Responding to Diverse Needs

Block B provided a wealth of opportunities to teach students of all

different abilities and background. I was provided the opportunity to
have experiences teaching Mathematics, Science, Reading and
Writing, and Drama. It was great to be able to teach three different
grade levels throughout the practicum component of Block B. For
each of the different subject areas I taught, I was provided with a
range of very diverse learning needs. Another thing I noticed about
teaching in Indiana, both at the Butler Lab School and at Central
Elementary, was the hugely diverse student body. Compared to
teaching back at home in Tasmania, Australia, particularly the
schools I taught in, there is a much less culturally diverse student
body. To elaborate, most students in Tasmanian schools are
Caucasian. Generally, there is a less culturally diverse population in
schools in the state of Tasmania, although culturally diverse
communities are much more common in the larger cities of
Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. As a side note, I genuinely feel
that the experiences I have had teaching students of all ethnic and
cultural backgrounds in Indiana will benefit me in the future if I ever
get a job teaching in any of the larger cities or suburbs of Australia
where there the cultural diversity is of a higher degree.
For this report, I will be focusing on how I involved and met the
needs of all students in the learning experiences I provided. I will
particularly focus on the ways in which I facilitated for students with
exceptional learning needs. The teaching experience that provided
the largest range of student abilities was definitely the Enrichment
sessions at Central Elementary. For these Enrichment sessions, I
worked alongside my fellow Block B peer, Max. The group we were
assigned to originally had four students; Marcus, Elijah, Ashton and
Andrea, but in the third enrichment session, another student, Blake,
joined our group. Below, I will provide a brief overview of each
students level of ability to illustrate the group dynamics.
Elijah:
Elijah was advanced in terms of his higher order thinking, he
was actively engaged with the activities we provided and was
willing to assist his peers when needed. He was the most
attentive student in the group. He was also able to elaborate
on the activities we did with the group and good
understanding of texts we read with the students.
Marcus:
Marcus was a high needs student who struggled to pay
attention for long periods. He had trouble focusing on the
tasks at hand, in particular when reading text. Marcus was a
below level reader. When reading different texts, he could

often only read one word at a time; therefore not gaining any
comprehension from the text.
Marcus Worked best when participating in learning
experiences that involved visual learning and gross motor
skills.
Although we were not provided with any explicit information
on our students abilities, I would say that Marcus is a student
with a learning disability.

Blake:
Blake had an extremely minimal ability to verbally
communicate. Blake could not speak in full sentences or even
phrases. In the first few sessions, he would mostly
communicate through body language, facial expressions and
hand signals. It was difficult to involve Blake in reading
activities due to his difficulty verbalizing the words. A great
moment when teaching Blake was when he clearly made out
the word water, which was a large improvement on what he
was able to communicate throughout the previous lessons.
Blake was actively involved in the hands on, acting out
activities where he could use gross motor skills and express
emotion and actions.
Through observation, I would say that Blake is a student with
a severe learning disability.
Andrea:
Andrea was actively engaged in most of the activities,
although she sometimes became distracted very easily if she
was not actively participating. For example, when someone
else was reading, she would quickly lose focus and become
distracted, looking around the room and not paying attention
to what was being read or discussed.
I would consider Andrea a below level reader.
Andrea required maximized on task time when doing group
work and whole class activities.
Andreas strengths shone through when we summarized and
discussed aspects of text and she was able to support her
reasons when predicting upcoming parts of texts.
Ashton:
Ashton had an on level reading ability, although became
distracted fairly easily.
Through observing Ashton working with a partner and in whole
group activities, it was apparent that he is a very intuitive
thinker, although sometimes it was hard to get him to share
his great ideas with the group.

