I like many of the assessment activities in the sixth grade language arts virtual school course; they're varied, choice driven, and appeal to multiple intelligences. For example, in the lesson "2.02 The Reading Readiness Road: School Day Blues," the main character in the story experiences a painfully embarrassing day at school. The Creative Reader Response assessment activity gives the student two choices: create and send an e-card to the main character or write her a friendly letter of encouragement. Both options have links to lists of specific directions (which has more links to definitions, galleries of cards, and guidelines for letter writing. I like like both choices because options empower learners and variety addresses multiple intelligences. This is another example of how virtual school meets the special needs of learners. The e-card assignment meets the needs of learners with strong spatial intelligences and the letter assignment meets the needs of linguistically oriented learners. The choice between the assignments allows students with learning disabilities choose the assignment that suits their areas of strength but still gives them the opportunity to practice important skills.
In our gifted program we use Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences as a guide for meeting the special needs of our students. It appears the virtual school also provides alternative assignments and assessments to meet the needs of the children they serve.
Armstrong, T. (1994) Multiple Intelligences: Seven Ways to Approach Curriculum. Educational Leadership (November), retrieved on 4/11/08 from http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/articles/7_ways.htm
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing about that example of choice in the lesson. I do think that can be empowering to provide options in terms of they way a student can demonstrate their knowledge and skills.
I'm interested in alternative assessment, but since I have no teaching experience yet, I'm not sure what it would be like in practice. Hopefully, I will maintain my interest in alternative assessment. From a students perspective I really appreciate it when teachers go the extra mile in terms of trying to get the most comprehensive, accurate assessment possible. On the other hand, from a teacher's perspective, I can see how alternative assessment methods can be challenging to utilize.
Acknowledging how common various disabilities and diversity in learning styles can be, I believe utilizing technology to individualize instruction and considering the theory of multiple intelligences appears even more necessary.
Jeanne-
I've noticed this as well in the course I've observed. I think offering student choice for assessments, and thereby differentiating instruction, is even easier in the virtual school than the traditional school. There is no need to make multiple copies of directions and rubrics, everything is digital and can be added to the course easily.
I think alternative assessments are great and are often overlooked by many teachers who found something the believed worked for enough people years ago and keep using it over and over, ignoring those that aren't successful with it.
I think a lot of the virtual school's success in meeting student needs, by doing things like offering assignment choice, is because there is less bureaucracy in general and because of the easily managed/updated digital curriculum materials. Also, the ideal of being student-focused helps a great deal too, which includes acknowledging that there are multiple intelligences and giving up on the idea that everyone must fit into a certain learning profile, otherwise they're failures and can't hack it. I've even heard of honors teachers in my school say a student wasn't "honors material" because they didn't do well on their traditional assessments that didn't offer choice, rather than consider maybe the assessment didn't meet the learning needs of the student. But don't get me started on that.
-Justin
I see this as further evidence that differentiated instruction is important to all learners, regardless of whether they are online or in a traditional classroom. I wonder if the ability to vary instructional and assessment strategies in the online course is made easier by the design methodology. In other words, instructional designers create the content. The teacher does not have to continually come up with creative alternatives. I wish we had the chance to observe the designers and better understand their methods and workload.
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