Differentiating Instruction for At-Risk Students

What to Do and How to Do It

Rita Dunn, Andrea Honigsfeld

• Publisher: R&L Education
• Year: 2009
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781578869848
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

No single approach to teaching is effective with all children; each helps those with identified learning-style strengths to increase their knowledge base within the first three or four months of classroom use. Some learners will want to continue using a single method; others will prefer a variety of approaches. When the activities described herein are introduced to students whose learning styles they match, most will demonstrate strong abilities to learn and remember new and difficult content within the first four months of beginning_if not earlier. This book is written to prevent more children from becoming at risk and to help those who already have fallen behind their classmates and do not enjoy school. Each chapter describes different instructional strategies, a summary chart shows how to match at-risk learners with the specific approach most likely to substantially increase their academic achievement. These instructional approaches are designed to engage youngsters in action-oriented activities that gradually increase cognition and help children to internalize and retain what they are taught. Applications of these instructional strategies are suggested for increasing performance in literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface: Why Do Many Children Struggle in School?
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 01. Who Are Students at Risk of Academic Failure and How Should We Teach Them?
• Chapter 02. What Is Learning Style?
• Chapter 03. Teaching Global Students Globally
• Chapter 04. Redesigning the Classroom for Increased Comfort and Concentration
• Chapter 05. Teaching Tactual Students Tactually
• Chapter 06. Teaching Kinesthetic Students Kinesthetically
• Chapter 07. Teaching Peer-Motivated Students with Small-Group Techniques
• Chapter 08. Teaching At-Risk Students with Contract Activity Packages
• Chapter 09. Teaching Visual/Tactual Students Who Need Structure with Programmed Learning Sequences
• Chapter 10. Teaching Unmotivated At-Risk Students with Multisensory Instructional Packages
• Chapter 11. Experimenting with Learning-Style Instructional Strategies in Practitioner-Oriented Steps
• Chapter 12. Research on the Dunn and Dunn Learning-Styles Model: How Do We Know It Works?
• Chapter 13. How Schools, Parents, and Courts Can Respond to Federal Law and Improve Classroom Teaching for At-Risk Students
• Appendix A: Semantic Differential Scale (SDS)
• Appendix B: Comparative Values Scale
• Appendix C: Supervisory Learning-Style Scale
• References
• About the Authors