Jennifer Fulton

TE 801

October 31, 2014

Expanding Your Instructional Repertoire: My Action Plan

My proposal was to differentiate instruction for some students in my focus hour and in
the second hour of Biology that I will pick up for the Guided Lead Teach 2. The proposal idea
came from my mentor teacher and me when watching how my students responded to the
instruction in the last unit, which was on biochemistry. Biochemistry is a hard unit for almost all
students, but if not differentiated properly, it is a nearly impossible unit for those students who
are special education students, or SE. Therefore, during this upcoming unit on cells, students in
my focus hour and in sixth hour, where there are high populations of SE students, instruction will
be differentiated and made less complicated and more clear for these students who want and need
science concepts broken down into more manageable chunks.
Many of these students will simply give up if the material is too hard. They will shut
down and not even try if they feel as though they have a low expectancy for success. I had
students complete only half of the last exam because they honestly felt either that they did not
know the material or that they could not do it and were not capable. The main issue with this is
that if they do not try at all, they cannot succeed even a little bit. They received zeros for the
parts of the exam that they did not complete. If they do not experience any success, they will try
less and less and the cycle continues. Their hopelessness is palpable, and quite honestly, it makes
me very sad as well.
The ways in which we will differentiate instruction for these hours is to create different
assignments and texts. With Eastern High Schools heavy focus on instructional learning cycles,
or ILCs, and reading apprenticeship, or RA, and strategies, we are required to make learning
more student-driven and less teacher-focused. The texts provided for the other hours (my nonfocus hours: second, fifth, and seventh) will be less chunked and at a more complex level. The
texts provided for third and sixth will be at a less complex level, although not dumbed down as
these students are not less intelligent or less capable than the others. I fully believe they are
capable of understanding just as much as every other student that we teach; they just need the
information presented in a different way.
These students will be more attentive and will be more easily able to maintain their
attention level because the activities will be more interactive, there will be more videos, and the
worksheets and text presented will be more chunked, shorter, and less complex. The students
who generally give up easily will be less likely to give up because they will be given activities
that present a higher chance of success for their learning style and ability. Students will not know
that they are getting different materials or lessons than any other hours, but they will be told that
I am changing the way I am teaching and designing materials because I have their success in
mind. I will be more prepared to step into this role because I want their success just as much, if
not more, than they do themselves. I do not feel that these will truly provide new roles for
students, but instead this will provide a higher chance for success for students and I may mention
that to them one-on-one.

Jennifer Fulton

TE 801

October 31, 2014

Students are always presented with a model of what they should do or how they should
act based on classroom norms which they helped to establish at the beginning of the year. This
unit will be no different. I will model each activity for them in a more explicit way and the model
coach fade cycle will be more evident to my mentor teacher, my field instructor, and me,
although the students may not be able to identify that or articulate it if asked. They will hopefully
be able to see the differences in my teaching style and my lessons. The difference in the activities
will be clear in how they are presented (many, many examples and the results of the activities
will be modeled) and the differences in the text will be clear. I will include examples of this type
of differentiation in text in the email I send. One text will be at the more complex level and the
other text will be more of an interactive reading activity, with prompts and a guide to help show
the students in a more obvious way what they should be retaining from the text.
The students will be supervised more as individuals or as groups and less as a whole class
and the emphasis will be learning as a whole unit even though most of the activities or readings
will be individual or group. I will focus on the success of individuals AND on the success of the
whole class. Many of the students did not get the grade they wanted for the marking period,
which ends on Monday, but they will be given a clearer plan for success and how to achieve a
higher grade at the beginning of this marking period. They will be able to get their progress
report every Monday or Friday, depending on what my mentor teacher and I decide works better
for us as a unit. They will be given more opportunities to make up assignments and to see how
they missed points through more explicit grading and rubrics. Assignments will be turned in the
same day to prevent students from having time or opportunity to lose their assignments or to not
do them at all. There will be a greater opportunity for success on the test at the end of the unit
because the students will have a different test format than the one they had for the scientific
method (unit one) or biochemistry (unit two). They will be given a more scaffolded version of
the test than the other hours and the multiple choice section will only have two or three choices
rather than four or five.
This all fits in with the readings from TE 801, specifically knowing my students and their
abilities as well as where they need more explicit direction or instruction. As Weinstein and
Novodvorsky state in Chapter 6 of Middle and Secondary Classroom Management, it is vital to
provide students a path to academic success. This includes maintaining my expectations as their
teacher and encouraging them to set high expectations for themselves as well. This also includes
helping them to set goals and a way to keep track of their progress, using more rubrics so that
they can see where they may have missed points to make redoing assignments and doing
assignments easier, and teaching the students ways to keep themselves organized for biology
class and for life beyond class and high school.
I believe that this form of differentiated instruction the special way that I am going to
go about it will provide my students with a much higher chance for success academically than
what I have been doing previously. They will be taught in clearer ways and will be held to high
standards with clear, specific expectations. They will be more easily able to meet these goals

Jennifer Fulton

TE 801

October 31, 2014

because they will be provided with step-by-step ways to do so. I believe that this will not only set
them up for success in biology, but success in other classes as well, as the skills taught will be
transferrable. I also believe that through differentiating assignments, projects, and tests, the
students will be more likely to persevere and less likely to throw in the towel too early. I want so
badly for them to believe in themselves as much as I do and I feel that through discussions with
my mentor teacher, my field instruction, and the readings that this is definitely achievable. I
cannot wait to see how this unit turns out! I hope the students enjoy what I have planned.