TUGAS KELOMPOK

EVALUASI DAN REMEDIAL PEMBELAJARAN BS.

AKUNTANSI

OLEH :

KELOMPOK 3
ARDIANSYAH MARWAN A1A622024

WD UMMI MUTHMAINNAH A1A622024

ERNA PASIMBONG RUMPA A1A6220

JURUSAN PENDIDIKAN AKUNTANSI

FAKULTAS KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN

UNIVERSITAS HALU OLEO

KENDARI

2024
A Wichita School Case

Traditionally, many teachers throughout the country have been expected to stay in
their rooms, apply the «tried and proven» approaches, and keep things under
control. With little or no encouragement to try new approaches, many teachers
who have chosen to experiment with new educational theories have had to do so
in the isolation of their classrooms, with little or no support. Nevertheless, some
teachers are eager to use any technique they believe will improve their lessons.
Fortunately, today most districts are encouraging teachers to experiment. Such is
the case here in Wichita. One Wichita junior high school teacher attended a
district in-service meeting where he learned about learning styles theory. He then
invited a consultant from the teacher center to visit one of his classes and explain
the concept to his students.
The teacher administered a learning-style preference questionnaire, and the
students scored the survey, developed their profiles, and shared the results with
the class. The students were then encouraged to contribute ideas for classroom
organization that would take advan- tage of the variety of preferred learning
modalities within the class. They helped set up areas where students could hold
discussions and listen to audio recordings and areas where students could read or
work on written assignments.

He then administered the survey to the parents and helped them interpret the
results regarding their own preferences.

Parent-teacher confer ences became more effective, and soon other teachers began
experimenting with the con-cept in their classrooms.
Because innovations often require additional facilities, materials, space, and
program flexibility, success requires the support of
administrators, teachers, students, and parents, all of whom must understand the
importance of the change.

The teacher must establish the credibility of the proposed change. First, the
teacher should provide evidence that the approach is effective. The literature can
be used to show the success other teachers or districts have had with the
innovation.

Experienced teachers know that many variables affect learning, including

students’ natural interests, skills, and aspirations.

Kahlil Gibran said of the teacher, «If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter
his house of wis- dom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.The
first step in meeting the needs of learners is to understand how they learn.
Long‐Range Planning
Long-term or long-range planning is often a defining attribute that distinguishes
between the approaches of novice teachers and those of more experienced
teachers.The research indicates that when teachers increase their understanding of
con- tent and methodologies, student achievement also increases . Maximum
academic attainment requires teachers who have both a firm grasp of their content
areas and a repertory of effective teaching strategies. Some schools permit their
teachers to follow their students from year to year. Some schools permit their
teachers to follow their students from year to year.

Concept Development
Recall from chapter 5 the highly acclaimed international studies of mathemat- ics
teaching , which reported that the high-per- forming Asian students spend far
more time making connections among major concepts than U.S. students do. The
decline in performance on standardized tests may be the result of the way our
students store information. To be able to use newly learned information, students
must see how the new information relates to a larger whole as they learn it. Such
strategies, called advance organizers, can be an effective means of gaining student
attention and directing it to the lesson. The advance organizer may be in the form
of questions for students to listen and look for in the lesson. In a follow-up
discussion, the teacher can ask students to tell what they observed. Then the
students are asked for examples and non-examples of the concepts.

Such problem-based learning assignments give students plenty of opportunities to

learn concepts and develop skills across all disciplines. Furthermore, students
eagerly accept the challenge . Students must be given opportunities to reflect on
and experiment with concepts. Giving students this responsibility helps them
develop their own con- clusions.

Science teachers in two high-achieving countries, Australia and Japan, care-fully

develop just one or two concepts during a lesson. Activities and discussions
preceding the introduction of the major concepts provide a vehicle for discovering
and understanding them.

