Prompt Three:
The first accommodation that I saw by my teacher was the decision to place students at certain levels. How do you determine where to draw the line between a high achieving student and a low achievement student? The more I think about it, I don't know if I could personally do it. In the third grade class that I am a tutor in, while I am there, the teacher hands out homework. She has two different copies that she hands out within a classroom, the easier version and the more difficult homework.
Although I have heard of homogeneous classes before, I have never heard of heterogeneous classes with homogeneous homeworks. This technique seemed somewhat outlandish because within the class period, the students learn the same assignment. If the students were at different levels of topics, it would make sense to have different assignments. But the differences between the homework is the same topic, different levels of difficulty. With a singularity of material, the only difference from student to student is ability to comprehend the assignment. The student with a low comprehension of the assignment may have this disadvantage for several reasons. The student may not be paying close attention during a class period. The student may not respond to the explanation of the material as well due to their sociocultural standpoint. The student may not have the ability to spend as much time on their homework at home. Finally, certain students may have the ability to utilize their parents for assistance on their homework while others do not have the same luxury.
The second instance of responsiveness to sociocultural standing was something that happened to me while I was tutoring. During one of my tutoring sessions, I had the privilege of tutoring on the Thursday before Halloween. Although halloween was on a saturday, and they still had another day left of school, the excitement of the day to come had filled the classroom. The issue within the classroom is harnessing the energy from this lesson in order to continue with the math objective of the day. After my group of students had finished their assignment, they started to talk about their plans for halloween. One boy said he was going to be a professional football player, another was going to have a Scream costume, complete with blood that actually ran down the front of the mask. While these students were enthusiastically explaining the intricacies of their costumes, I noticed one student, normally talkative, had fallen silent. The other students finished talking about their costumes and then the three of them all turned and asked what he was going to be. Shrugging, he tried to play it off as if he did not know. It was apparent to me that he did not have a costume and he was uncomfortable that all the other students had something he did not. I immediately stepped in and brought up the fact that I myself did not have a costume. This instance was the first instance that I had encountered where it was aparent that a student that may have an economic disadvantage compared the other students. As a teacher, it is vital that you try to minimize the difference between students so that way certain students do not feel more privileged than others. If students do not feel comfortable with their economic standpoint, it inhibits their ability to learn within a classroom, and as teachers, one of our responsibilities is to ensure comfortability of all students.
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After reading this entry, I agree with you that the students should all receive the same homework assignment. This is especially true if the students were learning the exact same thing during class time. The only thing that I can think of that would make the teacher assign two different assignments is if some of the students are English Language Learners. In that case maybe they did not have enough technical skills taught to them in their native languages, so Goldenberg's concept of transfer is not working well for them. If that's the case then the teacher is probably making the assignment easier for them so that they can incorporate their English learning with content-based language as well.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to comment on the idea of split homework assignments. The goal in any classroom is not to make sure that the privileged succeed, but rather that the entire class is given the opportunity and the means to reach a common level of understanding. This technique, however, seems to be working against that goal. In some cases, for instance in the case of a student with and IEP, you may need to alter homework assignments, but that is not the case here. This technique, while seemingly helpful, is only allowing--and even promoting--the very achievement gap that teachers should be working against.
ReplyDeleteMy midterm paper was done on this concept, as related to an article by Kim Marshall. Essentially, it states that due to sociocultural aspects of student life, a gap begins to form between high-achieving students and low-achieving ones. The duty of the educator is to fight to close that gap.
Separate homework assignments, to me, seems to limit the potential growth of these "low-achieving students". In essence, it sends a subliminal message to this defined group that they are less intelligent than other students. Simultaneously, the easier assignment does not allow them to reach the same level of understanding as the students with the alternative homework.
I agree, if students are learning the same lesson they should be assigned the same homework. Perhaps, there should be certain sociocultural aspects taken into account when grading said homework, but the assignments should remain homogeneous. Doing otherwise, while it may be well intentioned, simply inhibits student progress and works toward marginalizing students and widening this gap.
I understand the idea of giving different levels of assignments to the students on different levels. I just personally don't agree with it. Who has the authority to put theses children at different levels of learning? Tests? Maybe some kids test badly, or so on and so forth. By putting children in higher and lower levels you're basically telling them that they won't do as well as other kids. That their standards are lower so therefore they don't have to do well or work as hard.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Nick when he said that if there are different levels of learning, teachers need to work high between the high-achieving students and the low-achieving students. Seperating the homework assignments is slowing down the potential growth of the low-achieving students which will ultimately affect them in the long run.
While the teacher might be trying to help the students, if you seperate them by homework, who's to say they wont later be seperated by class, race, or other differences. I see where the teacher means well, I however, don't agree with her choice to seperate her students.