Strategies
Family Mustelidae
As my students and I discuss possible strategies and study skills throughout this unit it is important that I give them examples to fuel their creativity towards the conception of tactics and skills that work best for them; strategies that help to circumvent struggles rooted in their particular learning disability. One of my favorite ways to learn and to teach is through association and analogy. Relating complex information to students through concepts with which they are familiar is an effective way in which I have historically been able to aid in their understanding of complicated or confusing information.
One of the most important points I want to drive home in this unit is for students to realize that they have both strengths and deficits and in order to learn most effectively they should strive to exploit their strengths; self-determination skills that Ward and Koehler list as the ability to "evaluate their skills, and recognize their limits." 3 7 To illustrate this point to students an exercise in association is in order.
I have always loved animals, so I enjoy using them for analogies. In searching for a group of animals to use I discovered that the Mustelidae family, more commonly referred to as the weasel family would suit my needs quite nicely. The plan is to associate the various ways a student can learn something with the variety of ways three members of the Mustelidae family are able to feed themselves. All of the students in my class have brains, though they each work very differently and must be applied in various ways to attain their goal of learning; just as the three members of the Mustelidae family all have claws and teeth with which to eat, however go about using those attributes in very different ways in order to feed themselves, always capitalizing on and exploiting their strengths.
Enhydra lutris – The Sea Otter
Sea otters are the heaviest members of the weasel family weighing between 30 and 100 lbs. They can be found on the northern and eastern coasts of the North Pacific Ocean. This otter is a marine mammal and because of the form of its body and thickness of its fur, webbed hind paws, large lung capacity and sensitive whiskers it is well suited for life in the cold ocean. The sea otter does all of its hunting in the water, preying on sea urchins, abalone, mussels, clams, crabs, snails and a variety of other sea life. Sea otters are able to use their paws, which have a tough pad on them to grip slippery prey as well as rocks. Sea otters use these rocks to smash open shellfish for the meat inside. The sea otter would have an incredibly difficult time catching prey on land, as its spine, legs and tail have evolved for swimming. 3 8
Taxidea taxus – The American Badger
The badger has a compact and muscular body with short and powerful legs. Badgers have incredibly large fore claws, up to five cm in length, and are able to exploit this trait, along with its body shape to hunt for prey. The American badger's diet consists mainly of small rodents and other small animals that live in burrows. The badger exploits its powerful legs and long fore-claws to burrow into the homes of prey to pursue them. Some badgers, like the sea otter, use rocks in pursuit of a meal. They use rocks to plug up tunnel entrances trapping their prey while they enter the den from a different tunnel. Like their cousins the otters, these members of the weasel family efficiently use their attributes to navigate their environment and attain the goal of feeding themselves. 3 9
Martes martes – The European Pine Marten
This member of the Mustelidae family most closely resembles what one thinks of as a weasel out of our three selected members of the family. Weighing in at around three pounds the pine marten's semi retractable claws help it to the arboreal life of running around in the tree tops. They use this attribute along with their long bushy tail to help keep their balance while they hunt smaller tree mammals like squirrels as well as small birds and frogs. Pine martens will also eat insects, berries and bird eggs. 4 0
You would be hard pressed to get these animals to hunt in the same way as each other. I can't imagine a sea otter being expected to hunt grey squirrels in the tree tops or badgers asked to dive to the ocean floor to grab some abalone then smashing them open even though they use rocks to aid in their own capture of prey.
If smashing shellfish with rocks is a student's ability to synthesize reading, they should recognize and acknowledge it, take pride in it, and use it to their advantage. Exploit it. If one of this student's classmates were asked to do it the exact same way, their peers web-less and smooth padded paws may have more difficulty. Quick and accurate mental math could be a student's five cm long burrowing claws; she should be recognize this strength when she uses it to trap large equations and go for the jugular.
I recognize that this is not a perfect analogy, but it can be used as another beneficial tool in helping students understand that they aren't all the same and the way they are asked to learn within the constraints of our current educational setup may be more difficult for them than others that have different strengths and deficits. One of the main points I want students to take from this unit is pride in their individuality, and in the school setting their strengths, deficits and learning disabilities are part of who they are. I want this unit to be used to help students fortify themselves with strategies to overcome these things and continue the march towards self-dependence.
Student Questioning and the Right Question Institute
The overarching theme of this unit has to do with student questioning; the majority of this questioning aimed at the students themselves and their disabilities. As they ask and answer these questions about themselves my hope is that through this self-knowledge they will begin to become self-determined learners and both advocate for their needs as well as participate and ask questions in class.
To help students learn to ask questions more readily and effectively I looked to a group called the Right Questions Institute, who operate out of Harvard. This group of teachers worked for years putting together a protocol for student questioning. This protocol stimulates student questioning by simultaneously forcing students to brainstorm any question they can think of without fear of being answered or disputed with learning about what the difference is between an open-ended and closed-ended questions and in what situations they are best put to use. With all of the self-discovery that will be happening, my thought is that this protocol will assist students in asking questions they may be too timid to ask otherwise. This set protocol will also serve as a useful learning strategy for students to use when they are stuck in a writing project or need to brainstorm for something. The protocol is as follows:
1. Question Formulation Technique
Produce Your Questions
Four essential rules for producing your own questions:
• Ask as many questions as you can.
