post 6

Starting with a good unit is the starting point of differentiation. You need absolute clarity of what you want the students to learn and why to have true differentiation. These are sometimes called essential understandings. Starting with the advanced learners and then Tiering for the lower students would be the next step in planning for differentiation. This can also be done the other way around starting with the lower students.

The students need to have a sense of community in the classroom for it to all work. They need to be able to trust each other to learn. They all need to feel safe and secure in their surroundings. Students will not want to share their ideas if they do not trust their group members. Growth is what should be focused on not who is the smartest one. The students need to learn how to help each other not just rely on the teacher. It should be a team effort. To me, this is the or one of the most important parts of having a differentiated classroom.

Flexible grouping and having different tasks assigned and/or chosen also helps a lot with differentiation. This can mean that some groups are student lead or teacher lead. Teachers should differentiate the content or process. Teachers should also differentiate for readiness, interest, and learning profile. All of the tasks should seem just as important and fun as any of the others because you really don't want anybody to feel left out or that the assignment is unfair.  

Continuous assessments are necessary to show what the students need to learn. This can be informal or formal assessment. A short pre-assessment can really tell you where the students need to be grouped and what they still need to learn. exit cards also help the teacher to know what the students know. A 3-2-1- summary is an example. This is where the students write three things they learned during the activity or lesson. I really like the idea of exit cards because it is good for those students who do not usually voice their opinions or learning and every students participates and shows what they have learned.

Tiering in differentiation

Tiering is necessary for differentiationTo me tiering is putting in scaffoldings that are just right. this also includes asking: what range of learning needs are you likely to address? what should students know? what is your starting point in the lesson? what is your first cloned version? what is your second cloned version? in class, we saw some cloned worksheets that were all very similar but they were different for those who were on lower or higher levels. I think this is how to differentiate.

The difference between good teaching and differentiation is that for differentiation the teacher is having different activities that are simultaneously meeting the specific needs of each student in the class. I think all of the hallmarks that we have learned about really help teachers to be able to do this.

We did some examples in class of how to differentiate. We did worksheets that were in different groups. We differentiated for reading levels and the reading process, readiness, comprehension, and for readiness. We also had a choice in some of the activities. We differentiated the content by letting us choose the different presidents. This also differentiated for our personal interests.

I think if we can do this for all of our lessons, the students will really learn quickly and be more motivated to learn because they are all on their levels and they have a choice in their learning. This also makes them feel more in control of their own learning. If the students are more excited about learning, this makes it easier for everyone. I am so excited to try this in a classroom!

post 4

There are important things about differentiation that I learned while reading this week. some of those things include, emphasis on the child as an individual. This is probably one of the most important things when talking about differentiation. If a child is not viewed as an individual, they will not feel that they are cared about. Independence is also an important aspect of differentiation. Activities that are planned should be geared toward the individual cild and encourage independence. I really liked the part in the book by Carol Tomlinson that said

" The point is to relentlessly seize the remarkable opportunity of a teacher to shape lives- to do the best we can to ensure that we are better at reaching children today than yesterday, better at it this year than last. connecting with each child is at the heart of differentiated teaching, because this approach to teaching does not accept learners as interchangeable parts."

I think that this is the whole idea of differentiation summed up into a few lines. This also was exactly the entire presentation by Sylvia was about.  Every student deserves to have a teacher that cares about their education and their individual needs. Being better at this should be a goal of every single teacher.

post 3

This week in class we discussed more examples of morning meetings. I really liked this morning because of the fun ideas for the greetings. I really liked the activity where you throw a ball to someone and they say the name of the person who threw it to them and then they throw it to someone else. I also think that writing questions on a ball and then having the students catch the ball and answer the questions their thumb landed on. This could be a really fun activity for many different questions. You could use it for any subject really just to review what was learned earlier in the week.

We also discussed the hallmarks more in depth this week. It was very interesting to me because there were a few different common themes between the majority of the hallmarks. The first and most talked about one was that you need to keep your end goal in mind when planning. working together to achieve goals was something that was mentioned in quite a few hallmark presentations as well.  Backwards lesson planning and thinking about the outcome of your teaching were also common themes between the hallmarks. I think that it is very important to have all of the qualities that were talked about in the hallmarks in your lessons. I think for some teachers many of these things come naturally for teachers and other things will need work. Just talking about doing these things makes me more excited to teach and make goals for me and for the students I will be working with.