Introduction
Declarationof Independence
Teachers andparent-teachers can’t go it alone. They need good materials to assist them.With good materials students will work independently and will persist at theirwork. With good materials your teaching task is manageable.
It isvirtually impossible to individualize instruction without individualizedlearning materials. Having students work on their own is a hallmark ofindividualized instruction.
Section Iprovides background. Section II makes suggestions about how teachers can bestmanage students’ independent work. Section III provides lists of availableindependent-learning materials. Section IV is a list of the publishers referredin Section III.
Plan:
Section I
1. Background:Principles of Teaching Two Kinds of Assignments
2. AssignedSchool Work: Part of a Continuum?
3. Mastery: IsIt Practical?
4. SchoolWork: Do Students See It as Purposeful?
5. AskingStudents Questions
6. Whole ClassInstruction: Is It Out of Date?
Section II
1. Strategiesfor Managing Students’ Independent Work
2. ChoosingWork According to the Curriculum
3. Test Often,Test Widely
4. Keeping aStudious Classroom
5. ObtainingStudent Commitment to Independent Work
6. Providingfor Student Management of Classroom Materials
7. ChoosingLearning Materials for the Independent Learner:
8. Using TradeBooks
9. Using Workbooks/Kits/Centers
10. Using software
11. Using theInternet/On-line Services
12. SendingIndependent-Study Work Home
Section III
1. LearningMaterials for Independent Learners
2. Learning toUse Computers/Using Computers
3. ForeignLanguages
4. LanguageArts/Reading/Literature
5. Library/Work/StudySkills/Research
6. Logic/CriticalThinking/Creative Thinking/Art/Interpersonal Skills/Across the Curriculum
7. Mathematics
8. Science/Health/SocialStudies/Environment
INDEPENDENT-STUDYCOURSES
1. Independent-StudyCourses By Correspondence
2. Courses onthe Internet/On-Line
3. InternetResources for Students
Section IV
1. List ofPublishers
2. Teachersgrades 5-12: willing to try out my reading comprehension tests?
3. TestDirections
SectionI
1.Background: Principles of Teaching. Two Kinds of Assignments
Teachers makeboth closed and open assignments.
Closedassignments are a follow-up of material taught. Often, they are practice. Allstudents do the work of the assignment in the same way. Examples of closedassignments are:
– Do allthe calculations on page 120 of the book.
– Writethe transcription twenty times as carefully as possible.
– Memorizethe poem on page 50.
Openassignments provide for student diversity. Examples of open assignments are:
— Write a halfpage about your weekend.
— Find threenew words in the dictionary and write sentences using them.
— Continueworking in your workbook.
Using thetechniques taught to the whole class, draw a picture with crayons illustratingthe season. Although closed assignments are necessary for the sake of mastery,they do present problems:
— Studentsvary in how long they take to complete an assignment. Take an example. Theteacher teaches a whole-class handwriting lesson on forming the capital B.Posture, hand position, and how the pencil is held are all taught in thelesson. The students are then given an assignment to practice the formation ofthe capital B. The fast students get the work done in short order. The slowerstudents complete only part of the assignment.
What should bedone with the students that finish the work quickly?
Should thelaggards be required to complete the assignment?
Thisfrustrating situation exists every day in every classroom in the world. Thereis no excellent solution. However, the students are least frustrated when thework seems easy to them. Rather than gearing the assignment for the averagestudent, the teacher can gear the assignment for the below average. Studentswho complete the work quickly can turn to open assignments.
The effect ofthis is that the slowest students work on closed assignments most of the time,while the fastest students work on open assignments most of the time.
2.Assigned School Work: Part of a Continuum?
The greatthing about a textbook, workbook, or kit is that is continuous — the studentcan see that he or she is progressing systematically. Each assignment relatesto what came before and what will come ahead. Students see the educationalpurpose of textbooks, workbooks, and kits.
Teachers whoteach from a textbook have the problem solved of how to organize work so thatit is continuous.
There is aproblem in the more open style of teaching found often in elementary schools.Usually, textbooks are used in some subjects, such as math and spelling.Occasionally, social studies, science, language, and health textbooks are used.However, when a decision has been made not to use a textbook as the organizingstructure for a school subject, what can a teacher do to make the workcontinuous and to have students see it that way?
One techniqueis to use a syllabus and to share it with students.
Anothertechnique is to use contracts. The assignments are all listed together, and thestudent progresses from one to the next. Either the student or the teacher putsinitials next to each assignment as it is completed. Contracts are most oftenused in assigning «extra work.»
Anothertechnique is for the teacher to select an educational objective from the«scope and sequence» curriculum guide and to pursue it for a stretchof days or weeks. The educational objective is displayed in the classroom andis referred to by the teacher as the unit or task underway.