The case-study method of teaching provides learners with opportunities to

strengthen their critical thinking and to become more deeply engaged in their
learning. This method, which presents students with either a real-life or a fictional
situation, is a student- centered, problem-centered approach. Once the relevant
information is identi-fied, students must organize it to give it new meaning .
The Unit Plan
Chapter 6 focused on setting appropriate aims, goals, and objectives, and chap- ter
7 focused on selecting the appropriate content and activities needed to reach those
aims, goals, and objectives. To do so requires a long-term plan, or unit plan. Unit
planning should be a joint effort by the teacher and students, whose roles in
curriculum planning are obviously different. Teachers’ extensive study of their
subjects gives them insights into what students need to know about the subject of
the unit .
Involving students in planning a unit can lead to more meaningful activities and to
the forming of a cooperative social environment, enriching the quality of learning
in the classroom.
Because the ordinary classroom does not provide this richness in learning and, in
most instances, limits what the brain can do, students become habituated to this
limited, sequential approach. Involving students can also increase their emotional
commitment to the material, enhancing their learning of that mate- rial. If students
are engaged in learning activities rather than remaining passive, both sides of the
brain will participate in the educational process regardless of the subject
matter. Experiential curricula , the curricula that actively involve students, also
have been found to motivate students to voluntarily associate with members of
other cultures, whereas token reward systems have failed.
An important part of the teacher’s role in planning a unit is to help students select
activities necessary for learning the content. This does not mean that the teacher
selects some of the activities and the students independently select other activities.
Parts of the Unit Plan
The learning unit, or unit plan, is much more than an outline of the subject
material to be explored within a certain topic. Unit plans typically include teacher
and student activities to enhance the attainment of the objectives, and a method of
evaluating the degree of understanding developed while studying the
unit . Learning units should also include a list of resource materials and people
and a bibliography or reference list that supports the unit and can be used to
pursue the topic further. Each unit should contain per- formance objectives that
are stated in terms of stu- dent behavior, describe the conditions, and specify the
minimum acceptable level of performance.
The first question teachers hear at the beginning of a new unit is, «Why do we
have to study this stuff ?
The statement of purposes is a list of general expectations the teacher has for the
unit. For example, the general expectations of a tenth-grade unit in government
may include an understanding of how a bill is introduced, increased tolerance of
the opinions of others, or an appreciation of democracy as a type of
government. Unlike the performance objectives used in daily planning, which are
stated in spe- cific, observable, and measurable terms, the purposes for a unit
should be general.
Sample Unit Plans
Following are several sample unit plans. The unit plan in box 10.1 was chosen for
its brevity and simplicity. This does not make it a superior plan, but such brief
units are often used. Perhaps the unit is too skimpy. Figure 10.2 shows the parts
commonly found in a unit. Notice that some of the parts in figure 10.2 are not
included in the sample unit given in box 10.1.
Goals and objectives should coincide and should reflect the teacher’s basic
beliefs. Box 10.2 contains a sample chemistry unit designed for use in an
eleventh- grade class. This more comprehensive plan has fewer weaknesses
because it has most of the parts that educators consider essential to any
unit. Examine its strengths and weaknesses.
Daily Lesson Planning
Making them attainable requires designing daily lesson plans that include general
expectations that can also be translated into more spe- cific terms.
For most teachers, the daily lesson plan is the most organized approach. Like a
map, the lesson plan gives direction to the lesson objectives. If the lesson begins
to stray, the lesson plan brings it back on course. Staying on course is difficult
without a lesson plan.
Factors Affecting Achievement
Several factors should be considered carefully in lesson planning because of their
effect on student achievement. Instead of teaching the concepts needed to
understand their subject, teachers of the same subject and grade level may cover
very different materials. The amount of engaged time teachers spend on a topic or
concept compared to the time that is allocated for the subject affects
achievement. The disparity between schools in the allotted time in which students
are engaged in their subjects is enormous.
Australian and Japanese teachers, for example, teach only one or two concepts per
lesson.
In other words, developmental time should put the important concepts and skills
in a broader context in order to extend the students’ understandings of those ideas.
Another variable that has been studied for over 50 years to determine its effect on
achievement is class size. Although the research shows the positive effects of
smaller classes to be minimal, the cumulative effect may be significant over time.
Additional research is needed to determine the effect of class size on the level of
student participation, since participation directly correlates with achievement and
since over the years the research results have been mixed.
Traditionally, clear concepts in each discipline, and effective models and strate-
gies for teaching them, have not been available because they have not been identi-
fied.
What Makes a Lesson Plan Good?
Lesson plans come in many sizes and varieties, and the length or style of a les-son
plan does not make one plan better than another. A good lesson plan can be a
comprehensive outline that is worded formally, formatted with the latest software
and enclosed in a plastic binder, or it can be a brief outline written in pencil on 3-
by 5-inch cards. The styles of good lesson plans vary as much as their length. A
good lesson plan contains material that will challenge and engage students
throughout the class period with activities that involve every student, using a for-
mat the teacher can follow without having to stop the lesson to read it. Planning
sufficient time for learning each concept allows students to engage in different
kinds of learning experiences. By the same token, if a lesson is not capturing the
students’ attention, teachers should take short detours to pursue tangential topics
that capture their attention.
Setting Objectives
Planning a daily lesson should begin with the teacher asking such questions as: In
