Exploring Methods of Teaching and Learning
Cultural Responsiveness
In the early 1900's my grandmother (shown to the right) taught in a one
room school house with all grades from 1st to 12th. She had to meet a wide variety
of learning needs. Today, our classrooms are becoming more and more similar to
my grandmother's. Our classrooms are filled with students from many cultures
and languages. They have different learning styles. We also find that within one
classroom there may be gifted students and below grade level students. There 1921
may also be students described as ELLs or CDLs. There could possibly be a student
using sign language (ASL), and learners diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.
We need to be able to teach all of these students effectively. We can no longer teach towards the middle of the class, hoping the slower students catch up and the gifted students don't get bored. All students are important and their individual needs can be met by changing our teaching strategies. Some might complain that this is unfair because all students are not receiving the same content, assignments, or assessments. But, what is unfair, is to expect all students to learn the same way, at the same time, and at the same rate. The image below is a perfect illustration of this concept.
Figure 1. This image of Equality vs. Equity was retrieved from
Dr. Hile's updates My 30, 2018. CSUGlobal. OTL565.
One way to do this is by having a LEAP mindset and by following the SIOP model found at the TESOL Trainers website, (2013). In this method of teaching, there are 8 basic components:
4. Strategies
5. Interaction
6. Practice & Application
7. Lesson Delivery
8. Review & Evaluation
Much more information about the SIOP method is found at the following website:
https://sioptrainer.blogspot.com/2018/02/how-is-siop-structured.html
Some commonly used acronyms and their meanings:
ADD Attention Deficit Disorder
ADHD Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
ASL American Sign Language
CDL Culturally and Linguistically Diverse
ELL English Language Learner
SIOP Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol
TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
Finally, to be culturally responsive, we need to put ourselves in our students' "shoes." We need to think about how they feel each day. We need to know as much as possible about their culture, their family situation, their academic standing and cognitive skills, their health, their emotions, their social strengths and weaknesses. This sounds impossible, but we can make it our goal to know our students in order to know how to best help and teach them.
References
Hile, A. (2018, May 30). CSU Global updates. Course OTL565.
TESOL Trainers, (2013). SIOP components and features. Retrieved from:
TESOL Trainers, Inc. (2018, Feb 23). What does the SIOP framework look like? Retrieved from:
https://sioptrainer.blogspot.com/2018/02/how-is-siop-structured.html
