Accommodating Differences in the Classroom free essay sample

Accommodating Differences in the Classroom Kia Wilson Grand Canyon University A classroom is made up of different personalities, attributes, backgrounds, and abilities. Each student in the classroom brings something special within the classroom. No one student is alike. Within a classroom, setting a teacher must sometime accommodate their teaching style based upon the students in the classroom. A teacher is effectively teaching when they can accommodate to their students in the classroom. Through this essay, one will be able to see how to accommodate to students who are visual learners, students who have social or behavioral problems, and students with learning disabilities. A student can fall into three different learning styles. A student who is a visual learner likes to see how things are done. A student who is a visual learner has to have anything shown to them or look at pictures to see how a task is completed. This is the best way a student learns who is a visual learner. One cannot just tell them how to do something they must see it. Some special challenges an educator may have to overcome to accommodate this group would have to be that they must show visual learners how to do something. According to Charles Smith (2009) one must show visual learners exactly what you want them to do as well as not cutting corners when demonstrating the task. Some special learning opportunities for students who are visual learners could be the educator incorporating pictures or painting a mental image so the student can obtain a vivid picture in their mind. Elayne Masters (2008) believes that by making simple accommodations in lesson plans, teachers can create a setting that will provide visual learners with creative opportunities. An educator can accommodate visual learners in the classroom by supplementing some lessons with photos, videos, and movies. An educator who does this according to Elayne Masters gives visual learners an opportunity to bring the lesson to life instead of just seeing words on a page. Another tool an educator could use for visual learners could be graphic organizers. Graphic organizers can range anywhere from flowcharts to timelines. Graphic organizers allow students to see what they are learning. Another type of group an educator might have to accommodate is students who have social or behavioral problems. Some common characteristics of students with social or behavioral problems might include depending on gender how the deal with issues for example males tend to be aggressive or antisocial while females tend to go into depression or social withdrawal, students with low self-esteem tend to have the greatest social or behavioral problems, and a higher drop out rate. Others common characteristics of students with social or behavioral problems include poor social skills, and difficulty establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Some challenges an educator might have to overcome when dealing with students with social or behavioral problems could be identifying a student, who actually has behavioral or social problems, allowing students to feel like they have a sense of control, and recognizing when a student may be suicidal. Some special learning opportunities that can be offered to represent student with social or behavioral problems could be the teacher taking personal interest of the students into account (Clarke at al. , 1995) and also showing the students that as educators we truly do care about them (Diamond, 1991). An educator can accommodate students with social or behavioral problems by giving the student an example to follow of another person who once had social or behavioral problems who is now successful. This can help the student because it allows them to see an example of someone who has overcome the issue. Another way is by the educator showing an interest in the student and making them feel like they really care. The last groups of students we will look at are those with learning disabilities. Some of the common characteristics include difficulty sustaining attention in the face of distractions, poor reading skills, ineffective learning and memory strategies, difficulty with tasks involving abstract reasoning, poor sense of self and low motivation for academic tasks, poor motor skills, poor social skills (Chapman, 1988). Some of the challenges an educator may have to overcome to accommodate students with earning disabilities would be to help them master the skills needed, help them to become motivated, and some of the students may not be on the same reading level as others in the class. Some of the special learning opportunities that could be offered could include minimizing any possible distractions and teach study and learning skills to help the student succeed. Ways an educator can accommodate students with learning disabilities could include providing the students with study aids such as study guides, outlines, and graphics. By providing students with this information it allows them identify important concepts. Another way an educator can accommodate students with learning disorders is use multiple modalities to present information. Using multiple modalities allows the student to have different methods of learning the information such as saying the word aloud, writing the word, and saying the letters of a word aloud. Students are all different in some shape, form, or fashion. In order for educators to be effective in their teaching, they must be able to identify and learn to accommodate differences in groups.