what ways do I want this lesson to change my students? What will they be able to
do as a consequence of the lesson? When stated at the outset, these proposed
behavioral changes can give direction to daily activities. Writing performance
objectives was the focus of chapter 6
Organizing Curriculum.
Having decided what material to include in the lesson, the teacher must next
decide on the sequence in which students will experience it. Sometimes the nature
of the subject dictates the order of presentation, so the teacher should check the
major ideas to be covered to determine whether there is a natural sequence.
A lesson on how to bake a chiffon cake would follow the sequence of the
recipe. A history teacher, too, would prepare many lessons involving historical
events taught in chronological order.
If the four or five objectives of a day’s lesson have no natural order, perhaps a
par- ticular sequence would make the lesson more easily understood. For
instance, a chem- istry teacher would probably not teach the formula of a
compound until the students had learned to recognize the symbols of the elements
contained in the compound.
Selecting Activities
Generally, more emphasis is placed on activities than on content, because today’s
educators recognize that classroom activities are major avenues for learn-ing. For
this reason, a lesson plan must describe those activities the teacher expects to use
to teach the content. At this point the teacher should review the partially
completed lesson plan. Some major ideas to be developed have been selected and
organized. The next step is to plan involvement by assigning a task that will
require the students to use each of the major ideas in the lesson. Questions can be
used as advanced organizers to focus students’ attention on the lesson and
improve student achievement.
Presented with several compositions, the students could be asked to identify the
principles of capturing the reader’s attention each time they occur. Later in the
class period, each student could write the lead paragraph of a composi-
tion, employing the techniques of capturing the reader’s attention introduced ear-
lier in the lesson.
The physical education teacher who wants to teach the correct procedure for
driving a golf ball may demonstrate each step and ask students to identify
mistakes that the teacher deliberately makes in each phase. Eventually, the
students go through the process themselves, while other students critique. A
vocational shop teacher would follow a similar process, as would
math, science, history, English, music, and art teachers.
Each of these activities is an assigned task that requires students to do things they
could not do correctly unless they understand the content taught in the earlier part
of the lesson.
Alexandra Fahner-Vihtelic identified 16 components to ensure success-ful lesson
planning.
Implementing the Lesson Plan
The results of any lesson are likely to be no better than the daily lesson plan, yet
the lesson plan does not guarantee learning success. Prolific planning may be
counterproductive if the teacher becomes single-minded and does not adapt the
lesson to the students’ needs.
Time Management
Although many educators recognize that the key to leading students tobecome
capable thinkers is to provide them time to reflect on their learning, many teachers
resist this practice because they are already expected to cover more con-tent than
they have time to cover. Almost inevitably, teachers’ use of classroom time has
been blamed for declining achievement in America’s schools. Perhaps what
teachers need is better time-management skills. By using a digital learning
system, teachers can create a digital lesson and post it on the system for their
students and fellow teach-ers to see, making it instantly available.
Benefits accrue not only for teachers themselves but also for students as they take
on the responsibility and challenge of a well-planned assignment. Because
beginning teachers often lack the ability to simplify and make sense of classroom
events, the time spent identifying the major principles and concepts in a discipline
will be a wise investment.
Summarizing the Daily Lesson
The lesson plan should end with a review of the main ideas covered in the
lesson, but the summary should not include every detail, nor should it merely list
the main parts of the lesson. A good way to summarize is by having students
name analogies and metaphors, and compare and contrast these with the original
idea. The review should show the relationships among the major ideas, tying
together the parts of the lesson.
Likewise, an English lesson on «How to Capture the Reader’s Attention» would
include each point and its development.
While reviewing can help students make essential connections, this does not
imply that the more time spent on a concept, the better. It is believed that a
major, indeed if not the major, reason that U.S. students underperform their Asian
counterparts is because U.S.
Learning Cycle Theory
One instructional theory uses a learning-cycle approach to instruction to help
students move through the levels of understanding in lessons. The hands- on
introduction enables students to develop descriptive and qualitative understand-
ings. The concept introduction stage lets them talk about their experiences, with
the teacher or in cooperative learning groups, where the teacher guides the
discussion
Teachers should guard against making assumptions about what students know.
Sample Daily Lesson Plans
Boxes 10.3 and 10.4 show some sample daily lesson plans. They differ in
style, but each contains a few major ideas and is arranged in a sequence that
facilitates learning. Note that each major idea is followed by an assigned task that
requires Planning and Converting Curriculum into Instruction 371 students to use
the idea. Note also that each sample lesson ends with a review that ties together
the major ideas in the lesson.
As of this writing, the George Lucas Educational Foundation offers almost 3,000
helpful articles on lesson planning, most of which feature links to downloadable
lesson plans.
Individualizing Instruction
Individualizing instruction is hard work. Without adequate planning, teachers can
be overwhelmed by the challenge of designing instruction for students who have a
broad range of abilities and levels of motivation. If students do not learn the way
we teach them, then we must teach them the way they learn.
An excellent example of an individualized instruction program appears in Box
10.5.
Lessons are enriched when teachers are flexible enough to take «side trips» when
individual interest is shown by one or more students.
.
In‐Class Ability Grouping
A common approach to reducing the task of teaching 30 or so students of varying
abilities and needs is to form subgroups of students who have abilities and
interests in common. Simple arithmetic would suggest that dividing a class of 30
students into five groups of six students per group would reduce the range to
