Barry White Jr.

10/06/12 Elementary curriculum Assessment Adapting the Curriculum to Meet the Needs of Diverse Learners
http://www.pbs.org/teachers/earlychildhood/articles/adapting.html

This article talks about changing the way teachers approach the classroom in regards to instructing the students. It was said there Is no one best way to teach a child, and I agree with that statement because every child brings their own style of learning to the classroom and it is on the teacher to reach and find out what type of style that child holds. In the article they talked about for a lot of years teachers have been approaching instruction with the mentality that every child learns the same and they could feed each one with the same strategy as the next. However adapting the curriculum involves differentiating instruction to provide learners with a variety of ways to process information and demonstrate what they have learned, in order to "match" the way in which each learner learns most effectively. The article goes into four ways in which the curriculum can be adapted instructional strategies instructional materials curricular content, and assessment practices.

Instructional strategies deal with the way the teacher teaches, the whole methodology behind what the teacher intends to put in the child and how they plan on doing so. Some suggestions for this technique are incorporating the use of demonstrations or role play; utilizing teacher presentation cues using gestural, visual, or verbal, to emphasize key points; scaffolding key concepts to be learned and getting learners more actively involved in the learning process. Some other suggestions are reading aloud to the students instead of giving them the traditional

text to read from on their own. The teacher might also want to diversify the groups instead of solely using whole group methods in the classroom. And also Varying their instructional design, in order to include a large variety of small group and cooperative learning activities

Instructional materials deal with making changes to the equipment and or supplies to which a learner has access during the course of instruction. This could be simply adjusting the readability level of written materials, enhancing critical features of the content within the materials themselves, designing materials with features that appeal to sensory modalities other than visual auditory selecting alternate instructional materials for their durability or safety features. The learners a physical motor skill also has to come into play when thinking about instructional materials whether the child is even capable of using certain materials. The teacher should have an alternative source of materials for cases like so.

Curricular content deals with adjusting the cognitive demand of a learning task for a particular learner. The teacher might want to reduce the number of vocabulary words assigned to an individual child and having a learner complete only the odd-numbered problems on a mathematics assignment. Assessment changes deal with learners having the opportunity to respond to instruction in a nontraditional manner, in some way(s) other than through typical oral recitation or written expression. Alternative learner responses might include: collage, sculpture, pantomime, dramatic portrayal, musical composition. Overall adapting the curriculum to meet the needs of diverse learners involves differentiating instruction to provide all learners with a variety of ways to process information and demonstrate what they have learned.