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A Curriculum to Reach All Learners
Oct 1, 2012 12:30 PM
By Renee Hutchins - FF/S
Are we satisfied with those learners who are simply “making the grade?” As educators, we must strive to meet all learners’ individual needs, including those who are excelling as well as those who may need a little extra support.
In Mrs. Hicks’ fifth-grade classroom, we have observed students who experience tremendous success in reading. Their reading vocabularies and their fluency rates soar! Parents complain that they will not put down a book – even at dinner time! This voracious fifth-grade reader is a dream for us because, as teachers, we recognize much of student success relies upon his/her reading ability.
Henceforth, our desire is to instill a lifelong passion and love for reading in all our students. We encourage them to spend time becoming best friends with a character in a novel and to travel to exotic places through rich text. We have also learned from reading researcher Guthrie several aspects of engaged readers.
They:
• seek to understand
• enjoy learning
• believe in their reading abilities
• are intrinsically motivated and have self-efficacy
Guthrie has also researched traits of a meaningful teacher.
He or she:
• creates contexts for engagement
• provides prominent knowledge goals
• builds real-world connections to reading
• supports readers with meaningful choices about what, when, and how to read
As Mrs. Hicks and I began co-teaching this year, it became obvious that many of our fifth-grade learners were thriving. Our goal was not only to support their growth and their love of learning, but to also guide them to dig deeper and reach further. This realization has led us down a path that guarantees we support all of our challenged learners, through both remediation and enrichment, whichever is necessary.
During Reading Workshop, we have just completed the delightful novel Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl, in which a clever fox uses his cunning ways to outsmart three simple-minded farmers who resort to extreme measures to protect their wares. With support from our technology expert, Rebekah Kinney, we planned for our students to use the creative story-telling app Toontastic. Students are taught to summarize this unique story through cartoon and animation, and Toontastic guides students through the story arc. The excitement continues to grow as the children use their imagination to draw the characters, build the setting, record voices, and add animation to include each of the components of the story arc. As we use this app to provide both remediation and enrichment, our desire is to meet the needs of all our fifth-grade learners.
Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading
Guthrie, J.T. (2001). Contexts for engagement and motivation in reading. Reading Online, 4(8). International Reading Association: Washington, D.C.
In Mrs. Hicks’ fifth-grade classroom, we have observed students who experience tremendous success in reading. Their reading vocabularies and their fluency rates soar! Parents complain that they will not put down a book – even at dinner time! This voracious fifth-grade reader is a dream for us because, as teachers, we recognize much of student success relies upon his/her reading ability.
Henceforth, our desire is to instill a lifelong passion and love for reading in all our students. We encourage them to spend time becoming best friends with a character in a novel and to travel to exotic places through rich text. We have also learned from reading researcher Guthrie several aspects of engaged readers.
They:
• seek to understand
• enjoy learning
• believe in their reading abilities
• are intrinsically motivated and have self-efficacy
Guthrie has also researched traits of a meaningful teacher.
He or she:
• creates contexts for engagement
• provides prominent knowledge goals
• builds real-world connections to reading
• supports readers with meaningful choices about what, when, and how to read
As Mrs. Hicks and I began co-teaching this year, it became obvious that many of our fifth-grade learners were thriving. Our goal was not only to support their growth and their love of learning, but to also guide them to dig deeper and reach further. This realization has led us down a path that guarantees we support all of our challenged learners, through both remediation and enrichment, whichever is necessary.
During Reading Workshop, we have just completed the delightful novel Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl, in which a clever fox uses his cunning ways to outsmart three simple-minded farmers who resort to extreme measures to protect their wares. With support from our technology expert, Rebekah Kinney, we planned for our students to use the creative story-telling app Toontastic. Students are taught to summarize this unique story through cartoon and animation, and Toontastic guides students through the story arc. The excitement continues to grow as the children use their imagination to draw the characters, build the setting, record voices, and add animation to include each of the components of the story arc. As we use this app to provide both remediation and enrichment, our desire is to meet the needs of all our fifth-grade learners.
Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading
Guthrie, J.T. (2001). Contexts for engagement and motivation in reading. Reading Online, 4(8). International Reading Association: Washington, D.C.
