Chapter 7
To assume that all deaf and hearing children have the same knowledge and approach learning in the same way is a joke to me. Lets talk about a typical 3 grade classroom first. All the children are hearing and they might live in the same area but that doesn't mean that they have the same knowledge or the same approach to learning. One family can be every involved in their children's life and wants to expose them to as much as they can to expand their horizons that child will have different knowledge than the next child who family doesn't have money to expand their child horizons or doesn't really want to be involved in how their child learns at school. The child who has a very involved family, s/he can have this love to learn and cant wait to get to school but on the other hand the child who doesn't have a very involved family might not want to learn or go to school. We aren't just dealing with the child and the child alone, we are dealing with the family, their environment, their will to learn. It goes back to the Nature vs. Nurture debate. I think it is the same with children who are deaf and even more so because they need that language just as much a child who is hearing. So, we look heavily at the family and see if they are putting true effort at learning their child primary mode of communication or if they are admit about getting the hearing aids/cochlear implant on.
I think it is hard to say how I would differentiate my instruction in an inclusive setting because 1) I have never been in that situation before and 2) each child is so different. My best stab at the question would to keep a close eye out on how the child seems to process what the rest of the class is doing. I might have to give that student more time to process or more prompts to what I want the rest of the class to do. If the assignment is to write a sentence about a picture, I might accept one or two words from my student who is deaf (depending if that is where they child is or not) then I might give that child the sentence prompt and then just have the student fill in what s/he said about the photo.
Treating children the same in our classroom, I think is the biggest mistake that we as teachers can do because they are not the same, they don't have the same family, background, knowledge, exposure ect... the list goes on and on. We need to take each child and teach directly to them. Yes, it is A LOT of work but I believe that is how our children will learn the best.
I think monitoring the student’s processing is extremely important as well. As teachers who do differentiate instruction you have to know when a student doesn’t understand what’s going on in the classroom. Students are very good at raising their hand, nodding, and doing what their peers are doing, even when they don’t understand what’s being asked of them. I think Kindergartners are a great example of this. When the teacher asks a question and all the students raise their hand because their friends did, they want the teacher to notice them, and other reasons, but when the teacher calls on them they say I don’t know or I forgot. We have to be exceptionally aware of our students’ progress and monitoring their comprehension of all things in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. All students are not the same and do not all learn the same. Students are unique and this is what makes teaching fun. When you are able to take a concept and have every student learn in their way you are successful. That is what makes me excited to be a teacher.
ReplyDelete