KELLOUGH Chapter 2: Professional Responsibilities of Teachers of Young Adolescents

Zombie-Based Curriculum?

Teaching style (Kellough definition):  the way teachers teach, their distinctive mannerisms complemented by their choices of teaching behaviors and strategies.

Last semester, during my novice-teaching experience at a local gifted middle school, I was given the opportunity to design an engaging curriculum for a fifth-grade Intervention class made up of 45 students.  One of the challenges was that the classroom did not have enough desks, so a third of the students ended up sitting on the floor.  There was no available technology; in fact, there was no defined space on which I could regularly write where all students would be able to receive instruction.  Two of the students in the class were enrolled in a foreign language course, being simultaneously taught in the same room by another instructor.  Last, half the class would attend only every other day due to their participation in band.  It was a class ripe for creativity and divergent thinking.

I was aware of the research on increasing children's comprehension, engagement, and attention to details through high novelty stories - such as those which have surprise twists and endings, more intense and active verbs, colorful adjectives, and unfamiliar characters.  I worked on designing an interdisciplinary unit of study that supported literacy, math/science, social studies, and the Arts.  One of the problem-solving, higher level thinking projects I planned was a geography lesson on sustainability through the scenario of a zombie apocalypse (we started the first week learning about honey bees and Colony collapse disorder).

Kellough states that "style develops from one's beliefs and experiences, and from one's knowledge of research findings" - and I concur.  The Characteristics of the Competent Classroom Teacher (pages 57-59) and the Behaviors Necessary to Facilitate Student Learning (pages 60-65) contain the ideas I assessed daily while constructing this unit.  

Reference:
Beike, S. M., Zentall, S. S. (2012, February 13). The Snake Raised Its Head: Content Novelty Alters the Reading Performance of Students at Risk for Reading Disabilities and ADHD. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0027216