As can be seen above, our group had a very wide range of abilities.
Considering previous experiences, I have never taught a group of
students with such a diverse range of abilities and individual
learning needs before. In doing so, the experience provided me with
opportunities to question my approach to teaching and encouraged
me to think of ways that I could involve all students in every
experience, regardless of their abilities. By getting to know our
students better in terms of their interests and abilities, we could
better facilitate for each of them. For example, it was a very
challenging to teach Blake the content that we were focusing on due
to his speech impediment, although we involved him in learning
experiences by encouraging a lot of whole body, gross motor skills
and facial expressions to express feelings and emotion. This is only
one example, but there were numerous times that the group
dynamics forced me to reconsider and change the way I taught.
Due to the low level of reading ability of the group, particularly
Marcus and Andrea, I would strategically pair students according to
their abilities when reading text. We paired Marcus with Elijah, and
Ashton with Andrea and Blake. We chose to group the students this
way to ensure the students who were less able to read were paired
with those more fluent, meaning they had the support and
assistance of their peers if needed. I also made sure to always
verbally summarize any piece of text we read so it made sense to
everyone.
Another strategy we used frequently to accommodate for our
students who became easily distracted when doing low energy
tasks, such as reading and discussing, was physical activity breaks. I
have used physical activity breaks numerous times before in
classrooms, and I believe it is an absolutely necessary part of daily
teaching, despite its benefits for students with short attention
spans. These breaks were especially helpful for Enrichment as they
tied directly into learning within drama, where the students acted
and showed different emotions through body language. This kind of
active, high-energy participation helped Marcus, Blake and Andrea
especially, as they thrive on high-energy drama games that involve
gross motor skills.
To introduce new concepts, we would use a PowerPoint presentation,
supported by our verbal explanations. Another strategy we used
when teaching dramatic genres were using visual tools. We gave
students masks showing different emotions, read different
scenarios, and then they would show which emotion they felt when
they heard each scenario. We also used a word sort game, where
there were 4 genre categories placed on the floor, with pieces of
paper with descriptions and examples of each genre spread out in
the middle. The students were required to apply what they had
learned in order to sort the descriptions into each category. This

activity was used to support visual

learning, which also helped with student
engagement.
The main technique we used to involve
and support all our students, who have
varied abilities, was through modeling
everything we taught and asked students
to do. Every time we read any text,
introduced new concepts or asked
Masks used to show different
emotions. (left - happy, right students to act, we would model it first.
sad)
We not only modeled before involving the
students, we also modeled techniques with the students. This
helped them to feel safe in becoming involved because it was a
collaborative learning space, rather than the pressure being put on
the students.

Community Collaboration

There have been many opportunities for collaboration during Block

B, both in terms of working with my peers and community
collaboration. I will begin by discussing the ways in which
collaborating has impacted my teaching throughout the semester.
I worked with my peers in the classroom at different times, namely
when teaching Science at the Childrens Museum of Indianapolis and
during the Enrichment sessions at the Butler Lab School. The
Enrichment sessions provided the most opportunity for peer
collaboration, where we worked with one of our Block B peers to
teach a subject area of our choice with a small group of 5th grade
students. The Enrichment sessions occurred after the students
finished school. The goal for enrichment, as the name implies, is to
enrich students learning outside of their normal class time. I was
paired with my peer, Max, for these sessions. Collaborating with my
peers definitely impacted my teaching this semester, presenting
both positives and negatives in different situations. In terms of
planning for the Enrichment sessions, having a teaching partner
definitely kept me accountable for my planning and preparation for
each lesson. We would negotiate set times to meet and plan outside
of class time, and we also corresponded through email. In order to
plan the whole unit of work and each individual lesson with my
teaching partner, I was required to be very open-minded and
flexible. I understood that I if I brought an idea to the partnership,
we may need to negotiate to ensure we were both happy with
implementing the idea in the classroom. There were times where I
had an idea that I thought would work really well in the classroom,
but Max did not understand it or did not see it as an easy thing to
implement. Similarly, at times I did not think that some of Maxs
ideas were ideal for the abilities of the student group we were
working with. In these situations, we were required to negotiate and
work together to make sure our ideas could transfer to the
classroom successfully. I must admit though, that at certain times,
my partner presented ideas that he was certain on using, but I
personally did not think were the most logical or age appropriate
way of teaching dramatic concepts. In these situations, due to his
very passionate feeling about these activities, in particular reading
Macbeth, I did my best to assist in teaching it in any way I could.
I if am being completely honest, I do much prefer either teaching
independently, or in situations where there is one main teacher
leading the class who is supported by another teacher who works
with and supports individual students. In previous teaching
situations and during Enrichment, I have found that having two
teachers trying to lead a class at the same time can cause students
to become easily disrupted and unsettled. I think this is a result of

