What is meant by "academic structure" ?

Take a bird's eye view of your self teaching in your classroom.  Ask the question, "What are the really important things you are taking into consideration to make sure as many of your students are learning at as high a rate as is possible in any given moment?"  These "things" are the elements of your academic structure that you can control across all subjects at all times during the day.  These are the elements of instruction that you manipulate to reach all those sources of individual variation when it comes to learning.

Here's one way of describing them.

1.  Differentiating Instruction:  How do you vary your actual instruction to make it available to as many of your learners as possible?

• the groupings you use for various learning activities

• interest, ability, random, gender based, ...

• pairs of children, trios, groups of six, ...

• within class, between class

• the way you structure participation

• seat kids together

• seat kids together with directions about how to participate

• friendship groupings

• random assignments that change over time

• varying your approaches to curriculum

• using concrete, hands-on materials along with words

• using multiple ability rich tasks a la  Cohen

• using multiple intelligence ideas a la Gardner

• varying your instructional style

• direct instruction

• groupwork

• inquiry based teaching

• open-ended investigations

• embedded assessments

free choice / activity times

 

2.  Teaching to the Whole Child:  How do you teach to all aspects of a child?  What they think, how they feel about what they are thinking, how they are able to physically show what they know?  In other words, learning is holistsic.  It involves mind, body, and spirit.  How are you incorporating these aspects into your teaching.

• specific times and routines to talk about and understand how kids are feeling about what they are doing

• classroom meeting time

• journal entries

• open ended discussions

• emphasizing the class as a kind of community

• focus on social interest - all for one, one for all

• being real about abilities - we are smart in different ways, no one of us is smart in all ways

• encouragement instead of praise

3.  The Team: Who else is there to help the children learn?  How will you engage them? What role will you take in these conversations.

• other subject specialists such as art, music, and physical education

• collaborative planning sessions

• Instructional Support Team meetings

• aides and special educators

• parents

4.  Time: How do you vary the rhythms of the day to keep it engaging and interesting?

• daily and weekly schedules

• high energy, low energy

• times to listen, times to talk

• play and work

• convergent and divergent assignments

• thematic integrated work and domain specific work

• collaborative and competitive and individual participation structures

• right answer focus and many answer focus

• intrapersonal and interpersonal

You are asked to describe your academic structure in the Classroom Structures Assignment.  Think about your teaching day as you consider the four contributing elements.  Use the headings.  The descriptors within each heading are provided only as suggestions to get your thinking going.  This is both a big picture and little picture perspective.