Nikki Spire's Classroom

Standard 3: Diversity

Description of the Artifact

I created my traveling the world unit my junior year for my EBD class for Dr. Clark. I choose this artifact because it contained information on not only the diversity of different cultures, but it also had a plan for differential instruction, I had the class learn through centers, giving the children visuals, physical toys and money, music of the culture, reading material, studying information on computers, working in groups, or pairs, and as individuals. I tried to give each child a chance to use their strength throughout this unit.

My second artifact is two lessons that I have written one on teaching some of the students number correspondence and two have two students identify visual what more is. I created to separate lessons for one station because each student has their own set of goals to work on that need to be addressed.

Personal/Practical Knowledge Gained

Through this artifact I was learning about the cultures as I was creating the project which was very fascinating for me. I also did more than what I was supposed to do because, instead of doing a unit that lasted a month, I had a unit that lasted three months. I had to think about the time frame, what I wanted the students to learn, the grade level, how students learned, and how I would keep track of the students actually working on their material. This unit took a lot of thought and planning into making it appropriate for a number of students.

I had a difficult time coming with how to teach the students the concept of more and less, but I found out how small I need to start out with the concept. I needed to have the two students first identify visually what more looked like and to just focus on more not teaching the students less. The other lesson was to teach the student number correspondence which I have learned numerous ways on how to teach the students this particular concept through looking at some of the file folders that already been created.

Connection to Standard

I have included this artifact, under Standard 3, because it demonstrates my understanding of diversity and meeting the needs of the students. I not only made sure that this unit showed diversity in learning about other cultures, but diversity in the learning styles being used to teach the students about the different cultures. For instance I had visuals of clothing from various cultures and actually let the students try on some of the other culture's clothing. I had music of the culture which allowed students that were more auditory to understand more about the culture through their music.

I feel that these two artifacts show diversity by representing the range of needs and ways a student must be taught. Every child is on a different level of learning and each student learns in a different manner as well.

Future Planning

After working on this particular unit, I would love to be able to use this unit to teach a number of students. I feel that diversity is a huge factor in schools, not only influencing how one learns, but by the number of cultures we have in schools today. I feel that having the students learn about the culture is very important because if we can understand someone's culture it will help us understand why a classmate is acting or doing things the way the do. One example is the clothing for Muslim students and why there is such particular clothing that hides their face.

I hope to be able to reflect of these lessons for future lessons or to gain insight on how to teach another subject matter.