Critical Incident One-Pager

There was a student named ***** at my fieldwork site last semester. She is reading below grade level but does not receive any additional time or attention from the classroom teacher. In spite of the fact that most of the other students in the class are able to comprehend grade-level text, ***** receives the same mini-lessons, the same amount of conference time, the same tools and the same absence of strategy group lessons or guiding reading as the rest of the class.

As part of a recent research project, I conducted an experiment on the impact that graphic organizers could have on the structure, engagement and proliferation of ideas in students’ writing and talking about their books. ***** was part of my experimental group and received the treatment of using a graphic organizer, an alphabet/story elements matrix. The class completed the assignments and I gathered my data, thinking that the experiment was over. Then ***** approached me.

“Miss Whitney, do you have any more of those charts?” she asked. “I think that really helped me understand the book.”

I was thrilled, of course, that I had done something to awaken understanding in one of my students. But I was also troubled – how many opportunities like this one had been missed by the lack of differentiation in the reading and writing workshops? Not all students are verbal/linguistic learners; some of these kids really need to create maps and diagrams, to sketch their envisionings or to dramatize what they see happening in their stories. Don’t students like *****, who may have some reading disabilities or gaps in their knowledge, need more time and attention? They need more hours, more explicit instruction, more scaffolding and more tools for support. I will finish with a quote from a former mentor: “Being fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing. Being fair means giving each child exactly what they need.”