer screen projected on the whiteboard; this is to show what I am doing along with them. I know during that first week, through expressions on students' faces, or the whispers of "I'm lost" what extra I need to do to make sure each student understands. That might be from drawing on the whiteboard what a toolbar button looks like, to a symbol or words that word will never bring to a person's attention as a misspell.
Pamela Moore
Eric, Our lesson plans are used as guidelines and are not carved in stone. We modify them in such a manner to ensure we have ample discussion time if a topic is harder to convey. The purpose of our being instructors is to teach, not to worry about an administrative requirement that fits some paper-pushers concept of reality. Teach on! JB
