The readings for this week focused on differentiated instruction. Like both of them mentioned, I find the concept to be a little intimidating. Despite having done some differentiated instruction in lesson plans, I always worry that the adjustments I make will not be effective. However, after doing the reading I do feel more familiar with the concept. It almost seems easier than I previously thought. I think this is because I have been thinking of differentiated instruction as individualized, which according to the article I am not supposed to be doing. The comparison to the one room schoolhouse was also helpful, and I will definitely keep it in mind as I move towards student teaching in the spring.
The second article broke this down even further, and discussed how an educator could differentiate different parts of their role (content, process, and product). This was helpful because it broke things down into smaller pieces. When I think of differentiation, I tend to think of the whole lesson, when I really could just be changing pieces of it. Even something simple like taking a break in a lesson to allow students to process the new information can be have an impact on their understanding. Knowing this will no doubt help me in the classroom. I also really like the idea of having students choose which assessment they wanted to do, or even coming up with their own. Students get to choose what interests them, and it gives them a sense of independence. There were only a few times in my entire K-12 experience where we got to actually choose what activities we wanted to do, and even fewer times where we could pick our assessment.
Allowing students to choose their assessment is something I definitely would like to try to implement in my future classroom. While I think it might take a little extra time to come up with different assessments for students to choose from, I think it would be worth the effort. However, I would be curious to see how this could be used in different content areas. I am pretty sure this could be used in history/social studies easily (although I could be wrong), but are there classes where this might be more difficult? Let me know what you think.
Hello Erin and thank you for your post.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that allowing the student to choose their own assessment may have many positives towards it. This can also help them become much more independent and allow for a greater choice making ability.
I understand how it can be intimidating. Just remember that as long as it has multiple levels of learning to meet specific students needs you should be fine! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Erin, great post! I agree that at first, differentiation seems a little intimidating. However, I think that the tips in both articles showed that it really is easier than we initially might think. I also loved the idea of students designing their own assessments! I think it would be great for teaching history - I also talked about this in my post.
ReplyDelete