- Select a student with special needs and one ELL student from your classroom or from a case study. Specify both students’ reading level. Describe the special needs student’s learning disability or difficulty either from a clinical diagnosis or from your own observations.
- Write or select an assessment in your subject matter and create two alternate assessments using vocabulary from the appropriate reading level of the two students so that you are only assessing the concepts of the subject matter that you are teaching. If the student has an IEP (individualized education program), refer to it while creating the assessment.
- Write a brief summary of the changes you made to the original assessment, explaining reasons for change.
- Make a note of the following as applicable:
- Special provisions for the student within the test
- Special considerations while delivering or administering the test
- Peer review at least one other cohort member’s alternate assessments for an ELL student as well as a special needs student. Leave your feedback comments on your peer’s activity submission page.
The assessment that we would be taking a look at for this given assignment would be The Giver Assignment, where students in grade 7 of International School of Yangon were given an assignment where they had to analyze the book and complete the assignment where they were to imagine and construct a utopian community in the project where they had to design and construct the five main sectors of a given community/country: government, education, family, and employment & money. The assignment had been inspired by the book where a dystopian community with authoritarian government system had been depicted with various restrictions and hypocrisies such as euthanasia, infanticide and various systematic injustice in how the government is ran. And so the students had to imagine for themselves in this project where they had to write about various components within the country including government, education, family, and employment & money, trying to imagine for themselves what an ideal, utopian community would look like as opposed to the dystopian community that The Giver depicts.
Perhaps, given the nature of these two students (ELL student and student with cognitive or physical disabilities), I would be altering the assessment by perhaps changing the nature of the project by making it more first-dimensional by making the project analyze the dystopian elements of the world that The Giver depicts. So rather than having to take the next step to construct for themselves an utopian community, they would be given the choice to analyze the dystopian nature of the community depicted in The Giver as we have discussed in class rather than having them come up with themselves a completely new utopian community that they have to not only imagine for themselves but also write extensive paragraphs and reports concerning about. Yet, I would have this be optional, as the creative writing assignment might be easier for students to complete as opposed to the dystopian community analysis of the book, though would only require them to synthesize what had been taught during class. And so, the students would have the option, but perhaps what would be differentiated would be the assessment rubric that would be provided to the students where they would have lower expectations in order to score points on a given rubric, where their relative language drawbacks would be accounted for while making assessment on a given rubric. Perhaps their progress and growth would be prioritized over absolute standards and assessment scores, in order to provide incentives to their learning and growth. (The reasons would be supported by my own personal encounters with an ELL student I have had while instructing them on this The Giver Project while working as a personal tutor)
And as for the differentiated assessment for this given project, I was able to work with an ELL student where I was able to instruct her on the use of vocabulary and encourage her how she has all the ideas within her, but that her ideas have to be formulated into sentences and arguments that the student might feel less confident in doing so. Being a self-assertive, creative and bold young lady, I see great potential in her ability to learn and lead her peers, yet her relative shortage in English compared to her peers which put her in a state of disadvantage when it comes to articulating her ideas could come as a setback in her self-expression, and hence I try to encourage her as much as she can that she has all the answers within her, and she has those creative ideas yet her hesitation to make bold attempts might be hindering her from completing her assessment. Hence, when it comes with ELL students, not only grammatical help and help with articulation of ideas and formulating ideas into sentences but also teachers’ belief in the students’ ability to succeed and thrive in the school environment. Both emotional and technical help and support is necessary when it comes to ELL students.
For students with disabilities, due to my short experience in the field of teaching, I haven’t had direct encounters and first-hand experiences with any of the students with physical, or cognitive disabilities. And the schools and academies I have worked at did not have any students with physical or cognitive disabilities. I had had an interview to work as a shadow teacher for one of the students at school who had mild symptoms of dyslexia. And from the very limited experience I have had, I can only imagine that similar principles would apply for students with disabilities but only in a more extensive level where both emotional and cognitive support and help would be necessary especially as they may be encountering difficulties understanding the assignment and potentially could be encountering problems working together with other students. And hence the teachers’ role as both mentors and coaches in helping them with their cognitive abilities as well as their social, emotional well-being and success.