which the instruction must be adapted to one-fifth the original
range. Unfortunately, the results of ability grouping usually are not dramatically
successful, though ability grouping does tend to improve student learning. An
analysis of more than 40 stud-ies found that ability grouping makes a small
contribution to the improvement of learning and a larger contribution toward
improvement of student motivation . Grouping enhances long-term teacher-
student relationships and higher academic achievement.
Whichever method is used, positive results primarily depend on giving quality
tasks that relate to students to the content being taught.
The effectiveness of ability grouping on learning also depends on the teacher’s
ability to adjust the instruction to each group.
Slower students may require more careful monitoring and guidance. When
working in groups, higher-ability students tend either to dominate the group or to
not participate in the group. Many schools serving mainly non-English-speaking
students offer less breadth and depth of content coverage, and students from
affluent communities are more likely to be placed in high-ability
classes, regardless of achievement scores.
Ability grouping helps teachers take each group or level of students to higher
levels. Another way beginning teachers can achieve this goal is by perfecting their
use of questions. Although the use of higher-order questions is no substitute for
mastering content, taking time to ask higher-order questions, encouraging students
to ask each other questions, and giving students time and encouragement to reflect
on their thinking are imperative. Involving wait time enables students to continue
interacting with the content. Children’s ability to move from the concrete to the
symbolic level requires distancing themselves from the present.
Students should be led to ask questions of themselves to ensure that they are
comprehending the content at a sufficient depth.
Unintentional Differential Treatment
Ability grouping requires different treatment for different groups at different
levels, but unintentional differential treatment must be avoided. For
example, while it is realistic to expect high-ability students to cover more material
more quickly than less capable groups, teachers often make unrealistically
different demands of the groups. High-ability groups may be paced as much as 15
times faster than groups of lesser ability, increasing dramatically the difference in
amounts of mate-rial covered by the two groups.
A major drawback of ability grouping is that it has been found to hamper minority
students’ literacy. From previous research, we know that teachers group students
not just on standardized test scores, but also on behavior, race, and class. So by
using ability grouping, we’re creating larger achievement gaps among minor-ity
students, which exacerbates inequality. Lower-grouped students are much more
likely to be assigned lesson plans that emphasize rote memorization and
routinized kinds of thinking, while higher-grouped students are assigned more
challenging lessons that develop reading comprehension skills. This practice
ensures higher performance from higher-grouped students than that from lower-
grouped students.
Teachers tend to treat students for whom they hold low expectations in several
different ways.
Teachers’ tendency to treat low achievers differently without realizing they are
doing so is a powerful message for teachers in diverse settings, because invariably
this special treatment becomes a barrier to success for these students. Students’
per-ceptions of teachers’ expectations has a statistically significant strong direct
effect on academic self-concept and academic achievement, directly affecting
students’ motivation to learn . The goal must be to always keep the stan-dards
high and find ways to help all students meet them. The danger of underestimating
students’ abilities is especially acute among English language learners .
Differences in Evaluation
The teacher may find it desirable to devise nontraditional ways to evaluate
advanced students, because objective tests may not measure the kinds of growth
anticipated for these groups. Such methodology as oral discussions or one-on-one
questioning may be needed to discover the depth of insights developed by
advanced students and to detect progress made by students of limited ability.
Precautions
Whenever students are grouped by ability, the teacher must take certain
precautions. There is a certain prestige in being affiliated with the upper
group, whereas a certain perceived disgrace befalls students who are assigned to
the lower group. Indeed, students often know the level to which they are assigned
even before their teachers know it. By making comments that allow comparisons
among ability groups and allowing students to make judgmental or derogatory
comments about another group, teachers may unwittingly contribute to the caste
problem.
The high premium set on peer approval in schools can exacerbate the emotional
damage caused by ability grouping. Also, higher-ability groups tend to become
snobbish and condescending toward members of lower-ability groups.
An alternative to ability grouping is multi-age grouping. Multiage classrooms
enable students to make continuous progress instead of being promoted each year
or waiting until next year to move forward in the curriculum.
Types of Ability Grouping
Different results are obtained from within-class ability grouping, crossgrade
ability grouping, between-class ability grouping, and between-class grouping for
particular subjects . When grouped within the same class , students are forced to
compete with classmates, but when the grouping is done externally the
competition is between two or more classes, causing students to cooperate while
competing. Other schools choose homogeneous ability grouping. For
example, five groups of students with similar abilities may be formed, producing
five «tracks,» each representing a different level of general ability.
Grade Contracts
Grade contracting recognizes that students are more highly motivated by some
topics than by others.
At the beginning of each unit of study, students are issued contracts. Contracts can
also be used to provide students with opportunities to earn free time and other
rewards.
Using Instructional Models
Another way to organize lessons is to use the formats provided by instructional
models. Instructional models provide a convenient organizer for teaching the
precepts of effective teaching or for teaching the steps of lesson planning.
The Information-Processing Model
A popular contemporary way to examine and describe learning is by viewing it
mechanically, as you might describe the process that computers use to store and
retrieve information. Using the five senses to gather information , humans
immediately decide which information to store.
Students cannot possess information unless it is stored in a manner that allows
them to make use of it.