Studentsbenefit from seeing their progress. When handwriting exercises, spelling tests,creative writing, and math tests are saved in folders or notebooks, studentscan see their progress over time.
When anotebook containing new vocabulary words or a notebook containing new sightwords is kept, students can review the words they have learned and see theirprogress.
3.Mastery: Is It Practical?
Mastery is thegoal of all teaching. In a classroom there is a special problem: the studentsvary so much in knowledge and abilities that it is impractical to expect allstudents to master the material taught.
Even in firstgrade not every student masters the material for the grade. When it was commonpractice to «hold back» students, many students failed first grade.Although nowadays few students are held back in first grade, nevertheless notall students master the material for the grade.
As studentsgrow older, the gap in knowledge and abilities among them widens, and gettingall students to learn the basic materials for the grade or course becomes evenmore difficult than it was in the early grades.
Shouldteachers throw up their hands and give up on the slower learners? This is amistake that some teachers make.
Slowerlearners respond to conscientious instruction. There are several strategiesthat teachers employ:
1) The teacherteaches a single student or a small group during class time or after school.
2) A fasterstudent is assigned to help a slower student.
3) The teacherfinds special instructional materials for slower students to work onindependently either during school time or at home.
4) The teacherenlists the parents to teach the child at home using instructional materialssupplied by the teacher.
5) Whenmastery is sought, as it should be, the importance of testing is readilyapparent. With test results in hand, both teacher and student can see how wellthe student has learned, and plans for next steps can be made.
4.School Work: Do Students See It as Purposeful?
Can anyoneargue with the idea that students should feel that their school work ismeaningful/purposeful/ important? Everyone recognizes that they should see itthat way. Nevertheless, it is commonplace in classrooms for students to work onassignments day after day just because the teacher says to. These students donot see the long-range purposes, such as these, provided as examples:
In firstgrade, learning sums to 12, recognizing a basic list of words, knowing theparts of our bodies, etc.
In fifthgrade, learning meaningful long division with decimals, understanding themeaning of a paragraph, understanding the contributions of ancient Bactria andKhorezm to our culture, etc.
When studentsdo not see their school work as meaningful/purposeful/important, they rely onthe teacher to urge them to work. When they do see their school work as meaningful/purposeful/important,they are self-reliant — they learn for themselves.
What can ateacher do to make school work purposeful to students?
1) Talk up thegoals and objectives of a course or unit of study or school subject at thebeginning of the year and periodically as appropriate — before work is begun.
2) Letstudents know, through pre-testing and other means, what they don’t know sothat, as they progress, they have a sense of learning and of having learned.
3) Keepfolders of work completed so that they can see their progress.
Classinstruction is the norm virtually everywhere, even though students varyenormously in their abilities and knowledge. Beginning reading is taught inkindergarten and first grade, long division with decimals is taught in fifthgrade, Uzbekistan government and law is taught in ninth grade, and physics istaught in eleventh and twelfth grades.
Why is thisso? Anyone who has taught a class knows the answer.
It is beyondthe capacity of any one teacher to teach a whole class of students each at hisor her own learning edge. Can you imagine teaching the intricacies of longdivision by decimals one student at a time?
Much importantinformation would remain untaught if there were no standard curriculum grade bygrade.
Many studentsbenefit from learning in the company of other students — together they holddiscussions, plan and present programs, etc.
However, thereis still room for individuals’ needs and interests. Advanced students are givenextra projects and assignments, sometimes as a group, while slower students aregiven make-up assignments or are put on a separate track with their ownworkbook. Help is enlisted from home.
What aboutgrades? No one has learned how to prevent slower children from comparingthemselves unfavorably with advanced children. However, teachers don’t have toreinforce these unfavorable comparisons by a harsh grading system. Parents(particularly, those of the most able children?) will probably always pressureschools to parcel out the A’s and the F’s, but teachers can soften this harshsystem:
– Reporthome the results of standardized tests.
– Gradefor student effort and application.
– Broadenthe curriculum to include special projects, and include the results in reportshome.
Some parents,recognizing the enormous individual differences among students and seeing theharm done by unfavorable comparisons, have chosen to educate their children athome, where work can be given at students’ learning edge. They have made thedecision that individualized instruction is more important than interactionwith peers at school.
5.Asking Students Questions
There are twoparts to any school’s curriculum — one, the curriculum prescribed by theschool, and the other, the curriculum determined by the teacher.
The prescribedcurriculum is often laid out in manuals or guides written by committees ofteachers and principals, either at the school system level or the state level.These manuals or guides list learnings and suggested means of achieving them bygrade level. The prescribed curriculum goes hand in hand with textbooks. Asstudents move upward grade by grade, the textbook plays a greater and greaterrole, until in secondary school it takes a commanding place.
