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The following is an excerpt from a PD 360 video:

Adam Baker at Jefferson High School in Lafayette is very successful with the students in his Sheltered English Biology class because he understands their culture and their needs.

“This special class is made up entirely of English language learners who are progressing well in their language acquisition as well as their mastery of biology,” Adam describes, as he walks through his classroom.

“These students had enough of the grasp of the English language to start talking about content laden material and new vocabulary,” he says. “And so these are all level threes and level fours. Some of them have failed biology and I’ve had them in a main-stream class and they failed. And so we brought them in here.

Mr. Adams makes accommodations in the instruction to make the learning more comprehensible for the students. He is preparing them for a lab on human skull evolution.

“They’re doing the labs in the same format that my mainstream students are,” Baker motions toward a science lab station. “There’s a different method in the way I deliver to them and provide instruction and scaffolding. There are differences in how to do the lab with a manipulative model. I’m more pronounced in my body language. I talk more about real life situations or analogies.“

We see Baker standing in front of his class, addressing his students.

“So,” he explains, “studying these fossils and comparing them to modern humans help us piece together a fascinating puzzle: the story of the history of humans on this planet. In this lab activity you’ll be carefully observing and measuring important characteristics of some fossil specimens in an effort to discover part of the story of human-kind’s roots.”

Baker sits down and discusses his differentiated method.

“I like to do this one at the end because it’s very personal,” he says. “We’re talking about humans now. You know, we’ve talked about whales and we’ve talked about all these other animals that have evolved. But now we’re talking about humans. So they should have a really strong basis of how this really happens.”

Baker stands next to an overhead projector, making notes over a graphic as he explains a task to his class.

“You’ll then construct a family tree diagram to show how these various primates are related,” he says. “So we’re going to take these skulls which are models of fossils of earlier humans. Get some information. See how they’ve changed over time. And then we’ll try and piece together this family tree. We are bi-lateral. That means you can cut us right in half. See that. We’re a mirror image. So this part right here is the same over here. So this is pretty accurate. Using other fossils that are very similar in the same way, we have these various fossils.”

Baker turns off the projector.

“Let’s talk about our pre-lab questions,” he says. “First question: If humans evolved from other apes, why do we have apes?”

“Cause they didn’t evolve,” a girl answers. “They just stayed the same.”

“So apes just stayed the same?” Baker asks.

“Yeah,” the girl responds.

“No. You’re wrong. Sorry,” Baker tells her.

“Oh, okay,” the girl says.

Another girl raises her hand.

“Yes?” Baker calls on her.

“These apes today are like our relatives,” the girl says. “We come from a common ancestor. So I figured that we just happened to evolve at a different speed and in different ways. So they’re kind of like our siblings but they have changed since back then. And they are the apes today.”

Video Summary

Foundation: Know the Student Part II From the “Every Teacher—An English Language Teacher: Secondary Edition”

School Improvement Network

“What’s the pressure for a species to live, for an animal to live?” asks Baker.

“Natural selection,” another student answers.

“Natural selection, which is based on what pressure?” Baker draws the answer out of his class.

“Ah, live or die like food or competition,” says a student.

“Food. Competition. Things from the environment,” Baker emphasizes. “You need food, water, and shelter to live and then to reproduce. So with these guys what we have here is a change in the environment. Where do we find apes today?”

“In the jungle,” says a student.

“In the jungle,” Baker repeats. “So these apes stayed in a jungle environment and adapted well to that, whereas these guys, early humans, went to a savanna, tall grasses, where you need to walk on two legs, which led to this evolutionary history. So, apes today are just as evolved as we are but in a different way; they took a different path. “

Baker discusses his success with differentiated education.

“Last semester I had them in a mainstream class where they put their heads down, completely zoned out. This class comes in here and they talk. You know what; you wouldn’t see this in a mainstream class because they’re not comfortable there. These guys, they talk to one another they talk to me and so well, it might be a little more rambunctious, but they are actually open to more ideas and new ideas and are able to make more mistakes and be comfortable with them.

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Segment length: 9:22

Video Summary

Foundation: Know the Student Part II From the “Every Teacher—An English Language Teacher: Secondary Edition”

School Improvement Network