When introducing new information to students, advance organizers can be used to

point students toward the most important information, thus affecting the
information that is retained. Then, by relating this new information to previously
acquired information, students can get meaning from new information that might
otherwise be meaningless to them.

The Inquiry-Based Learning Model

According to Linda Darling-Hammond and her colleagues , «The family of
approaches that can be described as inquiry- based includes project-based
learning, design-based learning, and problem-based learning» . Three of the
leading developers of constructivism used problem solving as their main teaching
and learning strategy. Problem solving is an idealway to reach both of these goals.

It allows students to take charge of their learning,. discovering meaning and

relevance to information through a series of steps that lead to a conclusion or
reflection on the newly attained knowledge. Teachers typi- cally use guided
inquiry to focus the learning experience and structure the inquiry around specific
instructional goals. Critical thinking, creative thinking, and problem-solving
abilities are all enhanced through inquiry-based learning. Inquiry-based learning is
a learning process through questions generated from the interests, curiosities, and
perspectives/experiences of the learner.

a question related to the topic of inquiry to be explored , followed by an

investigation and gathering of information related to the question , continuing
with a discussion of findings , commencing with a reflection on what was
learned .
The procedures for inquiry-based learning appear below.
The first step in any inquiry is the formulation of a question or set of ques- tions
related to the topic of inquiry. The question can be posed by the teacher or by the
student. Sometimes the question is referred to as a hypothesis or a problem
statement.
This helps students make connections with new learning and prior learning.
The information is discussed and analyzed for further understanding. The teacher
can direct the discussion and highlight the implications that arise from the
investigation and show how it relates to the solution of the problem.