The partplayed by teacher-determined curriculum is considerable, particularly in theelementary years, before the advent of courses. This is to say that teachershave much latitude in what to teach. There is no teacher who only covers whatis in the textbook or what is in the curriculum guide. One reason for this isthat the teacher is responsible for making the learnings relevant to dailyliving. Our fast-changing world demands that new developments in any field aretaken into account. Our times are so complicated that students are alwayschallenged to understand and make sense of their lives, and they challenge theteacher to help them.
Another reasonfor the large part played by teacher-determined curriculum is the greatvariation among students, not only in knowledge and ability but also ininterests and world-view. Teachers who test often and test widely see needsaplenty and feel a responsibility for accommodating them. It is in thisenvironment that a variety of learning materials becomes so important.
6.Whole Class Instruction: Is It Out of Date?
Assessment ofstudents’ knowledge and abilities is the teacher’s absolutely best educationaltool. It is so powerful because it is an inspiration to the teacher’screativity. When the teacher sees where students’ educational needs lie, his orher mind begins to work on what to do about them. An analogy with a politicianis in order: the politician who goes out to meet and talk with the peoplelearns what the needs are and then thinks up strategies for meeting them; thepolitician who lacks the common touch, on the other hand, generates ideas thatare often inappropriate. Similarly, the teacher who assesses students’knowledge and abilities begins to think out appropriate educational strategies,whereas, with the ivory tower teacher, there is often a mismatch between whatis taught and what is appropriate for the students. When tests are administeredin advance of teaching, the teacher sees where the needs lie, and the studentsrealize that there is much to learn — the test results are an inspiration tostudent humility.
Assessmenthelps prevent the teacher from teaching over the heads of the students. Whenthe teacher knows that a student is unsure about step 1, there is no point ingoing on to step 2. For example, if a student doesn’t understand subject andpredicate, there is no point in teaching sentence diagramming; if a studentcan’t multiply or subtract, there is no point in teaching long division.
Many classroomtests come from textbooks. Math textbooks provide many tests, as do some basalreading series.
Some of thebest assessments are the simplest. For example, a teacher’s dictating aparagraph, where the students are required to write down what is dictated, isvery simple but very effective. Finding a paragraph to dictate is no problem,and student shortcomings in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, andhandwriting are immediately apparent to the teacher.
Excellentresources are now available for finding tests. Buros Mental MeasurementsYearbook and Buros Tests in Print have for many years been an excellentresource, and now, in addition, there is the Internet[1]accesses the Test Locator. Responding to the «Enter a database query»in the Test Locator brings up a list of tests for almost any school subject ortopic.
EducationalTesting Service publishes its own catalog of tests available from manypublishers called «ETS Test Collection Catalog»[2](Oryx Press).
In addition toassessing students’ knowledge and attitudes before a study begins, manyteachers assess students’ interests as the study progresses. They recognizeindividual differences among students and make room in a study for students togo off on their own in some area. For example, in a study of Uzbekistanstudents might be asked to express interest in pursuing knowledge of Uzbekauthors, Uzbek warriors, Uzbek law, Uzbek architecture, Uzbek cities, or Uzbekregions, among other topics. Students would then go off on their own and comeup with a true-false test or a short report on their topic to share with theclass.
The content ofmost classroom assessment is specific to the curriculum of the grade or classbeing taught. For example, if a unit is to be taught on Uzbekistan, the teacherwill make a list of the vocabulary words to be taught in the unit, geographyconcepts, famous Uzbeks, wars, and so on, and will then test the students ontheir knowledge. The answers are usually open-ended: who was Abdulla Kahhor?Who is Abdulla Oripov? What is the name of the sea west of the Republic? Theresults tell the teacher — and the students — what the students don’t know;implied in the results are what the students need to know. Teacher and studentsare then ready to embark on the study.
There areknowledge, skills, and attitudes that are the responsibility of all teachersand all students, and the teacher will do well to assess this knowledge andthese skills and attitudes. There was a time in American education when a highschool social studies teacher, for example, would say that the teaching ofpunctuation and capitalization was the responsibility of the English teacher,not the social studies teacher. The team approach in secondary schools has doneaway with this compartmentalization, so that now during team meetings teacherscooperatively discuss educational needs and then plan strategies to meet them.
Similarly, allteachers take responsibility for students’ being able to speak correctly, towrite good English, to expand vocabulary, to add and subtract, to observe goodhealth habits, to be safe, to have good attitudes toward school, and to learnabout current events. The day of sending a student back a grade to learnsomething is, for the most part, a thing of the past.
Therefore, inaddition to teachers’ assessing students’ knowledge of specific grade levelcurriculum or subject matter,it comes within the purview of most teachers toassess students’ English proficiency, understandings about health and safety, attitudestoward school, and knowledge of current events. Students come to see how muchthere is to learn and share in developing educational strategies.
