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This stuff has been around forever -- well since the early 90's, anyway. This Dinah person may have co-opted the term "foldables" but the activity was already out there in full bloom by 1992. That's the date on a resource book I have entitled Alternatives to Worksheets
I got it back in my former school where most of my seventh grade students read at a third grade level or lower (the top kids were at a fourth grade level).
I tried some of those activities, like the flip books and the lift-the-flap things and various shape books and whatnot in an effort to get the student to produce something -- anything -- related to the curriculum for the grade. Having them write essays or do research was clearly out of the question because their skills were so weak (their self-esteem, however, was sky-high -- interesting).
It was only partially successful. A few kids, mainly girls, liked doing these things, but most did not. AT my current school the emphasis with middle grade kids seems to be to get them to use a computer to produce something. [Catherine here: true at our middle school, which has just purchased Clay-Mation & Virtual Reality software.] At least the computer can read to them and they may learn something.
I think one major reason these things have taken off is because of "radical inclusion." If you have students who are 4-8 grades below grade level and can't read or write independently (and this is not unusual in many places), what are you going to get them to do to "show their learning?" You need a "product." This stuff takes tons of time, keeps kids busy and "engaged," the student may end up with something that "looks nice," and everyone is happy. Have they learned anything? Who knows. Does this go any distance towards boosting their weak skills? Not at all.
However, consultants and administrators oooooh and aaaaah over these things, I kid you not.
BTW, I posted that link about wakawaka but Blogger got ahead of me and posted it before I filled in my handle and clicked POST.
from Steve H:
I'm beginning to see the educational world as a hot market for add-on products, especially if you include seminars. All you have to do is come up with a unique angle or hook. It's good if you can somehow claim that less is really more; that lower expectations can produce more results; that their ed school ideas really can work. Talk in generalities and gloss over the details.
"radical inclusion."
I think our town qualifies for this term, but they just call it full inclusion. It continues mostly through sixth grade, but it's still there in seventh and eighth.
Our town is known for this. People move to our town for its emphasis on the learning disabled. People write letters to the editor about how wonderful it is. I met another parent this past weekend who told me she moved to our town specifically for her autistic son. She loves the idea that he is fully integrated with the other kids and doing the same(?) work. LD kids and their families move in and more kids get sent to private school.
The school claims that with differentiated instruction they can make this work. They can't. My sixth grade son is doing very little writing and direct reading comprehension. Posters, cards, dioramas, artifacts, and anything that produces a "product" that isn't anything like a book report or test. In fact, outside of his seventh grade math, he doesn't get any tests.
I've talked in the past about how they want it both ways, but it doesn't work. Parents complain that they want more for their kids, but all they get is enrichment and not acceleration.
My son got low marks on one assignment because he didn't know quite what to do with a girl on his team who just wanted to cut up tiny pieces of construction paper and complain. They like the social idea of these kids working together, but they give them no instruction on how to do it.
This is a very touchy subject. Twenty to twenty-five percent of our kids go to other schools, but many think that the parents just want an elite education. I've seen both sides. Some in town feel very satisfied that my son is back in the public schools. One teacher's aide commented to me that my son's public school is so good!
The principal is very nice. We have talked about kids who go to or come from private schools. She understands why, but she still thinks that kids "can" get a good education in the public schools. Unfortunately, it's up to parents to make sure that their kids make the transition from very low expectaion K-8 schools to high expectation honors classes in high school.
Their idea of education is much fuzzier than mine. It's the only way they can make full inclusion work. They know there are limitations and they know why kids get sent to private schools, but they say that they have concerns that private schools don't have to deal with. They say that private school kids are "pre-selected". It's a tacit admission that they should, but can't do more.
Full inclusion is more important than academics, and they redefine education to cover this up.
This is an interesting take, and I'm sure it's true.
I also think there's more to it. My friend told me that her child's high school English Honors teachers recently assigned a paper with two options:
- 5-page paper
- 3-page paper illustrated with drawings
That's Honors English, which is quite selective.
My niece, also a high school freshman, recently had to spend 2 days drawing an animal in biology class. Two days. With no instruction whatsoever.
