Designing Creative and Culturally Relevant Instruction

737 words | 3 page(s)

Overview of the Class
Currently, I am teaching a class of twenty five 4th grade pupils at Green Oaks Elementary between the ages of nine and ten years. In my grammar class, I have three Hispanic children who use English as a second language. In addition, I also have a student from Kenya who just moved to the United States with his family which predominantly uses Swahili for communication. Since it is this latter student’s first time in an U.S. school setting, her parents have informed me that he is still improving his English and that they try to use English in the house more often. Finally, the class also has one Korean child, although he was born in the United States and speaks fluent English.

Objectives of the Instructional Experience/Idea/Concept
As an educator, I believe that my duty is to teach the pupils skills that will enable them to successfully complete school and also lead a successful life (Davis et al., 2013). To achieve this goal, I will focus on two objectives which are to improve the cultural competence of my students to allow them successfully navigate an increasingly diverse society, as well as to improve their creativity and innovativeness. The two objectives are closely related, particularly since different cultures have different innovative and creative techniques. In this case, improving the pupils’ innovation will be achieved by enabling a culturally-diverse environment based on idea generation and discovery (Davis et al., 2013). The learning experience to help achieve these objectives involves taking a class discussion where pupils will share the problems and dilemmas of being a 4th grade pupil; while generating ideas collaboratively to solve or help clarify their problem.

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Application of Concepts to the Experience/Idea/Concept
This idea will help in understanding the students’ cultural knowledge by ensuring that all students feel that their problems and ideas are valued by the class and the teacher. To achieve this, I will be aware of my personal cultural biases and therefore work effectively to understand my individual students (Cheung, 2012). In addition, this idea will help bring the students’ community and heritage to the classroom and send signals to the diverse students that they belong. In addition, the idea and activity also involve tapping into the students’ home and community resources by creating a link between school and home in discussing the problems they face as 4th grade students. Furthermore, the activity also involves students in the construction of knowledge by encouraging their initiative and autonomy in identifying their personal problems as students and generating ideas by communicating with each other. The activity will also help address cultural competence through reinforcement of the students’ cultural integrity, specifically since the discussion will encourage them to accept and respect each other’s differences by highlighting problems resulting from diversity (Cheung, 2012).

Moreover, the activity will also inspire students to have confidence in their culture-influenced majorly by the creative prospective by ensuring that the classroom is welcoming and understanding of multi-cultural students thus enhancing their self-belief after sharing their stories. Additionally, we will also encourage students to express their personal feelings and ideas by allowing them to pick the problems they wish to discuss and supporting their independence in generating ideas to solve these problems (Bennett, 2013). Also, the activity will enable the students explore their interests and choose potential ideas from a wide variety of suggestions. This should encourage the student to play with ideas and conjecture about possibilities specifically since they have a choice of ideas to select from, while also learning that there is more than one way to solve an issue. Finally, the class activity could also help the students find their creative strengths, especially after helping them to define their problems in a manner that is comprehensible to some of the students who may not speak English as a first language or vice versa (Bennett, 2013). This will encourage them to generate solutions and ideas that may help their fellow classmate.

    References
  • Bennett, S. V. (2013). Effective facets of a field experience that contributed to eight pre-service teachers’ developing understandings about culturally responsive teaching. Urban Education, 48(3), 380-419
  • Cheung, R. H. P. (2012). Teaching for creativity: Examining the beliefs of early childhood teachers and their influence on teaching practices. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37(3), 43
  • Davies, D., Jindal-Snape, D., Collier, C., Digby, R., Hay, P., & Howe, A. (2013). Creative learning environments in education—a systematic literature review. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 8, 80-91

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