The followingtests, drawn from the Test Locator, are illustrative of tests that many or mostteachers can use profitably, since the knowledge, skills, and attitudes thatthey test are the responsibility of many or most teachers.
ChapterII
1.Strategies for Managing Students’ Independent Work
Generalinformation
Check Up Testsin Science. These tests for ages 10-11 test children’s ability to make reasonedjudgments from observations of the material that is presented. Students recordtheir answers in words, diagrams, charts, and graphs. The material is based onthe scientific background that an average 10-11 year old will have built upfrom experience. There are 22 tests with 40 answers each. The tests areavailable from Macmillan Education Ltd., Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire,RG21 2XS, England.
Check Up Testsin General Knowledge. These tests for ages 10-11 are designed to be used as ageneral education resource. Subject matter includes literature, science andnatural history, vocabulary, geography and history, sport, civics, music andthe arts, mathematics, and religious education. There are 22 tests, each takingabout 30 minutes.
Check Up Testsin Workskills. These tests for ages 10-11 include reference skills,comprehension skills involving assimilating information so that instructionscan be followed, and interpreting data and presenting answers in visual form.There are 22 tests, each taking about 40 minutes.
KnowledgeMaster. This pool or library of 100,000 high school test items is available foreither Windows or Macintosh. Subsets for junior high and elementary teachersare available. Items can be selected by topic and/or by level of difficulty.Covers American history, government, world history, geography, economics, law,current events, mathematics, geometry, word problems, biology, health,psychology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, geology, oceanography,building trades, sports, fine arts, English, spelling, vocabulary, literature,mythology, Shakespeare, social studies, life science, earth science, andphysical science. A separate short series is produced for «KnowledgeBowl»-type competitions. New sets of secure questions for local, regionalor state competitions are produced yearly. Available from Academic Hallmarks,P.O. Box 998, Durango, CO 81302 (800-321-9218) (http:// www.greatauk.com).
DiagnosticTest of Library Skills. This test for grades 5-9 evaluates students’ knowledgeof library skills in these areas: title page; table of contents; card catalog;library arrangement; and reference books. All items are multiple choice.Available in both paper-and-pencil version and computer version. Available fromLearnco, Inc., Box L, Exeter, NH 03833.
Englishproficiency and reading
PrimaryReading Survey Tests. Level AA for grade 1 is a word recognition test. Level BBfor grade 2 tests both word knowledge and comprehension. Levels A-D are forgrades 3-6. These tests are available from the Australian Council forEducational Research, P.O. Box 210, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia 3122.
ACER WordKnowledge Test. This test for grades 9-11 measures knowledge of word meanings.It may be used by teachers as a screening test to assess vocabulary knowledgeand verbal skills. The test is available from the Australian Council forEducational Research, P.O. Box 210, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia 3122.
Test of WordKnowledge. This test is designed to assess a student’s skill in reception andexpression of semantics, which is the meaning system of language. They can beused to evaluate and identify students who may be having difficulty withsemantics. The test probes word knowledge on three levels: ability to matchspoken words with referents and to name pictured referents; knowledge of worddefinitions and opposites and synonyms; and metalinguistic aspects of wordknowledge related to multiple meanings and uses, figurative usage, and use oftransition words and conjunctions. Norms are provided for students from 5 to 17years of age. Available from the Psychological Corporation, 555 Academic Court,San Antonio, TX 78204-0952.
Attitudes toSchool
Attitudes toSchool Inventory. This test was developed to measure children’s affective andcognitive attitudes toward school. Conclusions can be drawn about children’senthusiasm for school, enthusiasm for a particular class in school, dislike ofdisruptive behavior, relationships with teachers, academic self- concept,social adjustment to school, and achievement orientation. Available from KevinMarjoribanks, University of Adelaide, GPO Box 498, Adelaide, South Australia5001.
Health
Know Your BodyHealth Survey. Three tests are available: grades 1-2, grade 3, and grades 4-6.The questions cover nutrition, exercise, safety, personal physical facts, andeating habits. The survey takes 30- 45 minutes. Available from Tests inMicrofiche, Test Collection, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ 08541.
Knowledge Testin Nutrition. A test for each grade level 1-6 is available. Concepts assessedare a variety of foods, vegetables, dental health, and snacking. Available fromTests in Microfiche, Test Collection, Educational Testing Service, Princeton,NJ 08541.
QuicktestsAcross the Curriculum
An interestingseries of tests is published by Globe/Fearon called Quicktests Across theCurriculum. Each book offers 50 reproducible tests. They are designed forgrades 6-12 (reading level: 4-5). These are the test books in this series:
AmericanGovernment Quicktests
AppliedMathematics Quicktests
EnglishReading and Writing Quicktests
FundamentalEnglish Quicktests
FundamentalMathematics Quicktests
GeneralScience Quicktests
InterpretingLiterature Quicktests
Life Scienceand Health Quicktests
United StatesHistory and Geography Quicktests
World Historyand Geography Quicktests
Searching theInternet
A search inthe Internet book store Amazon can yield interesting finds. For example,Quicktests (see above) are listed there.
www.amazon.com
A generalsearch in Google or one of the other search engines can also yield results. Forexample, entering «tests of knowledge» or «quiz» along withthe subject-matter area can yield many interesting tests.