I don't know how many of you have ever sat down and tried to draw an animal "from scratch." I have, and it's not pretty. As far as I know, the only people who can draw without instruction are autistic savants and people with frontotemporal dementia.
drawings of horses by typical 4-year olds
drawing by 3-year old autistic girl
I'm encountering two things:
- "visual learning" incorporated into all subjects across the board [update: having looked into the research on multimedia learning, I think that done right this may be a good idea when the instructor, not the student, creates the visuals]
- a complete and total absence of any instruction whatsoever in how to create things visual
The result -- and I've seen this, at times, in my own district -- is that when students absolutely must commit material to longterm memory, teachers fall back on the memory tricks we all know, e.g. direct memorization and the creation of mnemonic devices. That's what Ms. Peacock is talking about in the WordPOP! videos. She is talking about having students come up with visual images that will help them remember unfamiliar words such as "vex."
Mnemonic devices work, but you don't need a high school teacher to pass out worksheets and tell you to make some up.
You can just buy the book.
visual learning
foldables
why lawyers burn out
Independent George re: foldables
your tax dollars at work part 2
my busy day
not your father's formative assessment
remembering key concepts in math with foldables
south of the border
Steve H and palisadesk on foldables
homeschooling convention: no foldables
you may have to hit refresh a couple of times to load these pages:
21st century skills in Singapore
the master plan
horselaughs are heard in Singapore
more horselaughs in Singapore
11 comments:
As a parent of a kid in SPED, I HATE these visual things. Yes, my daughter has pretty significant receptive language delays, and she can learn certain concepts better with a visual aid. But that doesn't mean everything has to be an art project rather than a written report. Repetition and memorization can be just as effective, and we fall back on those to pass tests and quizzes where there actually is content. And don't get me started on the group project overkill--they are a disservice to my autistic daughter and the other kids as well. The roles in the group and expectations are never explicitly spelled out, so the entire group is penalized for not working together effectively. I think inclusion is sometimes effective, but in my experience, more effective education occurred in small resource or self-contained classes. She actually got direct instruction and drill rather than a ton of group projects or art projects in every subject.
"I also think there's more to it."
I know that there is no complete escape. I'm just hoping that I can talk with other parents to find the best path through high school for my son.
I was talking with my sister-in-law yesterday about her daughter's high school in Michigan. They have both AP classes and IB classes. Many of the AP classes are cross-listed as IB classes. They also have 3 levels or approaches to the IB program. It sounds like you have to have it all planned out from the freshman year.
Some teachers were pushing my niece to enter their IB program. They told her that those students get first pick of everything. The downside to the IB program is that it's a bigger commitment than picking and choosing AP classes and that only some colleges give you any credit.
I would like to see a parent support group in our town that would pass knowledge down to new parents and kids.
I think that in many cases educators don't realise how much there is to visual drawing and design. They expect English teachers, or even biology teachers, to teach it without thinking that there is any need to train those teachers in the skill. Art is easy, everyone is an artist, everyone can be creative, maybe. But the skills in technical drawing are very precise, hard skills.
But the skills in technical drawing are very precise, hard skills.
Only if you intend your drawing to actually look like its subject. The art schools are all about abstract expressionism and transgressive art these days - self expression and 'authenticity' ranks above technical skill.
Yes, we've even managed to find a way to invent 'fuzzy art'. Huzzah!
//But the skills in technical drawing are very precise, hard skills.//
Darn straight. I'm working on a comic book and I'm floundering a bit because, even though I'm damn good, I'm missing some basic skills due to not having any formal training. Those skills demand training and precision (i'm working on developing them).
It's no wonder people don't value the arts or view it has a career path that demands real skill when it's being abused and used as filler for other subjects.
I think SteveH basically nailed it.
It is difficult to get people to be honest about inclusion. It has both pros and cons -- cons for both the average-or-better students, and for the "included" students. On the other hand, the pre-inclusion days were not so great either, especially for students with special needs. What no one is really looking at, however, is how to make inclusion work effectively.
The seminal work that kick-started the "inclusion" movement was Lloyd Dunn's 1968 study, Special education for the mildly retarded-- Is much of it justifiable? , which surveyed the available evidence at the time and concluded that both the diagnostic and labelling criteria in use were highly suspect, and the "special" programs offered were frequently inferior.
Dunn called for a more rigorous special education system overall with highly skilled teachers, intensive instruction based on identified learning needs (as opposed to disability labels -- there is no empirical basis for different teaching methodologies or practices based on students' supposed "diagnoses:" reading-delayed students, for example, have similar instructional needs whether they are labelled mildly retarded, learning-disabled, communication-impaired, behaviourally-disorder, or whatever).