• Do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer the questions.
• Write down every question exactly as it is stated.
• Change any statement into a question.
Improve Your Questions
• Categorize the questions as closed- or open-ended.
• Name the advantages and disadvantages of each type of question.
• Change questions from one type to another.
Prioritize the Questions
• Choose your three most important questions.
• Why did you choose these three as the most important?
Next Steps
• How are you going to use your questions? 4 1
My choice in using this technique is a calculated one. When faced with students who don't ask questions about themselves, and because of this lack of self-knowledge have a hard time speaking up in class or asking questions in class I need to look towards a solution. My need, as a teacher of these students, is a way in which to assist students in practicing this questioning until it becomes second nature. The goal of the question formulation technique as written by Rothstein and Santana is for students to "think more deeply about their questions, refine them, and prioritize their use." 4 2
Classroom Activities
It is difficult to know where to start when thinking about introducing students to the idea of self-determination. Upon contemplating which strategy would present the information students need in a logical order, I came across a model for self-determination as devised by Field and Hoffman. They created this model, which leads students toward self-determination, by gathering useful lessons and units over a three year period. They then synthesized this research to create a model of how self-determination is achieved. They found that the process begins with students learning to know and value themselves. Using the skills they gain during this first step, students begin a planning phase, followed by student action based upon this plan. The last step is a synthesis of the outcome; asking students to learn from their experiences and use this information to circle back and begin the process all over again. The thought is that each time students complete the cycle they will better know themselves, their strengths, struggles, preferences and accept and value these traits. 4 3
Introduction Lesson
With this format in mind I think it is of the utmost importance to start from the beginning. I envision the first lesson being an exercise in the exploration of their disabilities, reading material that students very likely have little to no knowledge of. Using the Question Formulation Technique teachers should write a prompt on the board. It should be neither too vague nor too specific. It may take multiple trials to come up with a prompt that elicits the responses and reactions teachers are hoping for. The prompt I plan to use is: "Every student in the room has a learning disability." Students will then be asked to follow the protocol for asking questions about the prompt. This should happen in groups of any size the teacher chooses; my students will complete it in groups of three.
After this questioning session the teacher will introduce an activity to the students. This activity will involve creating small sculptures out of Sculpey; a colorful, malleable, and bakeable clay. Students will be asked to use this clay to create a small totem like sculpture that represents their disability and what they and others think about it. While students are modeling the teacher will facilitate a discussion about student disabilities based on the questions asked in the previous exercise.
This will be an informal question and answer, letting the students drive the conversation towards topics within the educational disability realm with which they are most curious. Students will be encouraged to weigh in and answer the questions of their peers when they have personal knowledge of the topic in question. The teacher will have information about each disability on hand with which to disseminate to students upon their request. These information sheets will have basic information about the disabilities, how they function, possible causes, effects, and effective strategies.
When students have created their small sculpture the teacher will write the word "disability" on the board. A discussion about the word disability will commence. I personally plan to break the word down and talk about how the broken down parts of the word make it sound like the inability or lack of ability to do something; in the case of my students, it is an inability to learn. The teacher should then inquire whether any of the students have learned in the past or are currently able to learn things. When the students confirm that they are in fact able to learn they will be prompted to think of a more suitable term the class can use to refer to their struggles.
When a suitable and appropriate term is agreed upon the students will be prompted by the teacher to destroy their "disabled" totem sculpture. They can throw it against the wall, stomp on it, tear it up or whatever they want. This was a representation of them as someone with a disability; someone unable to learn, who didn't have control over their education. Students can use this destruction to let out some of the frustration they feel towards their disability as well as the judgment that may be passed upon them by others. Please do require students to keep all the pieces of this sculpture and not get too carried away with the destruction.
From this point on teachers will refer to learning disabilities as whatever that class deemed a suitable replacement. The hope is to lead students towards something that has more hope than the word disability, something that represents the positive aspects of a struggle. After discussing what this looks like and what this means to them as students with this struggle ask students to reform their totem sculpture out of the ruins of their disability, but have it now represent this new term and their new outlook on how to progress.
I envision, in the case of my students, attaching a small screw with an eye-hole in the tops of these sculptures and tying a string through the eye-hole. I then plan to hang some sort of netting from the ceiling in the corner of the room over my desk and after the sculptures have been baked and harden, here they will all hang. We will discuss as a class that these will stay in the classroom until students graduate, but that they can be borrowed and used by students when they are going through stressful or anxious times such as an IEP meeting or big test. The idea is that these will represent strength through struggle and that students will use them as a reminder of who they are. As students advance in their self-dependence this sculpture will too evolve and advance their perception of themselves.
Weasels!
