The animals in the following pages use a variety of instructional techniques to address the needs of learners in their linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. These animals learned these techniques through this week's reading and videos as well as their personal experiences. 

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Annie Armadillo uses Analogize It (McTighe, 2021) to check for understanding with her students. This encourages higher level thinking but also allows for a significant amount of variance between students, which permits students to participate at their individual level.

Bartholomew Bird uses a Behavior Frequency Form (Vacca et al., 2017, p. 90) to monitor student behaviors. In his experience, one of the most frequently underdeveloped skills with which teachers enter the profession is behavior management. As a special educator, Bartholomew has worked with dozens of students with social-emotional disabilities, and the impact their behavior has on their academics cannot be overstated. Tools like the BFO can help a teacher identify triggers, the purpose (function) of the behavior, and any strategies that seem to reduce or correct the behavior. When these behaviors are properly addressed, teachers will almost undoubtedly see corresponding academic improvements.

Clara Cow uses the CARI reading assessment (Vacca et al., 2017, p. 104) to obtain informal, authentic information about her students' reading comprehension. Through the timed feature of the CARI, she also gains an understanding of how quickly her students read silently, which, in conjunction with the comprehension scores, helps her know if students are reading at an appropriate pace for understanding.

Danny Dinosaur uses Differentiated Writing Assignments to meet the different writing needs of diverse learners in his classroom. In his video, Chris Gable emphasizes the importance of differentiation in the language arts (or any) classroom. Although many teachers understand the utility of differentiated texts, differentiated writing assignments are less common. However, when students are able to answer a writing prompt that is relevant to them and on their ability, they are more likely to engage and excel.

Edna Elephant uses E-Portfolios in her sixth grade Remedial Reading classroom. Students create the portfolio "space" at the beginning of the year and add to it throughout the school year. Edna appreciates that the E-Portfolio allows students remote access to their portfolios, so they can work on them outside of school. She also likes that they showcase students' change and growth throughout the school year--change that students themselves can see and own. Finally, since Edna houses the portfolios in the district Drive, students will retain access to their portfolios after they leave her class, which will enable them to further reflect in future years.

Freddy Frog uses the Fry Reading Assessment to quickly judge text complexity of his texts. Since he teaches all subjects in his general education fifth grade class, he uses texts from a wide variety of genres and authors. The Fry Reading Assessment allows him to gauge the complexity of texts for which some of the "traditional" measures, such as Lexile or Guided Reading, are unavailable. Freddy has a classroom with a wide disparity in reading ability, and the Fry Assessment allows him to meet students on their individual levels.

Gretta Grasshopper uses Graphic Organizers (Lee County video) on the floor in her sheltered middle school Social Studies class. The visual and kinesthetic nature of the floor graphic organizer allows students to see and interact with the content, which uses different parts of their brain, increases exposure to the material, and strengthens retention. 

Henry Hippo is a new teacher working in a culturally and linguistically diverse school. He is nervous because this school is very different from the school where he did his student teaching. However, his mentor teacher has told him that it is important to hold High Expectations (Vacca, et al., 2017, p. 63) for all students at his school, regardless of their background, because this is part of culturally responsive teaching. Henry understands that this means he must get to know his students and their individual abilities so that he can help each student grow and learn.

Iggy Inchworm has recently conducted an Implicit Bias Audit (Rucker, 2019). This revealed the underlying biases--most of which he was unaware--that influence his perception of, attitude towards, and reactions to, various students and coworkers at his school. Although the implicit bias audit made him feel squirmy at times (he is a worm, after all), he knows that it is an important step in providing a welcoming, encouraging, rigorous academic classroom for his students. 

Jasmine Jaguar uses classroom Journaling (Vacca, et al., 2017, p. 63) to encourage student writing. By providing a "judgement-free" zone, she allows students to write about anything they want, in whatever style they want, as long as they write for ten minutes at the beginning of class each day. Students are then allowed to use this journal to spark ideas for classroom assignments--or not. She has seen significant growth in her students' writing abilities since beginning this practice. 

Karen Koala uses Kids' Books to introduce new topics in her diverse fourth grade general education classroom. Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz emphasize that picture books can be a useful tool for teaching diverse populations of all ages (2017; p. 72). Karen has noticed that her students                     enjoy being read picture books that were              written for younger grades to help them understand complex concepts. For example, she uses Where the Wild Things Are to teach plot mountain. This simple story has a perfect story arch, and students quickly grasp the difficult concepts of conflict and resolution when modeled through a familiar story.

Linda Leopard identifies the Lexile Level (Vacca, et al., 2017, p. 108) of each of her class texts. She then analyzes the given Lexile level from her students' most recent ELA EOG and matches students with appropriate texts. She also creates an individual plan to grow each student's Lexile level so that by the end of the school year they have made 1+ year's growth, which should then be reflected on the subsequent ELA EOG. 

Martin Moose learned that Media and Music can be included in his high school language arts class to increase student engagement. In his argumentation unit, Martin's students analyzed Tweets and Facebook posts to determine styles of propaganda, identify strong and weak argumentation, and identify bias. In his poetry unit, he invited students to bring in lyrics from their favorite artists, which they then analyzed through the lens of poetry, including identifying figurative language, noting rhyme and rhyme scheme, and analyzing imagery (Rucker, 2019). 

Nelson Newt uses Numerous examples to help reinforce vocabulary. In her video, the Lee County teacher explained that students need to be exposed to new academic vocabulary at least seven times in order to "own" the word. Therefore, Nelson incorporates multiple exposures to all new content vocabulary and also explicitly teaches plural forms so that English Language Learners can understand regular and irregular noun forms. 

Ollie Octopus incorporates student Opinion throughout the learning process. 

Ollie identified that one of the themes that emerged in all of this week's readings and videos is the importance of knowing and utilizing student opinion--whether that be knowing what current events interest them or garnering their self-assessment on a writing task--involving students in the instructional process increases engagement, especially with culturally diverse students who may feel like their voices are overlooked by the larger society.

Petey Penguin knows that Parental Involvement is key for student achievement and providing culturally responsive instruction. She invites parents to come speak to her middle school math class about the various ways that they use math in their everyday lives and careers. This strengthens the home-school partnership and increases student engagement.