EDUC732 presentation

1. Culturally Relevant
Teaching
Kristie Keenan
EDUC732

3. The 3 R’s of Education
ORelationships
ORelevance
ORigor

5. Relationships
O Get to know your students and their
culture so that you can better meet their
needs
O “We are all learners together– including
the teacher. It is not the curriculum and
the teacher against the student; it is the
teacher and student together tackling the
curriculum, and together they will be
successful” (Tileston & Darling, p.102).

6. Ideas to Build Relationships
O “I am From Poems”, “Me Charts”, etc.
O Get to know Student Learning Styles
O Perceptual Style
O Attentional Style
O Conceptual Style
O Thinking Style
O Talk to students about their perspectives, ideas,
and goals
O Let students know you believe in them through
encouragement and praise

8. Relevance
O Making learning meaningful and teaching
for relevance is critical
O Our brains discard 99% of incoming
information… So how do we make it
stick?
O “Making content relevant has the potential
to increase student performance by as
much as 40 percentile points” (Tileston &
Darling, p.80).

9. Ideas to Make Learning
Relevant
O Eliminate cultural bias in teaching
materials and content
O Provide personal and practical application
O Incorporate all of the
senses- “98% of all new
information comes to use
through taste, smell, touch,
hearing, and sight” (p. 82)

10. Ideas to Make Learning
Relevant Cont.
O Facilitate “contextual learning” experiences-
constructivist learning, real-life problem solving,
authentic assessments, etc.
O Incorporate All Multiple Intelligences
O Styles and preferences vary from one ethnic
group to another
O Activate Prior Knowledge
O “Our students are more likely to „get it‟ from the
beginning if we can find ways to either tap into
prior learning or…create them” (p.92)

12. Rigor
O “The best learning state is one in which
students are moderately challenged, so that
they remain motivated. We do not want the
challenge to be impossible; we want it to be
incremental” (p.97).
O Zone of Proximal Development

13. Ideas to Provide Rigor
O Help Build self-efficacy
O “I know I can do this because I have been
successful before.”
O Scaffold students‟ learning
O “We create a way for students to gain the
understanding needed to venture to higher
learning” (p.98)
O Stimulate In-Depth Thinking
O Wiggins & McTighe‟s 6 levels of understanding

15. References
O Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive
teaching: Theory, research and practice. New York,
NY: Teachers College Press.
O Tileston, D., Darling, S. (2008). Why culture counts:
Teaching children of poverty. Bloomington,
IN: Solution Tree Press.
O Wolfe, P. (2010). Brain matters: Translating research
into classroom practice. (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA:
ASCD.