The Giver Utopian Community Project (This is the sample of what we worked on)
We read about a book named “The Giver” that discusses the dystopian community. A dystopian community is a community with problems like a country that is unfavourable. For this essay it is about the utopian community, which is a community with no problems or with increased freedom than dystopian. There are many components that make up the community, they are government, Education, Family, Employments, and Money.
Government
First of all, the government is the most important component that helps make up a good community. In my utopian community it is a democracy which means that people in the community are able to vote for a person that mostly fits to become part of the government of the country. In the community, people that are in parliament make laws by talking with each other and if citizens have dissatisfaction with the laws of the country then they will have a discussion about the laws to decide if they need to change the laws for the country. In the utopia community there are 6 laws; no litter or trash throwing on the street, no bullying, no criminals, no ( eating, using, harming ) animals and plants, clean streets, no throwing trash on flow. Role of the police is to watch out if citizens break the laws of the community and decrease the criminals and breaking laws by finding them if they had broken the law. Police decide with a lawyer if the criminal should go to jail or not depending if it’s a big crime or small crime.
Education
The second component that makes up the community is Education. Education is a first step for children to learn how the community works and how people need to treat other people like learning about courtesy. In the utopian community, children in this community only have to come to school on Saturday and Sunday. There could be good reasons and bad reasons for going to school on Saturday and Sunday only. A bad reason is if students come to school only Saturday and Sunday their school progress would be slower than others and students will get more homeworks for 5 days no school, and the good reason that 2 days for school is because sometimes student get stressed for going to school and if they come school only for 2 days and homeworks for 5 days it could be less stressful than 5 day school and homework.
In my utopian community there are 3 buildings for one school. They have elementary, middle school and high school. On Friday they don’t go to school but they have volunteering, and helping children that need help or provide food for them. On school days, Saturday and Sunday for lunch they provide food in the cafeteria for free and there are some sports matches from different schools for example Volleyball, Badminton, Soccer, and other more. There are some events like the Olympics like our school, International day when people wear their traditional clothes and share their cultures to other and Band concerts, when children practice their parts and play their parts on the stage and other more events that build relationships between different classes and to build school spirit.
Family
The third component that makes up the community is Family. Family is the most important thing in this community. In this community the family is controlled by both the mother and father. There would be 100 different apartments and two villas. A swimming pool would be in the town center. And there would be restaurants with international cuisine like you could find on an international day. The houses would be kept the same in order to have it be equal among different people living in the neighborhood.
Employment & Money
The Last component that makes up the community is Employment and Money. In this utopia community there are important jobs like lawyers, doctors, police, teachers, fire fighters, movie directors and businessmen. The lawyers would be defending the rights of people in the courts. They will first have to go to law school in order to become a lawyer. They will be going through an interview process at the court to be a certified lawyer. The doctors would be curing patients in the hospitals and they will be picked through the interviews and they will have to graduate from medical school and go through internship and residency in order to work at the hospital as a doctor. They will have to work in the hospital for a couple years to become a real doctor.
The teachers would be teaching students at school and they will be picked by the school through the interview process. The right teacher who has studied English, Math or what they are teaching in college or grad school would be needed for the job. And they would be chosen based on their knowledge and skill, and type of experiences they had in other schools. The people will be trained through online teaching programs and colleges that train teachers for schools. The fire fighters would be putting off the fire in emergency cases and they will have to go through many different practices of putting off the fire in many houses for them to become real firefighters working at the fire station. And they would have to be really brave and courageous in order to work at the fire station.
The businessmen would be running business and they will be going to business school or learning from their own parents how to do business. They will have to learn from books as well as other people in the companies in order to run a good business. The people who will make good businessmen will be people with best personal skills and relationships. In this utopia community people choose their job that mostly fits to themselves. They get trained with their job from 13 years old to 18 years old and they get kind of a test and teachers decide if they could do their job or they need to get trained more.
EduContents 