Student reflections are encouraged and serve as a way to relate to the original
inquiry andretrace the steps that led to the conclusion. This also serves to
reinforce the model so that pupils can repeat the process in any problem-solving
situation.

Mastery Learning
In 1963, J. B. Carroll, a professor at Harvard University, wrote an article titled «A
Model of School Learning» in which he challenged the then-accepted belief that
students’ IQs are a major factor in determining academic success. Carroll
hypothesized that if three conditions were met, at least 90 to 95% of all high
school students could master class objectives. From the dozens of studies of the
effectiveness of mastery learning over the past 50 years, the preponderance of data
support mastery learning .

This system is teacher paced and group based. In contrast, most mastery learning
programs are student paced and individually based. Each student pursues learning
individually, at that student’s own preferred pace.
All mastery learning programs have several important characteristics in
common. First, they provide students with different lengths of time to master each
topic. Second, they give students opportunities to remediate or restudy material
that proves difficult for them, and then to retest without penalty. Finally, all
mastery learning uses criterion-based evaluation. This means that the criteria
essential for success are revealed before the study unit begins. There are two
essential elements of the mastery learning process.
The second essential element is the provision of formative
assessment, opportunities for students followed by feedback, accompanied by
corrective and enrichment activities. Gentile and Lalley summarized the data
from hundreds of studies and literature reviews and concluded that mastery
learning improves performance on criterion-referenced tests.
Student achievement using a mastery learning model is superior to traditional
teaching approaches.
Students in mastery learning groups scored higher on retention tests after several
weeks or months than did those in traditional teaching groups.
Students taught in mastery learning are significantly more likely to selfreport
positive attitudes toward, liking for, and confidence in their ability in what has
been taught as compared with transitional groups.
Teachers exposed to and using mastery learning in their own classes altered their
expectations, as well as their attributions, for student achievement and what
causes it . But mastery learning is not without its critics. Some critics say the
claim that mastery learning equalizes students’ learning abilities is an
overstatement. Some critics describe mastery learning as a «psychological trap»
that does not have a proper conceptual base.
Matching Teaching Styles and Learning Styles
For more than three decades, educators have conducted research to discover how
to teach students with diverse learning styles using complementary instructional
strategies.
This indicates that matching students’ learning-style preferences with educational
interventions compatible with those preferences is beneficial to their academic
achievement.
Prominent among those few programs was the Dunn and Dunn model. The
average students in the Dunn et al.
Dunn, Dunn, and Perrin perceived knowledge of learning-style preferences as a
tool teachers can use to design more effective instructional
experiences. According to Dunn and Dunn , difficult academic material needs to
be introduced through each student’s strongest perceptual modality, reinforced
through his/her secondary or tertiary modality, and then applied by the student
when creating an original resource that includes the information, such as a
poem, a set of task cards or flip cards, a time line, or a kinesthetic floor
game. Using these procedures, the Dunns developed guidelines for having
students do their homework using their learning-style strengths.
Miller and Dunn tested the relative effects of traditional lectures, readings, and
class discussions, versus the effects of programmed learning sequences in book
format, versus PLS using software on CD-ROM for the computer on students in a
college of allied health. All students were exposed to several topics through each
treatment in varying sequences. Students whose learning styles were
auditory, motivated, and authority-oriented performed statistically better with the
traditional approach than with either the book PLS or the CD-ROM PLS.

How to Match Styles

First, teachers can be matched with students who have similar personalities.

