Differentiation

What student-centered approaches or techniques can you use to address differentiation?

 * A great way to accommodate students with different learning styles and different learning needs is to create a "MENU OF ASSIGNMENTS." "Each student selects the way they would like to be assessed from a list that ideally offers options appealing to different preferred ways of learning (e.g., visual, oral presentations)" (Interactive Learner-Centered Instruction, n.d.).
 * Gifted and talented students are sometimes bored because they work at a much faster pace then their peers. Consider giving them an INDEPENDENT STUDY CONTRACT in which they identify ten questions about the subject that he/she wants answers to, activities he/she will engage in to learn the answers, and the products, with deadlines, he/she will produce to demonstrate learning.
 * Use the idea of "Role Cards" to differentiate learning for students during group work. Give each student a different role based on his/her strengths, weaknesses, or at random. For a group writing project, the roles could be scribe, grammar guide, descriptive word master, and flow editor. Scribe is in charge of putting words on paper. Grammar guide checks for subject verb agreement, correct use of punctuation, or any other issue that you, as the teacher, would like to have students focus on. Descriptive word master is in charge of adjectives, adverbs, and other words that will help the readers of this story visualize it. Finally, flow editor checks transitions and logical sequence.Depending on the size of the group, these roles could be combined or reduced. All students are in charge of the big picture, but this could be broken down as well. This is a idea that is based on “Role Cards” which can be found at http://www.lavc.edu/profdev/lernercentered.pdf (Interactive Learner-Centered Instruction, n.d.).
 * Depending upon the grade level of the students, you can have them work in pairs in order to better assist one another with the instruction. In this way, students who might be struggling with the material can get assistance for students who are not struggling.
 * Students could be allowed to demonstrate mastery of a concept in a method the most feel comfortable with, group presentation, report, Power Point, so long as it both met the needs of the students and fulfilled the requirements for the assignments rubric.
 * Differentiated student instruction can include differentiated levels of scaffolding for an activity. If, for example, students are writing an essay, some might be given: a key vocabulary list (with translations or definitions depending on their issues); a graphic organiser; or a sentence prompter. On the other hand, there my be others who do not need any of those scaffolds at all.
 * Simliar to role cards, break into groups with the high and low students evenly broken up. For the "know it all" kids, tell them they are muted to prevent them from dominating the exercise.
 * Another method that I use all the time is Reflection, at the end of class I have the students write down 3 things they learned and 1 thing they need to get better at. By having them each identify a weakness it "humanizes" the process, no one is perfect. It also gives you something to hold them accountable to. (More topics like this are explored in Assessment.)
 * Think-pair-share is a simple activity you can use in any classroom. Give students time to think about a topic, turn to their neighbor for a short discussion and then share the results with the rest of the class. ACTIVE LEARNING is the learning that occurs when students interact with the subject matter and generate knowledge rather than repeating knowledge. The phrase "guide on the side" characterizes the instructor in an active learning classroom.  There a number of ways to be more active with your learners in addition to think-pair-share:  Minute papers (giving students a few minutes at the end of class to answer the following questions in writing: What was the most important thing you learned today? What important question remains unanswered?; Other writing activities like posing questions and giving the students time to ferret their answers or give them time to freewrite about topics; Brainstorming; Games such as matching, mysteries, group competitions, solving puzzles, dictionary, etc...; Group work allows each person to speak, develop the skills to work with others, collaborate.  Engage students through active learning in your classroom.

Sources:

McManus, D.A. (2005). Learning the Lectern: Cooperative Learning and the Critical First Days of Students Working in Groups.

Interactive Learner-Centered Instruction (pdf). nd. On Course Workshop. Retrieved from http://www.lavc.edu/profdev/lernercentered.pdf

Tomlinson, Carol Ann. (2015). What is Differentiated Instruction? ''Reading Rockets. ''Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-differentiated-instruction