The followingare illustrative of tests available from the Internet:
FunBrain QuizLab — many home-made quizzes, classified by grade level and by subject:
www.funbrain.com
OhioProficiency Tests:
Ohio PracticeTest
Sample testsfrom Missouri Elementary Mathematics Contest:
Practice forMissouri Elementary Mathematics Contest
Elementaryscience practice test:
Elementaryscience practice test
Virginia Standardof Learning sample tests:
Virginiapractice tests
A mathproblems generator is available at
Math problemsgenerator
Navigate toHome Page «Students Can Learn On Their Own» — www.teacherneedhelp.com/ students/
2.Choosing Work According to the Curriculum
Assessment ofstudents’ knowledge and abilities is the teacher’s absolutely best educationaltool. It is so powerful because it is an inspiration to the teacher’screativity. When the teacher sees where students’ educational needs lie, his orher mind begins to work on what to do about them. An analogy with a politicianis in order: the politician who goes out to meet and talk with the peoplelearns what the needs are and then thinks up strategies for meeting them; thepolitician who lacks the common touch, on the other hand, generates ideas thatare often inappropriate. Similarly, the teacher who assesses students’knowledge and abilities begins to think out appropriate educational strategies,whereas, with the ivory tower teacher, there is often a mismatch between whatis taught and what is appropriate for the students. When tests are administeredin advance of teaching, the teacher sees where the needs lie, and the studentsrealize that there is much to learn — the test results are an inspiration tostudent humility.
Assessmenthelps prevent the teacher from teaching over the heads of the students. Whenthe teacher knows that a student is unsure about step 1, there is no point ingoing on to step 2. For example, if a student doesn’t understand subject andpredicate, there is no point in teaching sentence diagramming; if a studentcan’t multiply or subtract, there is no point in teaching long division.
Many classroomtests come from textbooks. Math textbooks provide many tests, as do some basal readingseries.
Some of thebest assessments are the simplest. For example, a teacher’s dictating aparagraph, where the students are required to write down what is dictated, isvery simple but very effective. Finding a paragraph to dictate is no problem, andstudent shortcomings in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and handwritingare immediately apparent to the teacher[3].
In addition toassessing students’ knowledge and attitudes before a study begins, manyteachers assess students’ interests as the study progresses. They recognizeindividual differences among students and make room in a study for students togo off on their own in some area. For example, in a study of Rome studentsmight be asked to express interest in pursuing knowledge of Roman authors,Roman warriors, Roman law, Roman architecture, Roman cities, or Roman colonies,among other topics. Students would then go off on their own and come up with atrue-false test or a short report on their topic to share with the class.
The content ofmost classroom assessment is specific to the curriculum of the grade or classbeing taught. For example, if a unit is to be taught on Rome, the teacher willmake a list of the vocabulary words to be taught in the unit, geographyconcepts, famous Romans, wars, and so on, and will then test the students ontheir knowledge. The answers are usually open-ended: who was Tacitus? Who wasCicero? What is the name of the sea east of Italy? The results tell the teacher- and the students — what the students don’t know; implied in the results arewhat the students need to know. Teacher and students are then ready to embarkon the study.
There areknowledge, skills, and attitudes that are the responsibility of all teachersand all students, and the teacher will do well to assess this knowledge andthese skills and attitudes. There was a time in American education when a highschool social studies teacher, for example, would say that the teaching ofpunctuation and capitalization was the responsibility of the English teacher,not the social studies teacher. The team approach in secondary schools has doneaway with this compartmentalization, so that now during team meetings teachers cooperativelydiscuss educational needs and then plan strategies to meet them.
Similarly, allteachers take responsibility for students’ being able to speak correctly, towrite good English, to expand vocabulary, to add and subtract, to observe goodhealth habits, to be safe, to have good attitudes toward school, and to learnabout current events. The day of sending a student back a grade to learnsomething is, for the most part, a thing of the past.
Therefore, inaddition to teachers’ assessing students’ knowledge of specific grade levelcurriculum or subject matter,it comes within the purview of most teachers toassess students’ English proficiency, understandings about health and safety,attitudes toward school, and knowledge of current events. Students come to seehow much there is to learn and share in developing educational strategies.
