Audience Description St. Anthonys School Background Information St.

Anthonys School is a Roman Catholic grade school located in Hawthorne, New Jersey. The school has 253 students enrolled from Pre-K through 8th grade. There are 122 boys and 131 girls. The population of the school by percentage of different nationalities is shown below in Figure 1. The number of students by nationality is: 1 Asian, 10 African Americans, 99 Hispanics, 1 Native American, 4 Pacific Islander, 137 White, 1 Unclassified. The socioeconomic statuses of the students vary, with 24% of the students qualifying for the National School Lunch Program. According to the NSLP Fact Sheet, for a family of four to qualify for any lunch program assistance for the 2012-2013 school year, its income must be below $42,643 (2012, p. 2).

Figure 1

Population of St. Anthony School by Nationality

White Asian Hispanic Native American 2% 1% African American Unclassified 1% 1% Pacific Islander

4%

39%

54%

Seventh Grade Class - General Characteristics The focus of this unit is on the 7th grade class at St. Anthonys School. The seventh grade has twenty-six students, thirteen boys and thirteen girls. During normal instruction, the class is split into an advanced math class and a regular math class, with thirteen students in each. However, for this unit, all students will work together in the same room to allow for more diverse collaboration and different types of thinking skills. Even though all students in the seventh grade are Catholic, there is some diversity in the nationalities of the seventh graders. There are sixteen white students, eight Hispanic students, and two African American students. The percentages of the seventh grade by nationality are shown in Figure 2 (below). Even with this diversity, there are no ESL students in the seventh grade.
Figure 2

Population of 7th Grade by Nationality

8%

31%

White Hispanic African American 61%

The learning abilities of the seventh grade students also vary. There are two students with IEPs and four students who qualify for supplemental help due to low test scores. Accommodations given to these students include preferential seating, extra time for quizzes and tests, supplemental instruction, reduced choices for exams, and retesting options for low scores. Additional information about students IEPs could not be disclosed due to privacy issues.

Seventh Grade Class Entry Competencies In general, the students of the seventh grade class have met the requirements of the typical seventh grader. They all have on-grade reading levels and have taken the same sixthgrade math class in the previous year. They have been introduced to the fundamentals of geometry and have worked with area of 2-dimensional shapes for the past two years. They have all been exposed to technology in many different shapes and forms in school. They have worked with calculators, iPads, computers, and the SmartBoard. They have completed many online assignments on a math program called Study Island. They have necessary knowledge of how to use Microsoft products such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The students of the seventh grade class know each other very well. Most have gone to school together for seven or more years, and have had every class together. They are highly willing to work together, an element that is necessary for project-based learning and cooperative learning. They have also completed several STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) projects throughout the year already, so they are used to working with materials, technology, and their higher order thinking skills.

Seventh Grade Class Learning Styles A learning style inventory questionnaire was given to the twenty-six seventh grade students at St. Anthony School. This questionnaire consisted of sixteen questions with three choices each. Each student completed the form and then calculated the total number of as (visual), bs (auditory) and cs (kinesthetic) to determine the learning style that best fit him or her. The results varied greatly, and some students tied between different styles. Figure 3 (below) displays the results in a Venn diagram, which allows for the overlapping part or ties between more than one learning style to be shown. When counting the ties as results for both learning styles, the visual learning style was the most popular with fourteen students favoring that style. Next, the auditory style had twelve students favoring it. Lastly, the kinesthetic style only had seven students favoring it.

Figure 3

When examining the sheets, it was seen that many students numbers were very close together and maybe only one or two away from a different style. Since the results from the students did not clearly point to any one learning style, it would benefit to analyze the results in a different way. All questions from all students that were answered with a, b, or c were examined from the class as a whole. This would give better idea of the dominance of one or more learning styles from the class as whole. Figure 2 (below) shows the percentage of questions from all the students that were answered as a, b, or c.
Figure 2

The results from the learning styles inventory showed me that the seventh grade students at St. Anthonys School learn in many different ways. There is no one learning style that dominates any of the other learning styles. It would be best to teach these students in ways that can address all three different learning styles examined here. Not only do the students vary from each other in their learning styles, but the learning styles also vary within the students themselves. Overall, these students can benefit from teaching using different modalities.

References United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service. (2012, August). National School Lunch Program Fact Sheet. Retrieved from http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/aboutlunch/NSLPFactSheet.pdf