Blog Entry #6

The diversity that I see the most in my service learning placement classrooms, is diversity in academic abilities. I get to see how both of my teachers help gifted students and students who are struggling. My 6th-grade placement teacher addresses these concerns by doing something called "face in the hole". She will have students do a problem on a whiteboard and then go over the problem on the board. After she has gone over the problem, she will say "face in the hole" and the students will all put their faces down on their desks. Then she will tell them to hold up a 3 if they got the answer correct, a two if they got it right up to a certain point, or a one if they did not understand how to do the problem at all. This system allows the teacher to see who is struggling with that area and focus on them. It also allows the aide in the classroom to be able to know who they should go help. This is just one strategy that this teacher uses to help acknowledge academic diversity.

My kindergarten placement teacher acknowledges learning diversity in a few ways. The first way that she does this is by having different groups based on their test scores during rotations. Then she caters every activity to the knowledge of the particular group. This helps her to be able to work with the kids who need extra help and it allows the kids who are excelling to be able to try more challenging work. Another way that she addresses learning diversity is by having aides pull kids into the hallway for extra help. These aides can help teach them letters and sounds that they may be struggling with. Having someone work one on one with the students opposed to in a big group really helps them to be able to improve. It also caters to the specific area that the student is struggling with. These are the two main ways that I have noticed my service learning teacher dealing with diversity in the student's academic levels.