A second approach to matching is to have the teacher select teaching methods that
correspond to student learning styles. Working with at-risk students requires a
particularly high level of skill and an even broader repertoire of strategies . The
teacher who discovers that a particular class of students responds favorably to
simulations and not to lectures, for example, should use more simulations than
lectures with that class. Another way to match methods with learning styles is to
administer a learning-style inventory to the entire class, which usually results in a
variety of preferences. The teacher can then group students according to their style
preferences.
Teachers benefit from conducting self-evaluations of their instruction. JoAnn
Susko at Rider University suggests that teachers keep on their USB drives a
journal of the methods they use. This provides ready access to each method and it
also lets teachers see their growth as they continuously expand their variety of
methods and styles. Of course, this means each teacher must master a variety of
teaching styles.
Not everyone believes in the powers of matching teaching styles with learning
styles. Consider also the fact that the level of students’ effort on a task affects
success more than the type of instruction.
Computer‐Enhanced Individualization
Information technology offers teachers unprecedented opportunities to
individualize instruction. Computers are powerful student motivators that can help
students integrate learned factual knowledge and abstract concepts, leading to
higher learning levels.
According to Laura Bernardin Janusek , «It’s impossible for a single teacher to
write 30+ different lessons for 30+ different students for every class period, every
day. Technology tools exist to help with the goal of individualization. In the
words of principal and author Ben Johnson, tablets are ‘the ultimate automatic
differentiating tool,’ especially when software is geared toward educational
purposes».
Former South Carolina teacher of the year Nancy Townsend advises educators to
use technology when it works best with students and to continue learning new
ways to meet students’ cognitive needs. To be effective, Internet applications
must use constructivist strategies.
Once information is accessed, it must be transferred into meaningful knowledge
by each student.

Other Ways to Involve Students

In addition to varying lesson plans and learning styles, a variety of learning

avenues such as textbooks, discussions, field trips, oral reports, term projects,
homework, and parental involvement is necessary. We now turn to the use of
these approaches to individualized instruction and the teacher’s role in each.
According to professors who work in Hofstra University’s STEM program, some
students may need to be scaffolded before they can be profitably involved
(Plonczak et al., 2014). For this to hap pen, some professors may need to
deconstruct pupil approaches to problem solving

Textbooks

As discussed in chapter 7, throughout the history of education in the United

States, one type of textbook or another has dominated the curriculum. At first, the
textbook determined the content to be studied. Lectures followed by rote
memorization and recitation often resulted in a boring, irrelevant curriculum.
Some teachers still consider the textbook to be the major source of content, and
although it is no longer the sole determiner of content, the textbook still plays an
important role in today’s planning. textbooks seldom put content and activities
together in ways that develop major ideas. But textbooks can actually be used to
promote student involvement. This requires the teacher to be proactive.

Teachers are becoming increasingly competent in curriculum development, and

more and more teachers are insisting on shaping the curricula in their classes as
they see fit.

Some teachers almost totally avoid using a textbook, substituting current

problems, learning-activity packages, or learning units they have developed
themselves., Unlike educators in Australia and Japan, American teachers seldom
use activities to help students develop content ideas. Few teachers have total
freedom to design their curricula. Many larger secondary schools hire a
curriculum director, a curriculum supervisor, or an assistant principal who is
directly responsible for this.

Discussions
According to Clare Jarmy , Good discussion . It also creates an environment of
constructive feedback in which tough questions are posed, forcing students to
learn to tackle issues on their feet and to articulate them orally. It involves
students responding to the views of others and evaluating them, and is
intellectually stimulating and rigorous.
Today’s students want to be involved, and good discussions provide all
participants opportunities to relate the topic to their own experiences. This sharing
of various perspectives can enrich the knowledge and understanding of individual
participants.

Conceptual growth occurs when students and teachers share different viewpoints
and understand changes in response to new perspectives and experiences.
Grouping students according to their interest in the topic and letting students
choose discussion topics can encourage total participation. Putting the reserved
students together forces one or more of them to assume leadership, and placing
aggressive students in the same group forces some of them to learn to yield the
floor to others. Assigning roles, such as «discussion moderator» and «recorder,»
and then rotating the assignment of these roles, will prompt all group members to
participate even further.

A student moderator’s failure to keep group discussion progressing and on target

can prompt teacher intervention, but too much interference will cause a group to
become dependent on the teacher’s leadership. A free-flowing discussion
provides a valuable opportunity to develop social skills, itself an important
goal, and helps students identify with their peers. Group discussions should help
fill these needs.
The participants need to know that each person has a definite role in every dis-
cussion.

Second, each person is responsible for contributing information to the

discussion. Opinions and contributions of knowledge should be prized only when
the participants can present evidence or facts to support them.

This assures all participants that their comments are being considered.
In addition to keeping the environment informal, pleasant, and nonthreatening, the
teacher is also a facilitator, helping students to locate appropriate resources and to
plan and evaluate their discussion.

Oral Reports
Begin planning oral reports by first deciding each report’s purpose. Oral
presentations can also make excellent assessment tools.

