Jillian Patti
ENG 3029
Interview Transcribed
Research Question: How do you (teachers) differentiate your
teaching methods to target all of your student’s goals.
J: Can you please state your
name.
L: Lauryn Kipper
J: Okay...So Lauryn… today I
am going to be asking you how you differentiate your teaching methods in your
classroom to target different student's learning needs. As a child.. what
methods did your teachers use that were most effective for you?
L: I don't remember a thing
from elementary school... I can tell you some things I remember but they were
not about the teaching style... I have teachers from high school that I can
tell you about.. I went to school, well I graduated in 88' so it was a whole
lot of chalkboard, a whole lot of full group, a lot of stuff that they don't do
anymore.. I don't really remember much about anything with literacy... I do
remember reading Shakespeare in high school and he did it like a play where we
each had a role and we each read a part and I guess after each act we would discuss
it but I don’t… I don’t think that part will be very helpful (laughs)
J: That’s no problem because
a lot of people don’t remember I’m sure… So how do you teach your students?
L: There’s a certain amount
of content that needs to be covered and there’s a reading series that we need
to use to fulfill the common core... so for instance, right now we’re doing
biographies… what is required with our series is that we read the biography of
George Washington Carver and the whole class does that and we usually start out
by reading it to them and then they’ll break up into small groups and they’ll
read it on their own.. uhm I also have the story on a CD so we have our reading
series available online so the kids can either read it online or there’s an
option where they can click and it will read the story to them and then the
words are highlighted as the narrator is reading. That’s supposed to be
at an instructional level but obviously for some of the kids it’s too hard,
it’s not instructional, which is why we do a lot of that stuff together.
Uhm…We dissect the parts of the biography, how it has headings, and when you’re
looking for information you look underneath the heading and that’ll give you
that, ya know, second grade obviously, lower level, uhmm… then we break up into
groups after lunch and the kids have different tasks that they’re working on
and I’ll take whatever my guided reading group is and that’s where I group them
by ability so my lower group will be reading a biography but a lower level, an
easier biography, my middle group will be reading, I think the lower group did
Thomas Edison and the middle group was .. I can’t remember what her name was..
Madame C.J. Walker, and that was like an average book and then the more
challenging one read.. what was it again.. I can’t remember, I don’t know it
doesn’t matter.. so there’s three different biographies ..
J: So you do have different
levels for the stronger students versus the struggling students.
L: Yes so they are all doing
the same thing but they’re not doing the same thing. They’re all reading biographies, they all have to look for
information under the certain headings, they all have to talk about the same
talking points but in texts that are more at their read ability.
J: Wow, that’s great. So that’s for different levels
L: Mhm
J: How do you use, for
example, for a specific lesson, whether it’s LAL, or math, or any lesson that
you can think of in your head.. how do you use auditory, visual and kinesthetic
(hands on) methods to focus on the needs of the students as a whole?
L: Alright, well, today we
did a math lesson and we used Plato to do fractions
J: Oh, ok so that would be a
kinesthetic method
L: Mhm we had to teach
equivalent fractions, which is a hard concept, but ya know the book tells you,
they give you these little cards and the cards have sections and you’re
supposed to put the two cards next to each other to tell what’s greater than,
less than and equal to a half… these kinds of things… but I think the cards are
too vague... so you had a piece of paper like this (points to piece of paper)
and like half of it is colored blue and this ones got four eighths colored blue
but if they don’t line it up exactly right or if there’s two that are close to
each other or they’re looking in the wrong place it’s just… it’s not really
teaching them anything… it’s you’re telling them what to do and they’re dong
it… so, uhm… so I found this idea online, I gave them a little container of
Plato and they played with it for about ten minutes and then I told them to cut
it in half, I gave them plastic knives, cut it in half, and they had to make
two circles using the lid of the Plato container as like a cookie cutter… and
then, so they had the two circles, and then with the plastic knives they had to
take the first circle and cut it in half and then the second circle they had to
cut it in quarters and then figure out, okay now how many of these quarters
would it take to be equal to a half, and I had the document camera and I had my
Plato on the document camera which kind of shows them what I was talking about
J: Wow, okay
L: yeah so that wasn’t LAL
but… I don’t know if you’d consider this kinesthetic but what they have to go
back and what they’re really learning now is how to go back and get information
in a book, so we give them squares that have either an idea from a story or an
event from a story and they have to put them in order, sequencing, but they’re
physically putting them in order so it’s a little bit kinesthetic.
J: That’s great… what
different types of materials do you use to promote differentiation?
L: In literacy?
J: overall…
L: well anything I do whole
group is a lot of auditory and everything on the document camera, everything,
uhm… some powerpoints stuff… like
today we played secret password, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that old
70’s 80’s gameshow?.. well I’ll show the kids a picture and I’ll read off the
child friendly definition of the word and then they have to tell me what the
word is but the secret password game we went into the smartboard room and I had
the kids, basically they were the audience in the background and then one
person, one child, like it was you and I, I’m standing with my back to the
smart board and the vocabulary words on the smartboard and you have to give me
clues to get me to say that word but you can’t say that word… so we do a lot of
that… interactive, not kinesthetic but it’s interactive… because they’re
required to learn the same vocabulary and they’re required to learn the same
content but it doesn’t have to, well the spelling can be more at their level,
there’s easy spelling words and challenging spelling words but the vocabulary
and the standards have to be the same across the board.