Dunn's article was a call to arms to make "special education" more than well-meaning daycare with lots of arts and crafts, vocational training and low expectations. Sadly many of his criticisms remain true today.
Subsequent studies and meta-analyses of the research have reached similar conclusions. Carlberg and Kavale's meta-analysis in 1980 found that special class placement was significantly damaging to students with mild to moderate intellectual delays but segregated settings were beneficial
for emotionally disturbed and learning-disabled students. Mildly retarded kids showed a definite drop in standard scores vis-a-vis their peers in "mainstreamed" setting, indicating that they not only did not hold their own, they lost ground despite the "special" placement, lower class size, etc
Epps and Tindal in 1987 examined the literature on segregated class vs. inclusion placement over the period from around 1930 onward and concluded that no benefit could be attributed to special class placement, generally speaking. They found no evidence for the efficacy of the academic programming or the different type of teaching provided. Much of this involved the "teaching to the preferred modality" hoopla that has made a resurgence recently and which has been refuted by Steven Stahl and Daniel Willingham, among others.
Wang, Anderson and Bram published another exhaustive meta-analysis of studies involving thousands of students that showed large achievement differences for mildly impaired students in mainstreamed setting versus ones in segregated classes (including segregated classes with part-time integration in the mainstream), these differences being in favour of the former.
In short, there is no available evidence that self-contained special education classes produce better outcomes for students with mild delays than the regular class; in fact, exactly the opposite is true. However, learning-disabled students (whether their disability is the result of poor instruction or of neurological difference) do benefit from intensive remedial classes with specially targeted teaching techniques and accelerated curricula. In an inclusive setting, these LD/CD (curriculum disabled)students continue to fall behind. They require explicit instruction in must reading, written language and math skills.
However, here another important distinction must be made. The statistics tell us about the "big picture," but they tell us nothing about the individual case. Just as a drug might be effective for 95% of patients presenting with a certain clinical profile, and detrimental to the other 5% (but without more data you cannot infer into which of the two groups a particular individual might place), the fact that "special classes" as a rule deliver a poorer outcome than "regular" classes as a rule does not mean that individual schools, or special classes, might not be vastly superior. The number of these would be too small to affect results in in large-scale studies.
Effective teaching depends on teacher skill and knowledge, availability of the appropriate curriculum materials, and some other variables. Given these, a "special class" can produce outstanding, even "miraculous" results. Zig Engelmann did this in his preschool program back in the '60's . See his Teaching Reading to Children With Low Mental Ages (1967) and The Effectiveness of Direct Verbal Instruction on IQ Performance and Achievement in Reading and Arithmetic (1968).
There are effective teaching programs for students with developmental disabilities that can assist in their becoming capable of semi-independent (or independent) living and employable. Effective private schools and some public school programs as well have always provided these. What the research shows should not surprise anyone: that the majority of public school programs offered these students are ineffective and a waste of time and money, not to mention the troubling issues of equity and the crippling of life opportunity. Of course, by inference, it also suggests that the standards in the "regular" class are not all that high either. I won't go there, for the moment.
Other benefits to "inclusion" that have not been separately validated as effective, but which make sense as contributing factors, are: more time on task, higher expectations, better peer models, more instructional time, fewer transitions, and a more enriched learning environment (low IQ, LD or developmentally delayed students benefit as much from interesting and engaging curriculum as "normal" students do).
Parents rarely have meaningful choices in these areas. By opting to "include" their child with learning disabilities or autism, they are likely gaining in opportunities for social competence, but losing opportunity for the child to be taught intensively and appropriately for maximum learning. Which is more important? That is really for the family to determine, but they should have a realistic choice. "Radical inclusion" takes that choice away, and nearly guarantees that the exceptional student will not get a secondary school diploma. I would like to see some public alternative schools that target such populations and provide intensive curricula and accelerated learning techniques.
They could do this with the funding already allocated (in most districts/states) for students with exceptionalities. If more money was required, foundations like Schwab and businessmen like the Kinko's founder might be prepared to sponsor model programs.
Then these students could return to an "inclusive" setting with a realistic probability of success. Meanwhile the "regular" students could be appropriately challenged -- with more than "foldables."