By answering these questions before the report is delivered, teachers can draw
each student into the oral presentations, maximizing interest and involvement.

A positive reward system can let students earn credit for participation without
penalizing those whose contributions are minimal.
The timing of oral reports can be critical, and care should be taken to avoid
scheduling so many reports in succession that students are bored by the
repetition. Because many secondary school students and some middle school
students hold part-time jobs, and extracurricular activities consume much of their
out-of-class time, class time should be allotted for preparing oral
presentations. Giving students time to prepare and an opportunity to present the
results of their assignments tells students that the presentations are worthwhile.

Students will quickly connect the report with those purposes and will not expect
any significant learning to result. Similar results occur when reports are used at
the end of a grading period to give students an opportunity to improve their
grades.

Projects

Regardless of the product, students need opportunities to discuss their projects

with their teachers and with each other, and to show their creations.

Homework
Historically, the purpose of homework has been to prepare the student for the next
lesson and/or reinforce concepts and skills learned in the previous lesson. For high
school students, homework has substan-tial positive effects. Junior high school
students can benefit from homework, but only about half as much. For elementary
school students, the effect of homework on achievement is negligible. Yet, as
sixth-grade teacher John Spencer has noted, homework offers the benefit of
requiring students to bring school into their world. The optimum amount of
homework also varies with grade level. For junior high school
students, achievement continues to improve with more homework when Planning
and Converting Curriculum into Instruction 393 assignments last between one and
two hours a night.

Homework seems to be equally effective in all subjects. The purpose of each

homework assignment should determine the teacher’s behavior.

Box 10.8 offers suggestions that should help teachers design and implement a
system for assigning homework.
Perhaps it is time to rethink the purposes of homework in light of the heavy
emphasis the core curriculum places on in-depth learning.

Such self-assessment focuses students’ attention on their thought

processes, leading to increased ownership of their learning.

Parental Involvement
As noted in chapter 2, the NCLB legislation requires a higher rate of parents’
involvement in curriculum planning. The past decade has seen a definite trend
toward increased parent involvement and an increasing desire among parents to
have a greater role in controlling the future of their children’s school.

Most site-based teams include parents and are empowered to make decisions on
curriculum, finance, and all other major school matters. Teachers are meeting with
parents to collaborate on curriculum and are using technology to engage and
inspire them to take an interest in their children’s education.

Without question, the curriculum is being fundamentally reconstructed to respond

to the diversity of this nation. As parents in poor communities become more
involved, curricula are being reconstructed to meet the needs of students from all
segments of society.

Conclusion
Following is a summary of some of the advances made and concerns raised about
the topics discussed in this chapter.

ADVANCES
Many teachers are using the case study method to help students engage more
deeply in their learning.
Involving students in planning their curricula can enrich the social climate in the
classroom, and NCLB requires increased student involvement in planning.

CONCERNS
Our students cover too many topics, too lightly.
Teachers need to learn effective methods of engaging students in planning.

This chapter encourages the matching of styles in the classroom. There are a
number of advantages to matching teaching and learning styles, but this method is
not a solution for all education problems, and teachers should be aware of the
limitations and criticisms of this movement.
Studies show that many teachers, especially novices, find it impossible to monitor
different groups in classrooms .
Even the term learning styles is not clearly defined in the literature, and a clear
definition in terms of student performance would be helpful. The study of the
effects of matching learning and teaching styles is still in its infancy.
The information-processing model and the inquiry-based learning model are just
two of the many instructional models instructors can choose to organize
lessons. Inquiry-based learning allows students to take charge of their learning, dis
-covering meaning and relevance to information through a series of steps that lead
to a conclusion or reflection on the newly attained knowledge.
Mastery learning has proven both successful and controversial.
Flexible time for individual students doesn’t fit the school calendar, and many
parents insist on receiving traditional A–F grade reports based on competition.
Individualized instruction can be facilitated and enhanced through information
technology. An approach to individualizing learning which has been highly
successful with many classes is grade contracts. Such successful approaches have
some common elements. They spell out the expectations the teacher holds for
students, and the teacher carefully monitors student behaviour
Long-range planning, short-term planning, and individualizing instruction all
contribute to the goal of helping each and every student succeed. Teachers who
are empowered can, in turn, pass on this power to students through helping them
earn ownership of their education.