Staying in this vein of self-discovery I feel that more exploration into student attributes and skills is a very important step. It is important not only for students to recognize these attributes and skills but to understand how they relate to their struggles and how they can use them to compensate for things that are more difficult. In short, how they can exploit their strengths to make their educational lives easier.
To explore and illustrate this concept I plan to make a connection between these strengths and deficits, and the strengths and deficits of other creatures. This lesson will begin like the others; with a prompt. Teachers again have creative reign over this decision and my prompt will more than likely evolve as I have practice with the question protocol. My prompt will be: "Sea otters, badgers, and pine marten all use their claws and teeth to catch and eat prey." My hope is that this will elicit questions about the difference between the ways in which these animals go about using their claws and teeth to eat.
In groups of three students will use a computer to look up the similarities and differences between the ways that these creatures use these fangs and these claws to catch and eat their prey. This information will be written into a graphic organizer with three intersecting circles. Students should be given a time limit; I plan to give my students 15 to 20 minutes. As a class students will then share out what they found. When this portion of the lesson is over, students will be asked about the strategies they use when learning and if the people in their group all learn the same way and employ the same strategies. After a discussion students will be prompted to use another graphic organizer with the three names of the group members in place of the three animals. Instead of comparing hunting techniques however, students will compare learning techniques.
Students will be given another 15 to 20 minutes to complete this new graphic organizer. After the time is up students and teacher will all come back together and share their findings. When students have shared their findings and discoveries they will each be given a skill inventory or "toolkit" graphic organizer that will stay in the classroom in their personal folders. On the graphic organizers the students will be prompted to write a few of the strategies they discovered which will represent the first "tools" in these personal attribute/skill inventories that will serve as a reminder to them that they have skills which can be put to use and even exploited.
Wogs!
As an exciting extension of the aforementioned activity; one that I hope will really drive the point home: students will be constructing creatures called Wogs that will have to perform a variety of tasks.
The lesson will again begin with a prompt: "Every thing has attributes and we can compare those attributes to predict which thing will be better at a task." Again, this prompt is malleable. After students have gone through the protocol we will discuss their findings. The teacher will pose questions to students about whether they can predict who will be more successful in school based on the way students study and learn. Questions about all types of competition can also be used. What attributes make the best basketball player? The best pilot?
After this discussion the teacher will introduce students to the Wog. The Wog is a creature that has to do a variety of tasks but has not been made yet. Students will divide into groups of two or three. For each group there will be a bag containing the components of a Wog. Each student group will select a bag of Wog parts. After making their selection they will be able to take out the components and survey them. After discussing their initial thoughts and questions, the first Wog task will be revealed: a race down a ramp.
Wogs can be made up of anything you have around, although each piece you put in a kit must also be in the others, it must also differ in some way, such as size or shape. For example if you put the cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper in one set then you must put a portion of a cardboard tube in another and a paper towel tube in yet another. This will illustrate that like the animals we looked at previously, which all had claws, though they looked different and were used in different ways, so to do all Wogs have differing cardboard paper-rolls. Teachers must also come up with a fixed amount of whatever fastening agent they plan to use, whether it be glue or tape or staples, each group must have the same amount.
Now that students know what their Wogs will be doing, teachers should invite them to look at the other teams' Wog parts for a few minutes. Next, the teacher will pose questions to students about which Wog they think will likely win and why. Students should be asked which parts they feel will be the best attributes for this task, and any other questions that will promote their thinking of how attributes are exploited to complete a task. Students will then be given a significant portion of the class period to construct their Wog, but will be given a strict end time.
When students have completed their Wogs and the time is up, the race shall commence. It can be a single race or the best of a certain number of races. After the race(s) student will be asked to come back and share-out what they saw. Specific emphasis should be placed upon whether their predictions were correct about which Wog they thought would win. My hypothesis (and hope) is that many of their guesses will be wrong, and the initial "good" parts made much less difference in the winning than the exploit of certain parts used in a creative way. The connection between these attributes and the ones they mentioned earlier about what styles and attributes make up the ideal learner should be compared.
This lesson is another attempt to help students realize that they have many attributes in which they can exploit to overcome their deficits and become the learners they want to be. This lesson could be extended and students could use the same bag of parts to see who can create a Wog that can hold the most cargo while floating in water, or a Wog that has been saddled with transporting the last of a species (an egg) from outer space to earth and must protect the baby species when landing (being dropped from increasing heights). Whatever fun activity is chosen the emphasis should be put on the examination of perceived attributes and short-comings of these Wogs and the eventual outcome of whatever contest is decided upon.
There will no doubt be many specific questions about certain aspects of learning disabilities, and more time can be devoted to the exploration of each disability. There are wonderful books for students of all ages, both fictional and non-fictional that explore the lives of young people with learning disabilities. Other activities that will help to foster this journey are goal setting activities, learning style inventories and guest speakers who have become successful in spite of their disability. There are many things a teacher can do to help students with disabilities on the road towards realizing self-determination and having an open dialogue throughout the process is essential.
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