Week 5 Reading Response

1. In chapter 5, Tomlinson discusses 5 (five) bullet points about the differences between teaching curriculum that is important, and “covering” what she calls “scaling Everests of information [that is] not effective for our students." Choose two of the bullets to explain what they mean to you, and how they help you envision the kind of teacher you want to be.

I really like the second bullet where it talks about "students in schools, classrooms, and educational systems that teach less and teach it better score higher on standardized measures..." I found that quote to be so true about me as a learner. "Curriculum that is a mile wide but only an inch deep is ineffective in producing real learning." For me knowing that I learn better if I am not thrown a lot of information quickly, really helps me to realize that I need to make sure that I do not teach that way. I need to not focus on trying to cram as much information in so little time when I am teaching. I know that I learn best when I am taught about something and we spend awhile discussing it and making sure I know it well as well as the other students in class. It is important that teachers know that yeah maybe some students can learn something really fast and really grab on to the concept, but, the majority of the students who do not learn like that need to spend more time on the subject so that they too can really grasp the concept.

The second bullet i really like is the one that says, "The importance of curriculum lies in helping students master and retain essential information, organize knowledge around essential concepts..." I feel like this bullet and the other bullet are closely related. We are not doing the students any good in helping them learn the information if we do not spend more time focusing on helping the students master the curriculum. What good is it going to do if we just fly through our curriculum and finish with everything we were supposed to teach; even though we really did not teach our students. If we want to be able to pat ourselves on the back we need to make sure that our students master and retain the essential information we teach them. Not give ourselves a pat on the back because we covered all of our curriculum even though the students did not learn anything.


2. From chapter 6, share 2 (two) exact quotes that are meaningful to you and explain why they matter to you.

The first quote I really like is in the italic area right at the beginning of the chapter. It says "All children can learn does not mean all children are the same." This quote matters to me because all our future students will learn what we teach. It just really matters how we teach it. In the quote it says does not mean all children are the same. So with that part of the quote we need to make sure that we do not teach all our lessons the same way. Since all the students will be different learners we need to make sure that we teach in many different ways. Just like we are learning to be a differentiated teacher!

The second quote I really like is "help students discover how ideas and skills are useful in the world." I know growing up and going to school I always wanted to know why what I was learning was going to help me in the world. We need to make sure that we give students reasons as to why they are doing the certain things and help them to connect it to the world and how it would be useful. If students know that it will be useful for them in the world they are going to enjoy doing an assignment better and learn it better.