After our discussion last week it became very clear that we need to look at changing our current report card. Our current report card simply does not fully communicate what students are
expected to know and be able to do. A new report card would allow parents and students to understand more clearly what
is expected at each grade and or subject level. With this understanding, parents will
be better able to guide and support their child helping him/her to be
successful in our academic programs. We should also develop a second page (similar to figure 2.1 on page. 19) that rates key skills as they relate to effort and behavior, again giving parents and students more feedback as it relates to learning.
We need to make an effort to give more attention to individual learning styles. Maybe that involves giving every student a learning styles test such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. What would engagement look like if our classrooms were grouped according to similar learning styles? How can we have students self-report learning styles and adjust our curriculum accordingly? These are things that could potentially impact learning. All children have unique learning styles and students clearly gain strong benefits when their teachers recognize their strengths and weaknesses as learners. If we are not inclined to much self reflection about our teaching practices, we are likely to continue teaching others the way we learn best, assuming that this way will work for all students. Do you know how your students learn best?
I agree with a profile. I have been involved with this practice and it is a nice tool to have. It is so true that we tend to favor our own learning style, guilty as charged, and need to address all learning styles. I feel a new form of report cards would be a nice change and proper timing.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your thoughts about investigating the learning styles of students. In Special Education, for at least two decades we thought that teaching to a student's favored modality would help them increase their skill levels in basic content areas. So if the child was a "visual learner" or an "auditory learner", we tried to accommodate that. The research didn't bear out that this approach was effective, however, after years of using it. I think what was really being shown through research, however, was that "poor" teaching to a favored modality didn't benefit the student--which was often happening in the 80's and 90's in Resource Rooms, where many staff were ill-equipped and poorly prepared to address the needs of students with severe academic lags. Today we hopefully are doing a better job of teaching essential skills, and we know more about appropriate content, pacing, on-going assessment, etc. When we add to that, the desire to engage students by teaching to their favored modality or learning style--then good things can happen!
ReplyDeleteI think it would be interesting to see what the learning styles are of individual students. I do not necessarily think that it would be practical or good to lump all of the people with the same learning style together. I think that it is good for students to work with other students who learn differently than they do. There is something to be said about being able to civilly interact with people different than you are. I think that the onus might have to be on the teacher to try to teach to multiple styles of learning. I think that it is probably true that teachers tend to lead toward the styles they are best at, but in the end its up to the teacher to differentiate their instruction.
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