J: How do you let students make
interest based learning choices?
L: Oh, that’s easy (laughs)…
I read a book this summer called The Daily Five, I don’t know if you heard
anything about it… it’s two sisters and they wrote this book and I use it right
after lunch when I do guided reading groups, they have basically five choices,
they can read to themselves, they can read with a partner, they can listen to
reading I have books on a tape or a CD, or they can do word work, which is just
a whole, I have one of those rolling cabinets with like ten drawers and there’s
ten different activities that they can do based on whatever the spelling words
were that week, so it follows whatever the phonics pattern is… I have little
paper Iphones and I laminate it and write on them and they can practice typing…
uhm what else… I have pencil, pen, crayon, and marker where they write their
spelling words once with a pencil, then write the same word in a marker, then
they write it in a crayon, and then with a pen. I have cool little file folder games where they manipulate
the words uhm… in the beginning of the year I had build it, smell it (laughs)…
which they really liked. They ad
like foam uhm scrabble tiles so they had to use the tiles to make the word and
then I got smelly markers from the dollar store so then they could write the
words that they made and then they could smell it. That was a big hit, build it, smell it, and then the last
choice was to work on writing. I
didn’t start working on writing right away because I felt like they really
needed a lot of guidance now they’re more independent. So when we come back from lunch they
have their choice, they can do whatever one of those five they want and then
they work on that for twenty minutes while I’m with a reading group. As long as they get five done within
the five days they’re good. So if
they really want to finish this book that they’re reading or they really don’t
feel like reading they just kind of want to ya know sit back and let someone
else read they can choose listening to reading so, but they have to do all five
in five days.
J: Oh wow, that’s really
good… do you or how do you modify the content to focus on every child’s needs?
L: That’s a big sore subject
with me (laughs) I taught inclusion for six years so the kids that had IEPs
were… as long as they didn’t need… actually they all needed a lot of help, I
had kids that were uhm ya know had aspergers, I had kids most of them were
learning issues but some of them were emotional, behavior, one little boy I had
was legally blind so his modifications were of course different. I had someone from the commission come
in and tell me how to modify things for him uhm but (laughs)… read me the
question again… modifying the content?
J: yes…
L: This is my big stinking
point with my director of special services, which is why I am not in inclusion
anymore, because she just likes to use the word modify modify modify and I say
modify what? Do you want me to
modify my instruction, do you want me to modify the content, do you want me to
modify the assessment? And she really wouldn’t give me an answer so… I’m not doing
that anymore (laughs). I can
modify instruction, I can teach it to you 300 different ways if you want I’ll
stand on my head, I’ll do a song and a dance, that I don’t have a problem with…
if you want me to modify the content I feel that kind of has to come from the
administration, specifically what do you want me to do, do you want me to like
I say, okay this child has to have ten easy spelling words as opposed to the
kids that have ten easy spelling words and five challenging words… is it
somebody that just needs more time is it uhm where I mean maybe if there’s a
passage I’ll read it to you and then you read it to me or you read it to me and
then we talk about it rather than you know you’re doing a cold read… modifying
the assessment is very vague and we really don’t get any guidance and there’s
no mark on the report card to show that anything was modified so if ya know
Shannon’s report card could look just like Charlie’s report card even though
Charlie is a gifted student and Shannon is basic skills… it’s ya know… very
sticky… I don’t know if that answers your question but (laughs)… I mean the
standards needs to be covered… they have to, they’re supposed to do what
everybody else does at their level so maybe you get fifteen questions for
homework and somebody else gets seven
J: uhm… how do you modify
the process in which you teach?
L: My instruction?
J: Yes
L: Okay… for math, I do a
lot of, we call it, pencil I can do myself, blue I do with someone else, red is
what the teacher said, now I know it in my head, so lets say of instance here’s
this thing that they’re supposed to be able to do by themselves. If they can do it by themselves, they
complete the assignment in pencil and then I’ll know and anyone else who looks
at their journal will know that this is something that they did by
themselves. If they can do number
one, five and seven by themselves but they need help with numbers two, three,
four and six, then they can pick up a blue pen and they can work with a partner
but then they have to write their answer in a blue pen. If I help them with it ya know if they
still can’t get it and I have to help them with it they have to write their
answer in a red pen so it shows… its like evidence… as far as writing goes I
probably am not the best person to ask (laughs)… we use a lot of graphic
organizers , a lot of graphic organizers and spend a lot of time teaching them
how to use it but the kids that really have trouble, they can’t use it on their
own. One of the uhm one of the big
things is persuasive writing. So
you know the layers of an oreo cookie… so I teach them OREO, it’s actually not
really persuasive in the second grade it’s more that they’re giving their
opinion and then your reasons why.