4.Keeping a Studious Classroom
Over the doorin one studious classroom is a sign reading, «Quiet, please. Learningunderway.» Another classroom has a poster that says, «You are here towork.» All the students not with the teacher are working independently.One student is writing an unknown word on the whiteboard, where the headingreads, «New vocabulary words.» Later, the class will discuss the word,and each student will enter the word with its meaning in a notebook. On acorner of the whiteboard are the assignments for the day; separately, there arethe assignments for the week — «Write one half page on your pet.»«Find information (no more than half a page) on Apaches.» «Writea number problem requiring division for the class to solve.» «Lookthrough the dictionary for a spelling word ending in ‘tion’.» Students arebusily engaged in completing these assignments. Several students are finding informationon Apaches, a current class topic; one student is using an encyclopedia;another is in the Internet. The student in the Internet has found someresources to write away for. Other students are working on worksheets and workfrom kits.
The teacher isnot harassed. Students in this classroom are eager to produce and to have theirwork checked and sometimes expect more of the teacher than one person can do;consequently, the teacher limits his or her commitment: weekly writtenassignments must be no more than a page, monthly reports must be no more thantwo pages, etc.
Discipline inthe studious classroom is a matter, first, of convincing the students of theirignorance. When a student misbehaves, the teacher calls out, «Who was thefourth president of the United States?» If the student answers,«James Madison,» the teacher calls out, «What is the capital ofHungary?» The wrong answer is followed by a short lecture on how much thestudent has to learn and how short is the time for learning. Students in thisclassroom are not time wasters because they realize how much there is to learn.
Discipline inthe studious classroom is also a matter of liking to learn. Students areconvinced not only of their ignorance but also of the desirability ofovercoming it. They diligently write vocabulary and spelling words in theirnotebooks. They use the dictionary, the encyclopedia, and other referencebooks. Each student keeps a notebook of half-page comments about books read.
Much teachertime is spent at the teacher’s desk with a student. The teacher reads andcorrects written assignments with the student. Math assignments are checkedindividually. Workbook pages are corrected. Since the teacher’s time isvaluable, work with any one student is limited to a few minutes; however, a fewminutes devoted to overcoming a student’s specific weaknesses or mistakes canbe more valuable than much full-class instruction.
This is not tosay that full-class instruction does not exist in the studious classroom. Theteacher introduces new topics, explains principles and rules, such as in spokenand written language or math, and hears student reports. However, in generalthe students are working on their own.
At one time inthe development of schooling it was thought that students should be generallysocial. Since many students would rather talk than learn, the consequence of asocial classroom was much talk and little learning. Students have plenty oftime for socializing outside of the classroom. The purpose of being in schoolis to learn. A poster in a classroom says, «There is a place forsocializing. This is not it.» Fortunately, learning can be interesting,and students who would rather talk can become absorbed in their work. Althoughbeing a student in the studious classroom is work, the rewards of this work aregreat.
Periodically,the teacher meets with each student to evaluate progress and to make decisionsabout appropriate learning materials. Because of limitations on the teacher’stime, plans for work to be accomplished must cover at least a month. A studentplaced in a workbook or a kit works in that workbook or kit over a period oftime. One criterion in selecting a workbook or kit is, how suitable is it forlong-term use.
Students wholack commitment to their independent work find many ways to avoid it — horseplay with the student in the next seat, finding excuses for leaving theclassroom, or bothering the teacher with questions. The committed student, onthe other hand, devours more and more knowledge. Basic to the success ofindependent work is a student’s commitment to it.
When a studentrecognizes his or her own ignorance and sees work as the way to overcome it,commitment grows. If the teacher tests often and tests widely, the teacher cansay, you are weak in this area, and here is our plan for overcoming yourweakness. The student, seeing his or her own ignorance, has a purpose for doingwork. When the student is retested at the end of a period of independent work,he or she can see improvement.
When studentsare not naturally motivated, there are things that a teacher can do to obtainstudent commitment. The first question for a teacher to ask is, of course, isthis work appropriate and not too difficult. Next, the teacher can giverecognition to work accomplished. Putting a sticker on a child’s completed workis still a welcomed sign of recognition. A gold star gives recognition on achecklist. An «A» at the top of a paper gives satisfaction (althoughanything less than an «A» does not). Positive recognition of astudent’s work, then, is basic to obtaining his or her commitment to it.
Recordkeeping, also, is basic to student commitment, because the student can seeprogress in the record. The student in a workbook or kit needs to keep achecklist, most likely in a three-ring binder, listing the work in the workbookor kit and showing checks for work completed. Sometimes, teachers make a wallchart with students’ names and work undertaken; however, such a chart, put upfor all to see, can be a daunting experience for the slow student, who sees verylittle on the chart next to his or her name compared with those gallopingalong.
5.Obtaining Student Commitment to Independent Work
First andforemost among learning materials for the independent learner are, of course,trade books and reference books. The wealth of offerings in all academic fieldsis staggering. The student who is a dedicated reader can find a great deal ofinteresting material, both fiction and nonfiction. The teacher looking forcurriculum-relevant materials can take home an armload of books from thelibrary.