not having one clear leader that the whole class is required to listen
to and attend to because of the switching teacher roles. Due to
Maxs prominent verbal presence in the classroom, rather than
trying to compete with his instruction, I would often step back and
work with individual students who needed some extra support. We
did plan to alternate between activities, for example, max teaching
first, then I would lead the next activity, although it did not always
work out that way in the classroom. What did work really well in the
classroom as a result of working with a teaching partner was being
able to model readers theatre and acting to our students. In
addition to the teaching collaboration opportunities, the
opportunities to be involved in the community have been very
valuable.
There has been a huge array of opportunities for community
collaboration this semester in Block B. These opportunities have
occurred in each subject area in the form of teaching individual
students, teaching small
groups, and field trips. As
mentioned in the previous
sections, I have worked with a
group of five 5th grade
students, teaching them
concepts of drama and
Shakespeare at Central
Elementary. I have taught a
group of 3rd grade students at
the same school, focusing on
reading and writing. Also at the
same school, I taught a 3rd
grade student with a focus on
mathematics. Earlier in the
semester I had the opportunity
to individually lead a scientific
Working with grade 5/6 students at the
Butler Lab School. Leading a scientific
investigation with small groups
investigation where the students were
of grade 5/6 students at the
exploring the concepts of density.
Butler Lab School. My Block B
peers and I also had the opportunity to assist in teaching a large
group of students during a scientific exploration at the Childrens
Museum of Indianapolis. In addition to the opportunities I have been
given to be involved with teaching in the Indianapolis community, I
have also been lucky enough to be involved in many field trips as
part of ED 317/418, Science and Social Studies.

The first field trip we went on as a class

was to the Childrens Museum of
Indianapolis. It was great to explore the
famous museum and gather ideas and
inspiration for activities to integrate into
learning sequences. We also
participated in, and learned a lot about
how to implement a number of scientific
experiments. These included exploring
the concepts of density with the use of
a hydrometer, water, salt and sugar, as
The iconic Children's Museum of
Indianapolis
well as predicting and comparing the
density of different of types of liquids. I
also used the hydrometer experience I learned about at the
museum with the group of students I taught at the Butler Lab
School. As well as doing these activities, we were assigned a task to
find resources in the museum that we could use to help support a
classroom teacher in teaching different scientific concepts. From this
activity, I realised the vast wealth of information that is available to
teachers in such museums. If I were to become a teacher in
Indianapolis, I would most certainly make use of these valuable
resources to assist in teaching both Science and Social Studies in
the future.
The next focus for learning in Science was in the area of animals
and their environment; particularly we focused on the birds and
animals native to Indiana. Project Wild involved a representative
from the organization visiting our class at Butler University. Through
the Project Wild lessons, I personally learned a lot about the birds
and other animals native to Indiana. Through being involved in a
range of hands on, indoor and outdoor activities and games, I
learned how and why birds migrate, the natural habitats of
numerous animal species, how bears scavenge for food and what
they need to survive, and much more. On top of the knowledge I
gained through the Project Wild experience, I now have a certificate
recognising my completion of the program as well as two books,
Project Wild and Aquatic Wild, which have a number of activities I
can use in and outside the classroom. These books will certainly be
great resources in my future teaching endeavours within the subject
of Science.

In the lesson between the two Project

Wild lessons, the class went to the Eagle
Creek Ornithology Centre. This was an
amazing experience, especially being
able to explore the natural environment
of the park and see some native birds up
close. Besides being able to freely
explore all of the fantastic resources and
opportunities for informed exploration at
the Park, I also learned a lot from the
teacher led learning experiences. From
these experiences, I learned more about
Owl at the Eagle Creek Park
migration and the food chain, as well as
Ornithology Center
gaining a lot of knowledge about
Indianas native wildlife. As a Tasmanian, this was vey intriguing to
me.
The Indiana State Museum was the next field trip, this time with a
focus on Social Studies. Again I personally learned a lot about North
American history, such as colonization, the civil war and
segregation. I also noticed some similarities between USA and
Australia in terms of the clothing, cars, technology and everyday
items that were common during different time periods throughout
history. I also found some great exhibits that presented some
thought-provoking ideas within Science that I could apply to the
classroom. The main two were Birth of the Earth and Rad Science:
Skateboard Physics. The next week, we visited the Benjamin
Harrison home. From this experience, I gained a substantial amount
of knowledge about the former president, who was the only
president from Indiana. I also learned about other aspects of North
American history like immigration and life in the 19th century.
As a result of all of the amazing experiences I have had the
opportunity to be a part of during Science and Social Studies, I feel
that I am a more well-rounded as an educator. I now have an
expansive amount of resources that I can use in the future, as well
as a much more educated view of America and its history. I believe
that this newly constructed knowledge will benefit me both
personally and professionally.