Learning About Learning MARCH PAW PRINT Katherine Koonce, M.Ed., Learning Specialist
Some Fresh Ideas for the High School Teacher While the CPA high school students enjoyed a much-needed winter break last month, their teachers participated in a two-day professional development workshop with Dr. Michael Shackleford, delving into the concept of differentiated instruction. This type of instruction, in which the individual student’s learning styles and needs are considered, is already widely practiced in the high school. During this in-service training, however, teachers were given a more in-depth look at strategies, assessment tools and effective teaching practices that create a classroom learning environment that involves every student.
According to Dr. Shakleford, “Differentiated instruction is a philosophy that enables teachers to plan strategically in order to reach the needs of diverse learners in classrooms today.” While keeping the instructional level high, teachers create a learning atmosphere that is engaging and emphasizes critical and creative thinking. Assessment is used not simply to test a student’s ability to recall information but as a roadmap for a teacher’s planning and instruction.
Dr. Shakleford laid the groundwork for how differentiated instruction can work in the classroom by using Bloom’s Taxonomy, a tool familiar to all the teachers. According to Benjamin Bloom, learning progresses from the lower level skills of recalling facts and understanding ideas to the higher order skills such as analyzing and synthesizing ideas and judging their value. These categories are ranked according to their difficulty, that is, the lower levels must be mastered before the higher levels. With this in mind, the presenter offered a myriad of fresh and inviting classroom strategies to assist the teachers in incorporating the concept of differentiated instruction in their already engaging lesson plans.
The teachers used their knowledge of recent brain research as a backdrop for considering the new strategies presented. Dr. Shakleford’s strategies acknowledge that the brain is a complex, adaptive system that changes in response to a person’s involvement in his environment. The more engaged and invested a student is in the learning process, the more flexible and efficient his brain becomes. The teachers discussed and shared strategies that encouraged the use of group participation, inquiry and discovery, multi-sensory learning and graphic organizers.
The workshop gave high school teachers an opportunity to reflect on their teaching practices and to consider additional ways to encourage learning and purposeful interaction in their classrooms. The faculty appreciated Dr. Shakleford’s time and expertise on this important subject.
