Instruction Management: Meeting Students Where They Are
There is a widely accepted fallacy that artistic talent is something you’re born with or without. This belief often leads people to avoid pursuing an education in this discipline. My belief is that artistic skill can be attained by anyone with a desire to learn. Artistic creation is a vehicle for expression and educational instruction should be designed to facilitate students in efficiently operating this vehicle. Operation depends on the development of skills in observation and comprehension of the world around them, visual expression of concepts and ideas, creative problem solving, critical thinking, persistence and perseverance.
To design any vehicle without the operator in mind would result in a useless device. Just as in the fabrication of a vehicle, instruction should always be informed by the student being instructed. The challenge here is that students have differing educational needs, learning disabilities, differing modes of learning that are the most effective for them, differing socioeconomic status which affects their well-being and all these students are legally and ethically entitled to an education. Equal access to education means that students with varying needs and skills can attain the learning targets a teacher sets no matter where they start. In my experience this can be achieved through pre-assessment of student’s prior knowledge, room for student choice, emergent curriculum, scaffolding of instruction, and accommodations and modifications in the access and expression of artistic process and product.
It is easy to assume that all our students have the same basic knowledge and skills, but as many teachers quickly learn, this is not the case. The function of a pre-assessment is to gauge every student’s individual skills or knowledge of the content of the lesson which in turn informs the type of instruction that will most efficiently reach all students. While the pre-assessment of knowledge and skills is helpful in getting a basic understanding of your students, a fail-safe way to truly engage and include every student in your lessons is to allow for enough choice so that students can choose as complex or as simple of a concept to pursue in their expression. Not only will choice allow for students to assess their own capabilities, it will empower students to be intrinsically motivated to complete their works of art and become engaged in the process and product. If the end goal of instruction is artistic expression, it shouldn’t matter necessarily what the make or model of this expression is, just its ability to transport the student to the end destination. When you allow students to create art about the things that interest them, you can start to gauge student interests and allow them to inform your curriculum as those interests emerge.
No human experiences the world in a vacuum. We are constantly submerged in a sea of sensory stimulation through our ability to experience the world through sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Therefore, it makes sense for instruction to mirror the way humans experience the world around them. Instruction should account for learners who respond more positively to different learning styles including auditory, written, visual, and tactical experiences. In this way students with varying educational needs have different options for how to attain the required content. Scaffolding of instruction is also essential as it enables students with different starting points of comprehension and skill to reach the same learning targets. With more entry points of understanding, there is a better chance that all students will attain the set learning targets.
It is essential to also address the specific needs outlined in IEP’s or 504’s, the needs brought on by difficult home lives, or serious life situations students are sometimes coping with. Taking the pulse of the individuals in your classes is essential to developing effective instruction and can be attained by developing personal relationships with students and consulting with parents or counselors. This can inform the types of accommodations and adjustments you make to the requirements of a lesson and can look like extended due dates, alternate mediums offered to express an idea, or differing levels of complexity in concept or product.
One of the biggest challenges in instruction is keeping the big picture of learning targets in mind while accounting for the individual students meeting them. While student differences can be accounted for in planning for differentiated instruction it is important to consistently assess individual student’s needs and accommodate for them along the way.
There is a widely accepted fallacy that artistic talent is something you’re born with or without. This belief often leads people to avoid pursuing an education in this discipline. My belief is that artistic skill can be attained by anyone with a desire to learn. Artistic creation is a vehicle for expression and educational instruction should be designed to facilitate students in efficiently operating this vehicle. Operation depends on the development of skills in observation and comprehension of the world around them, visual expression of concepts and ideas, creative problem solving, critical thinking, persistence and perseverance.
To design any vehicle without the operator in mind would result in a useless device. Just as in the fabrication of a vehicle, instruction should always be informed by the student being instructed. The challenge here is that students have differing educational needs, learning disabilities, differing modes of learning that are the most effective for them, differing socioeconomic status which affects their well-being and all these students are legally and ethically entitled to an education. Equal access to education means that students with varying needs and skills can attain the learning targets a teacher sets no matter where they start. In my experience this can be achieved through pre-assessment of student’s prior knowledge, room for student choice, emergent curriculum, scaffolding of instruction, and accommodations and modifications in the access and expression of artistic process and product.
It is easy to assume that all our students have the same basic knowledge and skills, but as many teachers quickly learn, this is not the case. The function of a pre-assessment is to gauge every student’s individual skills or knowledge of the content of the lesson which in turn informs the type of instruction that will most efficiently reach all students. While the pre-assessment of knowledge and skills is helpful in getting a basic understanding of your students, a fail-safe way to truly engage and include every student in your lessons is to allow for enough choice so that students can choose as complex or as simple of a concept to pursue in their expression. Not only will choice allow for students to assess their own capabilities, it will empower students to be intrinsically motivated to complete their works of art and become engaged in the process and product. If the end goal of instruction is artistic expression, it shouldn’t matter necessarily what the make or model of this expression is, just its ability to transport the student to the end destination. When you allow students to create art about the things that interest them, you can start to gauge student interests and allow them to inform your curriculum as those interests emerge.
No human experiences the world in a vacuum. We are constantly submerged in a sea of sensory stimulation through our ability to experience the world through sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Therefore, it makes sense for instruction to mirror the way humans experience the world around them. Instruction should account for learners who respond more positively to different learning styles including auditory, written, visual, and tactical experiences. In this way students with varying educational needs have different options for how to attain the required content. Scaffolding of instruction is also essential as it enables students with different starting points of comprehension and skill to reach the same learning targets. With more entry points of understanding, there is a better chance that all students will attain the set learning targets.
It is essential to also address the specific needs outlined in IEP’s or 504’s, the needs brought on by difficult home lives, or serious life situations students are sometimes coping with. Taking the pulse of the individuals in your classes is essential to developing effective instruction and can be attained by developing personal relationships with students and consulting with parents or counselors. This can inform the types of accommodations and adjustments you make to the requirements of a lesson and can look like extended due dates, alternate mediums offered to express an idea, or differing levels of complexity in concept or product.
One of the biggest challenges in instruction is keeping the big picture of learning targets in mind while accounting for the individual students meeting them. While student differences can be accounted for in planning for differentiated instruction it is important to consistently assess individual student’s needs and accommodate for them along the way.