All students have some depth of knowledge.  I think you must first know your students and the challenges and successes they carry.  English learners are not the exception.  While they carry dual language and often have to language transfer, they still should have rigorous opportunities as the non English learner.  Seeing Tomlinson's name again, who I know is the guru of differentiated instruction, made me reflect on her idea that content, process, and product should be differentiated among students, all students.  I think giving EL students an opportunity to voice their understanding, or create a project, etc.,  over a fill-in-the-blank, selected response assessment, will show what they know, not just memorizing the answers.

The main idea of this article was about how sometimes teachers can get tunnel vision during lesson discussions thinking students are ALL engaged, when that may not actually be the case.  While it was a concept geared more towards upper grades and getting formative observations based off the discussion, I feel as though always having those 4-6 students who always know the answer or wants to be the first one to answer. The strongest points that the reading made to me was the idea that we need to foster and create environments where we are teaching students who may be less apt to talk or share how to “grow as talkers” and students who may be more talkative to be stronger listeners.  While I feel like this is already done some in my classroom, I could definitely teach it more explicitly especially at the beginning of the year. There were also two strategies discussed that I would like to use to better solve the problem of “the fisheye” in my future classrooms.  The first was the idea of using a laminated seating chart to mark off who has contributed to the class. Using this through the day to visually see patterns in participation as well as guide me as to which students need more support to become better listeners or talkers. Also, the use of icons or pictures to prompt student participation was something I hadn’t thought of before. By giving each student a picture of the day or having pictures under their chairs, I could provide a fun and exciting way to prompt student participation through the day.  

3 schools

Or offices 15 next year 

4th, 2nd, EIP k-3rd

6 principals

1 state

M. Ed and reading endorsement

These ideas will be useful as I think about my overthinking and move on. LOL

This article talked about rather than using  gradual release of responsibility learning style to teach students, we should start with them exploring the problem prior to teaching them. Letting them work through the problem and explore outcomes teaching them to think critically. When trying this approach for the first several times with students, they don’t know what to do. They are so used to us giving them a question and teaching them the answer. This puts the ball in their court and gives them ownership of their learning. I like to post anchor charts that say, “The answer is… “(it could be a number or a vocabulary word). The students have to come up with the question. They really struggle when they are first introduced to this activity but after a while, it becomes easier. They have to learn that there isn’t one right “question”. Their responses may be basic or some may be complex.