Meeting the Needs of All Students

  The IRIS module mentions six guidelines or principles that should guide teachers’ planning in order to meet the needs of all students: Big Ideas, Conspicuous Strategies, Mediated Scaffolding, Strategic Integration, Primed Background Knowledge, and Judicious Review. Big Ideas corresponds with the idea that all students learn differently and so flexibility should be built into the timeline from the very beginning of planning a learning unit. Conspicuous Strategies lends itself to our planning, implementing, and making clear to our students which steps are expected to be taken in completing a task or lesson. If there is a way to help the students be successful on project then they need that information and the how-to from the beginning. Mediated Scaffolding is the idea of providing students with assistance necessary to be successful on an assignment or assessment and slowly reducing the amount of assistance provided and theoretically needed until the assistance is no longer required at all. Strategic Integration is where teachers get to be creative. Including outside, relevant ideas into the topic being taught is a great way for students to explore the topic more thoroughly. For instance, if we are learning about primates, asking a local animal rescue to bring their baby spider monkeys in for a visit is an effective method for increasing the students’ interest and fascination in the topic. Strategic Integration is again making content more relevant to the students. If we can tie into the lesson personal testimonies about the subject at hand we are increasing the students’ ability to relate academic content to real-life. Judicious Review is essentially including review at any and all appropriate times throughout lessons beyond the one where concepts are first introduced. We do this all the time in Sunday School by asking the children to recall other people in the Bible who had similar experiences to the one being discussed.