Characteristics Of Diverse Learners- Blog 6t5e4c

Characteristics of Diverse Learners

The purpose of this course was to learn about today’s diverse learners. Today’s learners learn in very different ways, some are auditory learners; others are visual or auditory learners. Because of these differences in learners, we have t develop different ways to teach each individual learner. Throughout the course we looked into different learning disabilities, how to accommodate for them and how to write a universal diverse learning lesson plan.

Project One- Self Study Using Educational Theorists In the first project we looked at different educational development theorists and how they apply to us. This was in the form of a paper where we put ourselves into at least four different theorist’s theories and which of the four we thought was the most applicable to today’s learners. Doing this paper was really insightful and I enjoyed it immensely. The theorist that I could apply to myself and almost everyone else was the Erickson Developmental Model. This consisted of multiple stages with flexible age ranges as to when these stages mostly occur. The part that I liked the most was that the theory was very fluid. You could reach a certain stage in the series but when you hit a dead end you could go back and reassess a previous stage whenever you needed to.

Project Two- Teach the Class About Learning Disabilities The second project that we accomplished included researching a behavioral/developmental disability and then come up with a presentation in order to teach the rest of the class about it. This project was done in groups of two to three and made it much more manageable in research and delivery. Some of the projects included autism-spectrum disorders, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and attention deficit disorder just to name a few. We were given a few weeks to do research and to come up with a plan of action on how to teach this to our audience. Many presentations included using technology like Microsoft Powerpoint and other presentation programs. Others included skits, lectures and round table discussions. This was a great experience as it would help us to learn what was more or less affective in getting the message across. Almost always it was the lecture portions that were the least affective if they were longer than five minutes or so. After that everyone seemed to just glaze over.

Project Three- Design a UDL Lesson Plan In the third and final project we were to study universal design for learning lesson plans and come up with one of our own. This was a fun project as we could choose any topic we wanted and go with it

from there. We were required to bring in any materials that would be used in the class and to have a copy of the lesson plan for the professor. As I said this was a fun project but it did have its difficult parts. The most difficult wasn’t writing the activities or other options but it was finding what our Vermont state learning codes were. I spent probably 10-15 hours searching the web just for this one small part of our lesson plan. I think it would have been more helpful if the professor had the site for the state codes already along with the UDL lesson plan format. The UDL format examples were helpful even if I used my own template. Another thing that was a little misleading was that we were told to bring in a display of our materials and lesson plan and then to give a brief description of what our lesson was about. Instead we all ended up giving a 20-30 minute presentation on EVERYTHING in our lesson plan. This was aggravating as there was a bad snowstorm going on and many of us had over an hour and a half drive on a normal day. There might have been a mistake on the student’s part but as I was not the only one under the impression of this short presentation I want to think we were not the only ones at fault. Overall this project was a great way to wrap up the semester and was a great way to get us writing in UDL format.

Continuous Course Work-10 Annotated Bibliographies The last component to this course was the completion of ten annotated bibliographies, although this seems like a bad title. We were to find peer reviewed articles that were related to our current topics in class and to write a couple of paragraphs about it and post this on a class forum where we could all read them. This was interesting as it brought up a lot of interesting topics to discuss in class and often helped us understand what we were discussing better, at times though this seemed to be a little redundant once we reached over six or eight bibliographies.

Continuous Course Work- Course Handouts All of the course handouts/literature was very helpful as it was often related to the coursework and helped us understand an idea better. The professor was knowledgeable about her topic and will only get better over the years with practice. All of the students were treated equally and with respect. Grading was a sore point as many of us believed that the grading rubric was incorrect to the topic of learning and it didn’t leave much leeway for mistakes. The fact that if you made two mistakes in APA format your grade for that paper could go from an A to a C instantly. And this is for two mistakes in a 15-20 paged paper. This was similar for many of the projects where no little amount of error was allotted. This seemed a little unfair and not very ive of students being human.

Overall Course Review This course was interesting and very helpful. The course matter progressed in a logical manner and was always relevant to the course objective. My classmates were an interesting bunch even if they were all

form a different background than mine. Almost all of them were ABA majors while I am a foundations major. So learning the ABA side of education was very interesting and worthwhile as I can see myself using what I learned in this class often when I get my license.