My M.Ed. from University of the People

Introduction
This course has been a life changer for me. I recognized myself as a teacher (or rather ex teacher) who brought in differentiation in the classroom of maths. I have understood finally my own teaching philosophy and that is ‘inclusion’. That is, “Develop classroom content that allows every student to achieve standards while meeting the individual needs of diverse learners”, (Voltz, n.d.).

The focus of inclusion has been for me to have all students engaged with maths and optimize their potential. The origin of my search has been when I started teaching and had students chase me for marks. I felt, even as a new teacher, that it was wrong. When I ended teaching, I was able to personalize maths learning for all students in the class using my own model of differentiation.

I believe that when you place ‘inclusion’ as the mainstay of the teaching philosophy, there no end to how much you need to learn. For diversity of students keeps widening each year and it is a state of ‘here we go again’ with groups after groups.

The new that I learnt in this unit is a system of learning analytics, something I was doing in a vague manner, without a clear framework or goal. “Learning Analytics collects and measures student data and analyses how you can refine the learning experience to make it more effective for the student”, (Classtime, 2019, p.1). Now I know that this is an integral component of the work with the students.

My framework
My framework of teaching, hence, has 3 intertwined steps and these are given by the graphic below.
Any of the three steps can be the first step. But it must lead to the next in cycle and complete it too.

Personalized plan
For the sake of having a linear model, this is how I would create a personalized teaching model:

Learner-Analytics
For an inclusive classroom, we need to have “Analytics for higher order competencies such as critical thinking, curiosity, resilience, creativity, collaboration, sense making, self-regulation, reflection/meta-cognition, transdisciplinary thinking, or skilful improvisation”, transdisciplinary thinking, or skilful improvisation” (Buckingham-Shum & Crim, 2016).

I have to get into the habit of collecting data about the students. I would gather it from (a) their previous years’ scores obtained from the LMS used, (b) previous maths teacher, (c) the SEN teachers who have students assigned from this class, (d) connecting to the parents/boarding staff via email/meetings and invite them to share stories of their ward/boarder, (e) talk to the school head, who will have a bird’s eye grasp of the students and (f) look up the school website to check if anyone is listed there as a student who has achieved milestones in areas other than maths.

I would have some driving questions for the same:

• How diverse is my group where ability for maths is concerned?
• The students who are not good in maths, what are they good at?
• The students who are great in maths, where do they lack skills?
• How diverse is my group where life skills are concerned?
• How many students are on special needs help?
• Will the SEN teacher be there or not?
• At what time is my lesson – morning or afternoon? Before or after lunch?
• Is any student on assistive technology help? If yes, then what is it and what role do I play in it?

The objective is to know the students as much as possible.

Differentiated teaching
Teaching methods is where I would have an extensive differentiation. By and large, I keep a model of head-heart-hands to devise my strategies. This includes (a) thinking deeply about the concept, (b) feeling positive about it and (c) engage in hands on work. The strategies that cover these are a mix of problem solving, integration with arts, hands-on activities, flip the class and flexible grouping.

As per Markle (2018), “One cannot have a community of learners without having a positive instructional climate. Instructors help to create this climate by everything that they do, from the way they respond to student questions to the arrangement of the classroom chairs.”

I would focus on a pleasant learning climate by using furniture arrangement, my own moods and positive relationship with students.

Differentiated Assessment
It is a must to have an “Ongoing assessment, both formal and informal, and formative and summative, informed instruction…”, (Beecher and Sweeny, 2008, p.20) to measure student performance on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

I would have regular assessments. Daily assessment may include 1 or 2 problems to be done in a few minutes. Formative may include longer tests or integrated assignment such as ‘write a story using all 4 operations of decimal’. These usually last for a lesson. There are also the routine assessments under summative.

I would also have assessments that integrate maths with other subjects such as ‘write a story’ or ‘explain this word problem using a picture’. There would be an element of ‘choice’ in assessments by having students choose between ‘writing, speaking, drawing or recording’ when presenting product of a task given.

Post-Analytics
This would be an analyses of the mark sheets, rubrics and student portfolio. this would also feed further into pre-analytics for the next step. Post-Analytics answer the burning question asked by Buckingham-Shum, & Crim (2016, p.6), “did we make a difference?”

Conclusion
I can go on and on writing as what I would do. However, the main focus of the work is defined very clearly by the goal which is having a continuous growth using the design cycle of ‘analytics-methods-assessment-analytics’.

References

• Beecher, M. & Sweeny, S.M. (2008). Closing the achievement gap with curriculum enrichment and differentiation: One school’s story. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(3), 502–530. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ810785.pdf
• Buckingham-Shum, S. & Crim, R.D. (2016). Learning analytics for 21st-century competencies. Journal of Learning Analytics, 3(2), 6-21. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1126768.pdf
• Classtime. (2019, July 12). How learning analytics can make your teaching more effective. Retrieved from https://www.classtime.com/blog/learning-analytics-make-teaching-more-effective/
• Markle, B. (2018, August 20). Reflections on Shifting to a Flexible Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/reflections-shifting-flexible-classroom
• Voltz, D., Sims, M., & Nelson, B. (n.d.). Connecting Teachers, Students, and Standards: Strategies for Success in Diverse and Inclusive Classrooms. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/Publications/Books/Overview/Connecting-Teachers-Students-and-Standards.aspx