So the top layer is the O, that’s you’re opinion, so I think we should
have no homework on the weekends, and the second layer of the cookie is the R,
and that’s when they have to give a reason, so We should be able to do whatever
we want on the weekends, whatever… the E is when they give examples or they
explain further their reason… so the E has to go with the R and that they have
a really hard time with ya know I don’t think we should have homework on the
weekends, I think the weekends we should be free to do whatever we want uhm I’d
rather just play with my friends and watch tv… and then the last O is their
opinion restated , that’s why I think we should not have homework on the
weekends…. So that’s a graphic organizer for persuasive writing. There’s uhm… a lot of graphic
organizers for writing, for reading I just kind of do the stuff that we have to
do whole group and then stuff that is at their level they have a different
text, a different level book.
J: How do you divide time,
resources, and yourself so that you are an effective catalyst for maximizing
talent in all of the students?
L: Okay well I’m in the classroom by myself, I don’t have any
help, nobody comes in to pull out or to push in… it’s the Kipper Show all day
long (laughs)… I’m exhausted…divide time I’m very bad at time management, I
find myself using a timer a lot, otherwise, I’ll go on and on and on uhm…
resources… how do I divide resources?
J: I guess you can say the
materials…
L: Uhm…I don’t know if this answers it but if we spend a lot of
time on something I try to use the student’s work as a model for an example of
student work as a model and we pull it apart and say what was good about it,
uhm like for writing they may volunteer to read whatever their response is to
the writing prompt and we’ll say did they answer the question, did they say,
did they list their opinion, and reasons, and examples, did they give main idea
and details, those kind of things.
I might switch off with another teacher and she might give me one of her
really great responses and I’ll white out the name and throw it on the document
camera and say another fellow second grader did this, did they do this, uhm… we
share resources with each other… I get a lot of my stuff online… I don’t know…
I don’t know if that’s what you meant by that.
J: That’s excellent thank
you, and then how do you help students become self-reliant learners?
L: I’m not real good a that (laughs)… for reading I say a lot
where you write and I say it when they’re right and when they’re not right so
they have to think about whether they really were right… uhm… because you’ll
notice especially when they’re first learning to read if it’s something that’s
a little challenging then they’ll read it and then they’ll look at you because
they’re looking for, was I right, or they’re looking for an answer so for instance,
one of the kids today I don’t remember what the word was but she almost had it
and she knew she almost had it too but she wasn’t right so she looks at me and
I said were you right and she’s like no and I said well then don’t look at me,
I don’t have the word on my head, try it again. Did that make sense?
Did it sound right? Did it
look right… so they’re thinking about the content of the story or the structure
of the sentence or the shape of the letters… Does what you said match the print
on the page? So they’re putting
that all together to make sure that what they’re saying matches what they’re
reading.
J: That’s great… so how do you provide multiple ways to asses
students considering that some students are advanced and other students are
struggling?
L: Alright… on homework they
have a choice for spelling there’s a nine square board and they have to do
three assignments by the end of that lesson so usually it’s within a week, they
get to pick whatever assignments they want to do… on a test though I really
don’t modify… for the special ed kids I’d read them some of the questions and
answers aloud to them and they would just have to pick the right one… other
kids I would uhm maybe if it was multiple choice I would cross out one of the
answers so that they only had to chose from three answers rather than four…uhm…
I might give them if it’s something like math I might give them manipulatives
that they need or they might be allowed to use… like if it was a story
comprehension and I was teaching them how to go back and look up information
like for the biographies, I might let them use their book because if they’re
able to use their book to find out the answer then that’s the skill that I’m
looking for.
J: Do you do formative
instruction or an overall assessment?
L: I use a little bit of everything. I mean absolutely they have assessment at the end of each
lesson. At the end of ya know
chapter seven in math we’re doing fractions there is going to be a fractions
test. We do it in two days, we do
an oral and slate review so I’ll go over a little bit of everything we’ve
covered in that lesson, they write their answer on the slate and they show me
it under their chin and then I can just get a quick look… uhm… what else do we
do… I really don’t do a lot of one on one assessment accept for reading when I’ll
give them a paper and I’ll set the timer and I’ll say I just want to see how
much you can read in a minute, and then they read that to me and then I
literally just count how many words they can read in a minute for oral reading
fluency uhm… but (laughs)
J: Do you have/what are you
whole class/individual learning goals?
L: Well obviously we have
objectives.
J: So that would be the
class learning goal, the class objectives for the day
L: Yes, mhm
J: And then let’s say a
struggling student, do you have individual goals for them?
L: Nobody that is in my class now has an individualized uhm
learning plan like that… I have one on a behavior plan but not on a learning
plan. Well there’s an objective
for each lesson and then an objective for each unit… so let’s say if ya know
the objective for this mini lesson is using prefixes and suffixes it might be
part of a bigger piece that goes for the week but I don’t think, nobody has an
individual learning goal… I set them and it’s like this is what we are going to
be doing today (laughs) ad if something gears us off track that’s fine we’ll go
with that… maybe I should have individual learning goals (laughs)