However,anyone accompanying a class of students on a visit to the library will noticemuch aimless wandering among some students. It’s as if there were too muchoffered, as if the offerings were overwhelming. From all this wealth somestudents can’t find a single book they want. There are several reasons for thisdisappointing fact. First, the books that children look into are often toodifficult for them. Poor readers in elementary schools shy away from «babybooks» out of shame — they would rather walk away with nothing than haveother children notice their weakness. Second, their interests are not welldefined — they look here and there, not knowing what section of the librarythey want. The children interested in sports or animals or history are in thosesections finding books, while the wanderers see so much and at the same timesee nothing. Third, they have a poor understanding of library organization — they are in the fiction section when they should be in nonfiction or vice-versa.
Librarians andteachers, well aware of these problems, respond in several ways. Many of themconstruct grade-by-grade reading lists and then establish book clubs so thatchildren receive credit for the listed books that they have read. While stillin the classroom, teachers meet with students to set up objectives for alibrary visit so that even the wanderers have a purpose for the visit.
Severalpublishers, too, have come up with book lists. Learning Links, HoughtonMifflin, DC Heath, Harcourt Brace, and Dandy Lion, among others, offer sets ofchildren’s literature by grade level. These and other publishers also offersets of theme-related trade books. Houghton Mifflin, for example, offers setsof mathematics-related trade books by grade level. Learning Links offers setsof graded books related to many topics: adventure, adult friends, animals,children as victims, city tales, coming of age, coping with divorce, countrytales, and so on through survival and young classics; other sets of trade booksfrom Learning Links are related to social studies, such as exploring ancientcivilizations, immigrating to America, remembering the Holocaust, and savingour planet, among others. DC Heath offers sets of books by grade level. RoyalFireworks Press offers sets of Aesop’s fables graded according to readingdifficulty. ECS Learning Systems offers a set of trade books related toAmerican history and another related to world history. The Harcourt Braceclassroom collections are related by theme and author to their StudentAnthologies.
Poor readersdo better reading many easy books than reading one «challenging»book. If they are guided to the easy books and become enthused about reading,their reading abilities will grow. If they feel obliged to tackle the«challenging» book, they will become stuck; furthermore, their likingof reading will plummet, and the hope of their becoming lifelong readers willsuffer a setback.
The enthusiastic,dedicated readers are never, as we all know, a classroom problem. They areeager to finish their assigned work so that they can get to the book waitingfor them in their desk. They can then be seen absorbed in a world of history,science, sports, biography, humor, or fiction. Theirs is a great gift, whichvirtually everyone respects. As adults, they are the ones who can be seen on anairplane, bus, or subway transfixed by a book.
6.Providing for Student Management of Classroom Materials
Workbooks haveoften been criticized for being a mish-mash of lessons. A spelling workbook,for example, which is probably the most popular type of workbook, is often amixture of spelling words, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization. It is nodoubt true that not every student needs every exercise in a spelling workbook;however, individualization of instruction has not gotten (anywhere near) to thepoint where a student is working only on work that he or she needs. Many ormost of the exercises in a student’s workbook are probably useful. Workbooksare a marvelous invention and should not be readily dismissed. When studentsare properly placed in a good workbook, the workbook can keep them purposefullylearning hour after hour. When students are working in a workbook, the teacheris free to work with other students.
Many of thelearning materials referred to in the subject-matter lists (accessed from ChapterIII ) are on blackline masters, that is, they are reproducible by the page.They can be copied in quantity and stored in folders, or they can be laminatedas single copies. In any case, these kits must be organized and clearlylabeled. One-time use of a kit is probably counterproductive because ofmanagement problems; a student who uses a kit should use the pages sequentiallyover a period of weeks or months. Records of a student’s use of a kit must bekept, both by the teacher and by the student. The student manager of a kit mustkeep it orderly and stocked.
Becausesetting up a kit is time consuming, and keeping them stocked and in order is aproblem, teachers should add kits slowly. They are wonderful only when wellorganized and purposefully used. A few kits in a classroom are often as many asa teacher can handle.
The kits tochoose first are those that many students can use, such as creative writingkits, research project kits, or language skills kits. The kits for slowlearners can come later. Also, it is best to choose kits that students canstick with for a period of weeks or months. The kits that students complete ina few days only add to the teacher’s management problem.
