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Reflection
Matthew Carlson
OTL565 Reviewing Differentiated Instruction and Exploring CDL Learners
Colorado State University Global Campus
Dr. Richard Schreck
May 1, 2016

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Reflection

This course has given me an opportunity to reflect on many areas of education and how they
relate to educating CDL students, as well as the students I regularly interact with. Currently I work at
an international school in Paraguay and interact with students regularly both as a substitute teacher and
as a tutor. While these students are highly fluent in English (most have been in a bilingual program for
many years) they do frequently encounter problems which are linguistic in nature. Therefore, I believe
the alternative instructional methods addressed in this course do offer important insight into ways I can
refine my actions to better meet the needs of my students. Secondly, I applied the Critical Thinking
exercises required in this class to work I do on a weekly basis with a Chemistry student. Reflecting on
those assignments provides additional insight into implementing practices that benefit CDL students,
but generally represent best practices for supporting the needs of any student.
One critical component to instruction that came up was pre-assessment. Pendergrass (2013)
suggests that effective pre-assessment is essential to effectively differentiating instruction for students.
My role with the tutoring student I am working with is primarily to support her regular classroom
instruction. Therefore, identifying prior knowledge so as to develop a lesson that will be apt for her
specifically is important. Herrera and Murry (2011) extend pre-assessment for CDL students to include
understanding cultural background, where students have come from, when they came, family
dynamics, and previous educational experiences. While I do not consider the students I work with to be
necessarily be CDL students, understanding their culture has been essential in developing positive
relationships and making content relevant. I specifically remember tutoring a different math student
who was struggling not because of language issues or content understanding, but because she had no
understanding of the game of golf and her teacher was asking questions that required an understanding
of being above or below par. The content in this class has certainly reinforced my appreciation for the
need to develop cultural understanding and provided practice which can be used to develop them.

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Teaching vocabulary is another issue that has come up repeatedly. One issue that become
apparent reflecting in Critical Thinking exercises was certainly a need for a more purposeful approach
to reinforcing vocabulary understanding. Herrera and Murry (2011) address throughout their book
different methods and approaches for teaching CDL students, many of which also apply to non-CDL
students. A focus on vocabulary reinforces the idea that all students are in the process of improving
their language acquisition. This is important for academic vocabulary use across many subjects, but
also relates to a unique set of vocabulary represented in each unique discipline. Therefore, as someone
who will be working in education for many years to come, exposure to approaches for vocabulary
instruction which apply to a variety of types of learners is very relevant.

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References

Herrera, S. & Murry, K. (2011). Mastering ESL and bilingual methods: differentiated instruction
for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson
Education.
Pendergrass, E. (2013). Differentiation: It starts with pre-assessment. Educational Leadership, 71(4).
Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/
/Differentiation@_It _Starts_with_Pre-Assessment.aspx

dec13/vol71/