Post 1/18 - Classroom Differentiation

Hiya, folks!! 

This is Tia Janette Smallcomb. I am studying at Utah Valley University to be a Elementary School teacher and it is my goal to be a good one. A key component of being a good teacher is differentiating your instruction. This means you have to know your students and you have to teach them where they're at as individuals and as a whole. You have to teach in different ways and at different levels.  You have to keep in mind a lot of things to make sure each student is learning to their fullest potential. 

In the book Differentiation in Practice by Carol Ann Tomlinson, I learned some beneficial things:

Quote: "Teachers proactively engage learners where they are, recognizing that an elementary classroom is a mixed bag of readiness levels, interest, and learning preference."

I love this quote! This is something for teachers to embrace with their whole being! While we are teaching we need to remember that elementary school impacts kids view of school, learning process, and themselves as learners.We must be proactive, differentiating instructing isn't something you do once and move on, it's ongoing and it is a mixture of a great many things. We must make learning a fun, good, and beneficial experience for each child, so that they will find learning fun and continue doing it.

 Differentiated teaching is responsive teaching: 

• Who she teaches
• Where she teaches
• What she teaches
• How she teaches

Some ways that I read (and liked) about how to differentiate and how to help you figure what to be differentiating include: Pre-assessment and continual assessment, giving more than one way to show understanding, having clear and flexible groups (similar skills/interests vs mixture or both), flexible in all things, involve students in understanding the nature of the classroom and in making it work for all, help students understand importance of competing with oneself to achieve one's "personal best." My favorite thing about differentiation is that we must use it to give children a "way up" not a "way out." They deserve that push in the right direction, a challenge, not the easy way out. 

Student Characteristics:

• Readiness - Scaffold! The best tasks are slightly too hard for the student they need a small amount of help to figure it out.
• Interest - For my Exceptional Students class I worked with a resource teacher that helped kids with reading by choosing passages that the children were interested in. For one boy, it was driving, another was horses. 
• Learning profile - This is the learners preferred mode of learning-the way a learner learns best.  

The curricular elements that can be differentiated are content, process, and products. You adapt these based on student characteristics in need of differentiation. I am excited as a future teacher to engage in differentiating my instruction! It is going to be a hard and arduous task, but it is going to be completely worth it! I want to help each child in the best way possible for them!! :)