7.Choosing Learning Materials for the Independent Learner
Novadays,there are thousands of available educational CD-ROM’s and software programs onesthat are curriculum related. However, there are many that a teacher might beinterested in. One resource is the Children’s Software Review, a database inAmerica OnLine sponsored by HomePC magazine of more than 1,500 reviews ofchildren’s software. All product reviews are catalogued by title within analphabetical index. Another resource is Superkids, available at
www.superkids.com
Still anotherreview site on the Internet is
school.discovery.com/parents/reviewcorner/
Also availableon the Internet is a comprehensive list of software — Children’s EducationalSoftware, categorized by grade level, available at
www.smartkidssoftware.com/grade.htm
There is amagazine called Children’s Software Revue (note spelling). If you subscribe,you are authorized to see software reviews on the Internet.
When computersbecome more commonplace in classrooms, CD-ROM’s and software will become moreand more practical. With several computers available to a class, severalstudents can use them; with workstations, the high cost of some software won’tbe such a drawback. As things now stand, with a limited number of computers inclassroom or school, computers are soon overtaxed, and a school’s orclassroom’s collection of available software is limited.
8.Using Internet for self-independent learning
There is sucha wealth of information on the Internet that it must soon be a part of anyone’ssearch for knowledge. At one time I was (mistakenly) diagnosed with a conditionof excess iron in the blood called hemochromatosis. I wanted to learn as muchas I could about the condition. My search, terminating (finally) with«medical articles,» resulted in more than one hundred references tothe condition. I selected three that seemed least esoteric and was able todownload them for $1.50 apiece. Another time, I wanted to know the names of thefull cast of the movie Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and GreerGarson. A search on the Internet gave me a list of all of the cast members. Asearch on almost any topic brings up an array of responses, which will grow asthe Internet expands.
These searchesdo take time. The search for information about hemachromatosis took a couple ofhours, and the search for the cast of Pride and Prejudice took at leastthree-quarters of an hour.
Practice with searchingis necessary — the student can learn with practice to limit his or her searchesso that Internet provides dozens instead of thousands of responses.www.altavista.com allows the user to surround a phrase with quotation marks,thus limiting the number of responses.
Before usingthe Internet, students will probably benefit from using a guide, such as EveryStudent’s Guide to the Internet (Glencoe/McGraw Hill) or The Portable Learn theNet, found at www.learnthenet.com/english/index.html, which is the site, also,of on-line courses teaching use of the Internet.
The ACTLaboratory, through its Digital Education Network, has created InternetDEN,which offers online lessons that explain basic Internet tools and navigation: www.actden.com/
Most of theInternet’s value to a student is the same as to an adult — providinginformation. However, there are some sites on the Internet specifically forstudents and children. Some of these are not as good as a book. Others,however, offer beautiful graphics, and still others are interactive.
The Internetis most valuable when the student has a purpose for using it. Without a clearpurpose, a student can drown in a sea of trivia. Furthermore, in contrast witha book, magazine, or newspaper, on the Internet it is not easy to skiminformation, and so pulling information off the Internet can be less productivethan getting information from a book, magazine, or newspaper.
Shouldclassroom time be provided for gathering information from the Internet? In somecases, yes. However, the Internet can eat up much valuable classroom time.Certainly, it can serve as a supplement to classroom work when accessed from astudent’s home or from a school computer outside of classroom time.
SendingIndependent-Study Work Home
How should ateacher respond to a student’s request to work at home on independent-studymaterials? The teacher certainly doesn’t want to stifle a student’s interest;on the other hand, some students race through work so quickly that, instead ofreally learning, they are just covering ground. Furthermore, school materialsthat are safe in school are sometimes lost or damaged at home — «My dogchewed on it,» the student says! Lastly, if the work requires checking, ata student’s home the teacher is not at hand to check it. It is true that someparents are just as good at checking student work as the teacher, but othersaren’t. Then there is the student who does work at home and brings an armloadof work to school for the teacher to check, expecting the teacher to spend aninordinate amount of precious class time doing so. For sure, the question ofwhether to send independent-study work home is not a simple one.
If the teacherdoes decide to allow independent-study materials to go home, the teacher mustbe particularly diligent to work with the student managers of kits andcollections to be sure that they are keeping track of the materials. As anylibrarian knows, lost materials are a major headache. If possible, the teachershould keep a backup copy of the materials.
To thosestudents who arrive at school with an armload of completed work, expecting theteacher to check it, the teacher should say, «Excellent! You have done alot of work. Let’s spot check it to see how conscientious you have been. Ifthere are many mistakes, back you go to redo it.»
Students whoallow materials to be lost or damaged cannot be allowed to continue on theirdestructive path. On the other hand, their sentence shouldn’t be forever. Oncethey commit to more responsible behavior, they should be given another chance.
Parents whoare willing to work with their children are a godsend not only to theirchildren but also to the teacher. The teacher provides the independent-studymaterials; the parents do the checking. However, sometimes parents are notknowledgeable enough to check their children’s work, so the teacher mustcontinue to spot check.
Navigate toHome Page «Students Can Learn On Their Own» — www.teacherneedhelp.com/ students/