Teaching Students with Special Needs

It is very important to know how to act with special needs students in your class. For example if you have students with learning disabilities and in the other hand gifted students, you as teacher should know how to manage you instructions. Students with learning disabilities have poor self-esteem, short auditory memory and easily confused, and has difficulty in working with others, however, gifted students tend to have high level of curiosity, well developed imagination, well organized and able to recall information. Here comes the challenge, you as a teacher should gives your attention more to those students with learning disabilities,you should provide oral instruction for those students, you have to give them quick feedback to see the relationship between what was taught and what was learned, also provide them with concrete objects so they can learn better and faster. But the most important thing is that you don't have to differentiate in the way you are treating them, you should  treat them equally, for them to feel safe and for their achievement.

How to make school more interesting?

Every school child has something to say about school experience. For instance, students love school if they have activities that meet their interest, if they have good peers to share with them good time, beside the good academic performance and good relationships with their teachers, definitely they will tell you they love school, however, students how lack most of these necessities, for sure their academic performance will decrease and they will hate going to school. 

The Question is: What can be done to help students love school? Several steps could be done, here is some of them. For example, fun Activities are ways students can be encouraged to love school, through providing them with such fun activities, like playing piano or dancing, if they found that these activities meet their interest, for sure they will love going to school. Also another way could be done is by making school feel a little like home, some students hate school because they miss the comfort of home, having a comfortable and lovely environment surrounding them at home, so they find it difficult at schools because of the rules and atmosphere. Therefore the only way that can help students to feel they are in a safe and comfortable space is by allowing them to hang pictures of family and friends in their own space. Another important thing is that teachers should be a good friend for their students, as a teacher, you should know when to be serious and when to be a good friend, when to make fun and jokes and when to be strict, it's not a rule to be mean all times, it's important to be flexible and this will make students love you and enjoy coming to school.

Online Webinar: Implementing Global Fluency In The Classroom: Activities, tools and lesson Ideas of Leveraging Your Classroom Student's Diversity

I have watched this online webinar and i have got a great information concerning the topic. This webinar was presented by Brad Gosche. He first started talking in general about global fluency, then he define what is global fluency and how it affects education.He said:" Global Fluency is the knowledge,skills, and mindest needed to live and work effectively and successfully in globally connected world." Then he move to talk about how to recognize the role of cultural acumen, and building professional relationships, trust among students, also he mentioned creating tools, techniques and activities to use with students and your school community. Gosche said:" Cultural influences all aspects of our different environments, interactions, and perceptions of others and reactions to our students." He also mentioned ways to develop global fluency, these ways are summarized: 1- stretching the comfort zone, 2- grouping colors and shapes, 3- sample discussion questions and last thing is understanding other's perceptions, backgrounds and experiences. He said that education demands global fluency to work effectively with both students and their families, and that successful educators acknowledge the array of cultures and perspectives in their classrooms and leverage them to enhance each student's learning experience.

How We Should Treat Our Students?

Many teachers thinks: "I'm the teacher, i'm the boss". None of the students have the right to oppose me in the class no matter what the situation is. Many teacher's believe in this, but they forgot that their role in class is more than giving information and leaving, they have to think that their role is being a great model to their students, they have to treat their students in a respectful way, listen to them, acknowledge them, listen to their  interests and praise them when needed. You as a teacher should encourage them through a 3 messages :" This is important , I know you can do it, I won't give up on you." Sending such messages, will make student more encourage to work, they will feel they are in a safe environment and the most important thing is that their productivity will be enhanced. So be careful in the way you are  treating you're students, they will imitate you in any situation you act with them.

Cooperative Learning and Student's Achievement

Cooperative learning helps to raise achievement of students, build a positive relationships among students, which is important for creating a learning community that values diversity. In addition, it provides experiences that develop both good learning skills and social skills. Research shows cooperative learning helps to produce higher achievement, increased retention, more positive relationships and a wider circle of friends, also it increases self esteem, greater social support. for example, if students are working toward a common goal, academic work becomes an activity valued by peers, students become more motivated to help one another to learn; if a student need  any help, his /her partner explain to him certain idea and this will strengthen their own learning.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of  complexity and specificity. The three lists include cognitive, affective and psychomotor  domains. the cognitive domain is broken into six levels: Understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. However affective domain is broken into five levels: Receiving, responding, valuing, organizing and characterizing  where in every level student's response differ according to each situation. Going to the last category which is the psychomotor which describes the ability to physically manipulate a tool or instrument. Psychomotor objectives focus on change and or development in behavior and or skills. It is also divided to levels as the other domains, these levels include: Perception which is the ability to use sensory cues, set which is the readiness to act, guided response which is the early stages of learning a complex skill, mechanism which is the intermediate stage in learning a complex skill, adaptation and organization. To sum up, bloom's taxonomy serves as backbone of many teaching educators, mainly those who lean more towards skills rather than content.

Intelligence

There are two theories regarding innate ability and it's relationship to performance and achievement. One theory is called "Innate Ability Theory", and the other one is called "The Effort Based Ability Theory". The innate theory demonstrates that the intellectual ability is innate, fixed through out lifetime. However, the effort based ability is very opposite to that innate, in the effort based theory they posits that all children are born with sufficient innate ability to achieve anything asked to them in school and that this ability is malleable through effective effort. Another way of summarizing this theory is that " Smart is not something you are, smart is something you get by working hard and through effective strategies".It is very normal that a teacher finds different levels in her class, differences in reading, readiness, in speed, in learning, and also on students who are way behind the others, but we have to keep in mind that incrementalist ( effort based theory) believes that all children have the intellectual capacity to learn and to achieve.