Impact of Demographics and Instructions
My first thought as I was completing my demographics chart for Mrs. Hodges 5th grade class was that the class only had 1 African American. The class was in no way racially diverse, but that was not a problem. As far as the male versus female ratio it was fair because the class had 12 guys and 11 girls, so it was well diverse on the basis of gender. Because there is an almost equal amount of boys and girls in the classroom there should not be a problem for equality in the curriculum.
In Mrs. Hodges class there are four students with special needs, and these students leave the classroom each morning to go to a “fast forward” program. The “fast forward” program helps the child to catch up and learn how to stay on task so they are able to finish their work at the same pace as the rest of the class, or close to the rest of the class. In other lessons throughout the day Mrs. Hodges may use “differentiation” to accommodate the special needs children. She may do this by calling on some of them to be the helper, or let them choose the activity for the lesson being taught (Lemlech, 2006, p.34). In the math lesson that was being taught that day I noticed that Mrs. Hodges chose one of the special needs children to write the correct answer on the smart board, and call him the “smart one” for that particular problem. She first observed him at his seat to make sure he was getting it, and to keep his participation level high she let him help. There is another student in the “fast forward” program that has a behavior problem and independent working problem. When it’s independent working time he cannot focus or keep quiet, but when the class was giving an assignment that allowed them to associate and help each other he done well. He completed the work with no problems and helped others also. According to Lemlech these type of people are known as “field dependent learners” (p.36).
I also noticed that many of Mrs. Hodges students did not do much class participation, and that bothered me. I was amazed at how many there were, and it was not because they were not paying attention, it was kind of like they were scared of failure. Mrs. Hodges told them that the lesson should be a review because they had been introduced to it the class before that one, and this may have brought about fear to many of the students because they still did not understand it. “Teacher expectations can effect student’s motivation an academic growth” (p.42). Mrs. Hodges did not push participation in the classroom to the degree that I thought would have been appropriate, and without class participation it’s hard to tell who knows the material and who doesn’t. She should start pushing participation, and encouraging more students to be leaders of the classroom by volunteering.
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