As a secondary elective teacher, my class is as diverse as they come. From students who range in age from thirteen to eighteen, culturally diverse as the makeup of our country, male/female/ or students who identify as neither and both, and beginning learners to show stopping advanced performers and technicians. How do we teach this many individuals?
My first approach is to build a relationship with the learners I am interacting with. Every learner wants to know they are seen, heard, and respected. Without that, not much learning takes place. Next, I make sure to lean on my two favorite resources as an educator. Khan Academy has been my "go-to" for a number of years. It keeps building and getting better and better everyday. I first began my interaction with Khan Academy five years ago. I was asked to teach an "SAT" prep course that I knew nothing about. I was given one day to prepare with no resources. SHOCKER!
The trusted SAT websites were confusing and a challenge to navigate. I was beyond overwhelmed. My students were overwhelmed. Someone had mentioned using Khan Academy for another class and I immediately went on the hunt! I was surprised to see how many resources they had on just one site. Setting my students up in our class was a breeze and I even created tracking sheets to help each student track their own progress and figure out the next step based on that progression. Khan Academy analyzes each student's progression. Let's say your learner is struggling with algebraic thinking. If they answer a question incorrectly, a video pops up which displays how to complete the problem.
This availability to have built in scaffolding techniques is imperative to the success of so many students. When teachers are responsible for more students than they can handle for any one class, this offers assistance to students who may not have otherwise received it. In this podcast with Sal Khan, the creator of Khan Academy, he speaks about the journey of discovery which led to KhanAcademy. Sal prides himself on this resource being free for all users. I can't wait to see what Sal and his team with do to continue making learning engaging and effective for all learners.
Switching gears, I want to shed some light on a technology that facilitates learning in a different way. While Khan Academy has numerous resources and strategies for a multitude of subjects, NewsELA concentrates on the specificity of language arts and reading. With NewsELA's mission being, "meaningful classroom learning for every student. We're an edtech company that brings together digital content with integrated assessments and insights. The result is more engaged readers—and engaged readers are better learners." this resource helps every teach who needs to help their students comprehend more content. That's pretty much everyone!
Since articles are consistently being updated, teachers are able to offer their students varied content while keeping students engaged with current events and a range of topics. When teachers create a classroom, they can push out articles of their choice to an entire class. NewsELA can also control the Lexile level for each class or you can elect not to and based on each student's progression, NewsELA will scaffold the article to the student as well as support differentiation.
This resource is incredible for supporting literacy across the curriculum. Core content area teacher and elective teachers can diversify their scaffolding techniques in one tool. As a teacher leader, I was responsible for gathering data for the Language Arts and Reading departments. Giving our team a resource they could use and track progression was a game changer. We could have more accurate data during our professional learning community meetings and our teams were more motivated to continue. NewsELA helps to track student progress while giving teachers and teams information in order to make informed decisions about what the next step should be in each child's development.
Since no two learners are alike and no curriculum is a "one size fits all" situation, Khan Academy and NewsELA offer some great tools to help teachers and curriculum teams make more educated decisions about how to differentiate instruction while keeping their students engaged and motivated to continue learning.
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