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To Connect Students to Standards-Based Content

We have worked with students interested in Korea, vacuum cleaners, screwdrivers, fences, chickens, James Bond, stop signs, churches, weathervanes, triangles, remote controls, dragons, and basketball. Any of these interests, no matter how obscure or unusual, can be used as part of a standards-based curriculum. For example, one student, Freddie, loved to “do the calendar.” Part of the reason why this was so central to his life was that he had spent 6 years in a self-contained classroom where students of all ages engaged in a calendar exercise daily. Therefore, when we started working with Freddie, his favorite activity was studying the months of the year and answering questions about the holidays and special events (e.g., Independence Day, Christmas, First Day of Spring). Although this interest in the calendar was not hurting Freddie’s education, it also was not helping him to grow as a learner. To enhance Freddie’s learning and to challenge all students in his sixth-grade classroom, we developed a calendar activity appropriate for older students. All of the students in the classroom knew the days of the week and the months of the year, but none of them knew that December 7 was the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor or that the date of the spring equinox can change from year to year. The teachers had all of the students work in small groups to find important dates related to history, science, literature, and math. Freddie was responsible for presenting the event-of-the-day each morning. All students—including Freddie—learned something new, and Freddie was thrilled to have a calendar activity incorporated into the daily schedule. In addition to tapping into a learner’s knowledge base, teachers might also target special skill areas. In a study of inclusive classrooms by Kasa-Hendrickson and Kluth (2005), a teacher, Ms. Holder, used one of her student’s areas of prowess as a tool for connecting her to standards-based social studies learning:

I want her to realize that she is very good at doing some things on her own. So I asked myself, “What is Shantel good at on her own?” Puzzles. She is great at puzzles. I knew another teacher had this magnetic puzzle globe so I asked if I could borrow it. Shantel needs to learn about Europe. It is important for her to have the same academic experiences and I might as well Kluth & Schwarz incorporate what she is good at to do it.

Not only was Ms. Holder able to find classroom time for Shantel to work on the puzzles she so loved, but she also found a creative way to push her student into complex content by using a skill that the learner prized. The instructional decision made by Ms. Holder might be applauded by Temple Grandin (2006), a woman with autism who wished that her teachers would have understood the connections that could have been drawn between fixations and academic content. One of Grandin’s fascinations as a teenager was sliding doors and, as an adult, she explained how this interest might have been exploited to improve her education: “If my teacher had challenged me to learn how the electronic box that opened the door worked, I would have dived head first into electronics. Fixations can be tremendous motivators.” She went on to share that teachers should use fixations to motivate instead of trying to stamp them out. Grandin’s sentiment is similar to one that we often share with teachers: “Don’t squash interests, exploit them!”

Additional Ideas for Connecting Students to Standards-Based Content via Interests or Passions