References:
Carlberg, C., & Kavale, K. (1980). The efficacy of special versus regular class placement for exceptional children: A meta-analysis. Journal of Special Education, 14, 295-309.
Dunn, L. M. (1968). Special education for the mildly retarded-- Is much of it justifiable? Exceptional Children, 35, 5-22.
Engelmann, Siegfried.(1968) The Effectiveness of Direct Verbal Instruction IQ Performance and Achievement in Reading and Arithmetic. In Jerome Helmuth (ed) Disadvantaged Child, v. 3
Engelmann, Siegfried (1967) Teaching Reading to Children With Low Mental Ages, from Education and Training of Mentally Retarded, v.2, no.4 Council for Exceptional Children, Arlington, Va.
Epps, S., & Tindal, G. (1987). The effectiveness of differential programming in serving students with mild handicaps: Placement options and instructional programming. In M. C. Wang, M. C. Reynolds, & H. J. Walberg (Eds.), Handbook of special education: Research and practice (vol. 1 pp. 213-248). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Wang, M. C., Anderson, K. A., & Bram, P. J. (1985). Toward an empirical data base on mainstreaming: A research synthesis of program implementation and effects. Pittsburgh: Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh.
"On the other hand, the pre-inclusion days were not so great either, especially for students with special needs."
This is true, so many parents hesitate to complain. The schools talk about differentiation, but it doesn't work that well. There is a conflict between high and low expectations.
Another commendable goal is to keep all kids in town so that they aren't bussed all over the state for special services. This adds more pressure on any sort of differentiated learning structure. Because this is a big focus in our schools, some had suggested "tuitioning in" LD students from other communities as a way to make money. Many parents were quietly worried.
In many ways this is a zero sum proposition; if one group gets more, the other group gets less. The wider the range of abilities, the worse it gets, and this is exacerbated as you go up the grades. By seventh grade, the school is forced into at least a couple of different tracks; one for math and one for foreign language. There might be other class groupings, but they don't make a big deal about it. This means that many seventh grade students are in for a rude surprise when the teachers start to really push to get them ready for high school.
The school tries to walk a fine line. They can't differentiate the material too much or else you might as well put the kids into separate classrooms. They try real hard to keep all same-age kids together. They will keep a child back a year or send them to an out-of-town program only in the worst cases. They are also very good at taking parents wishes into account. (The schools do offer special services too. Not everything is done with inclusion.)
However, this does have a direct effect on the curriculum and expectations. They can't have it both ways, and it has the biggest effect in math.
But that doesn't mean everything has to be an art project rather than a written report.
The kids shouldn't be doing art projects at all unless they're in an art class.
What's gotten muddled here is the fact that good visuals in a textbook or lecture help people remember the material.
But that's good visual material presented by the textbook or teacher - not visual material produced by the student.
As far as I know there's no research showing that students remember things better when they spend two days drawing pictures of animals.
It's no wonder people don't value the arts or view it has a career path that demands real skill when it's being abused and used as filler for other subjects.
Absolutely.
It takes years of effort & practice to do these things well.
"But that's good visual material presented by the textbook or teacher - not visual material produced by the student."
Exactly. Megan has great visual recall for maps and charts. She can draw the US with states freehand and also the shape of each state individually with cities included. We also have learned math facts through a visual display; in 3rd grade her case manager put up a bulletin board with all the facts on it next to her desk and she had the facts down cold pretty quickly. Many charts in science textbooks have also been very good, and I made my own visual aids to teach place value. The SPED teachers at school even adopted that one for other kids. But somehow this has been translated into all these artsy things. There is no art talent in our house at all. The only one of these projects Megan liked was a map one, as that has been one of her obsessions for awhile.
This is a sensitive subject for me. On the one hand, in our district, you often hear gifted kids' parents complaining about having SPED kids included and how the SPED kids get all the resources. On the other hand, they will not allow acceleration for gifted and the official title of the program even has "Differentiated Education" in it. It's really a lot of enrichment projects. I've known parents who have pulled their kids out of the program because of dissatisfaction. It's all curriculum problems--so much of mainstream is ineffective for everyone. I don't want to settle for lower expectations for my SPED daughter, but the expectations seem just as low for my "mainstream" 2nd grader with bad habits developing in spelling and writing.
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