WORKING WITH A DIVERSE POPULATION

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WORKING WITH A DIVERSE POPULATION
CHAPTER 11
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Schools with No Achievement Gap

• Emphasize reading skills
• Teach higher-order thinking skills to all
  students
• Routinely re-teach
• Require at-risk students to participate
• Require students to speak and write in complete
  sentences
• Get students emotionally involved
• Show patience and caring

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Conceptual Framework for Working with Students
from Various Cultures (Pransky Bailey,
2002-2003)

• Based on
• Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development
• Gees concept of Discourse Community
• Considers
• The difference between the schools Discourse
  Community and culture in their class
• The students language proficiency and background
  knowledge
• The interaction between teacher and students
• Nature of the task for the lesson

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Classroom Practices for Working with Diverse
Populations (Delpit, 1997)

• Make a study of language diversity a part of the
  curriculum
• Audiotape stories narrated by people from
  different cultures
• Have your students become language detectors
• Help students create bilingual dictionaries
• Use role playing dramatics
• Videotape student presentations

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Classroom Practices for Working with Diverse
Populations (cont.)
Have young students create puppet shows or role
plays using cartoon characters Allow students to
use a tape recorder in class Have students give
newscasts, modeling their favorite newscaster Use
childrens literature to develop awareness of
dialects and cultural differences Use childrens
books to identify contrasting language patterns
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Characteristic of African-American Vernacular
English (AAVE)

• Differs from standard English in
• Vocabulary terms
• Verb tenses
• Inflections
• Grammatical constructions
• Syntax (verb to be)
• Style

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Strategies for Working with AAVE Students

• Focus on one sound or grammatical item
• Have students listen carefully to the correct
  sound or structure
• Have students practice the correct forms
• Help students to hear the difference
• Have students repeat the AAVE form and standard
  English form
• Encourage students to use standard English in
  their classroom speech

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Blooms Taxonomy Type I Activity
Knowledge Simple recall of learned
facts. Comprehension Translating or interpreting
material from one form to another. Application
Ability to use learned material in
personal life. Analysis Ability to break
down material into its components. Synthesis
Ability to put parts together to form a new
whole. Evaluation Ability to judge the value of
the material studied.
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Blooms Taxonomy Task on Color, by Ruth Heller

• Explain the four stages used by a printer when
  applying color to a page in a book.
• Explain the magic of creating secondary colors.
• Using the supplies on the table, mix colors to
  create your own color wheel.
• Explain which primary or secondary colors create
  black.
• (continued)

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Blooms Taxonomy Task on Color, by Ruth Heller
(cont.)

• Using four transparencies, draw a picture by
  using each of the transparencies as part of the
  entire picture then place the transparencies
  over each other to show your complete picture.
• Survey your classmates to find out which color is
  their favorite and create a bar graph to show the
  results of the survey.