Teaching BIG Ideas in Diverse Middle School Classrooms

Kappa Delta Pi Record, Summer 2008 by Conderman, Greg, Bresnahan, Val

With a focus on concepts and principles, teachers can lead students in diverse classrooms in the efficient and broad acquisition of knowledge.

Imagine a classroom co-taught by a general educator and special educator that includes 11 students with individualized education programs (IEPs), two students with autism, five students from low socioeconomic levels, two students whose parents do not speak English, and five high achievers from enriched backgrounds. What should these teachers do to respond effectively to such diverse needs? Should they change the way they usually teach this class? Should they develop different activities and assessments? Who should they consult for suggestions and guidance? How will they help all students meet standards on required state tests?

Does this sound like a class described only in college texts? Actually, this description represents the authors' middle school co-taught general education social studies class. Ensuring the success of each student in this classroom-regardless of ethnicity, background, gender, ability, or income-represents the mandate for all teachers under No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

With the increase of diversity in classrooms and conflicting or confusing advice from experts, teachers may feel pulled in many directions as they race to cover the curriculum. Successfully meeting the challenge of teaching in diverse classrooms depends, in part, on using research-based instructional methods that boost academic skills and foster independent learning. In our review of the research and our work in diverse classrooms, we discovered and used several effective methods that produced significant student academic gains for all students in our classroom. This article describes one of those methods: teaching big ideas.

What's the Big Idea?

American education has been characterized as overstuffed and undernourished (Dempster 1993). Though students are being exposed to a considerable amount of information, they are educationally undernourished because little of this information is explored in-depth. Teachers are challenged to adequately cover all their content or grade-level state or district learning objectives (Kottler, Kottler, and Kottler 2004). Consequently, they may teach for exposure-that is, students learn a little about many things. Some students, however, do not benefit from this approach. Only the highest performing students or those with considerable subject background knowledge learn, understand, and apply material just from exposure. In short, the erroneous assumption that more is better works against the learning for all except the highest-performing students (Coyne, Kameenui, and Carnine 2007).

Rather than placing the emphasis on exposing students to every objective or everything in a textbook, teachers might ask themselves: What are the one or two main ideas or core concepts from this lesson that all students should learn? In other words, what big ideas should all students learn today? In sixth grade science, students may learn that a well-formed hypothesis can be tested. In a primary reading class, students may learn that spoken words are made up of a series of sounds. In an upper elementary reading class, students may learn that every story has a main character who attempts to resolve a problem. Emphasizing big ideas helps students understand the discipline, develop higher-level thinking skills, and make connections among and between concepts (Deshler and Schumaker 2006).

In contrast, presenting details-the traditional approach in middle and secondary grades-may be easier for teachers, but more difficult for students with memory, attention, and language-processing issues (Deshler and Schumaker 2006). Without considerable support, students in diverse classrooms may not be able to distinguish important from trivial facts, memorize facts for exams, or meaningfully associate isolated facts with corresponding main ideas and concepts (Conderman and Pedersen 2006).

Students from diverse cultures benefit from contextualized instruction presented in meaningful and relevant ways rather than presentations that emphasize details leading only to cursory understanding (Chamberlain 2005). Similarly, students who are gifted report that general education teachers repeat too much information they have already mastered and emphasize learning facts rather than ideas (Callagher, Harradine, and Coleman 1997). Most test items from general education classes, however, are based on facts. Consequently, it is not unusual for middle or high school students in inclusion content-area classes to be assessed on 60-80 facts per test (Deshler and Schumaker 2006). This practice seems counterproductive because half of today's technical knowledge will be replaced within a few years (Davidson 2005).

In contrast to focusing on facts, teachers can support the learning of all students in diverse classrooms by

* establishing the main idea(s) of the lesson or unit;

* selecting examples that support those ideas;