The first thing that must be considered when planning a lesson is how each of your students learn best. A successful lesson allows each student to become engaged and express themselves using their individual strengths. When you are able to include activities that address all learning styles each student has a chance to display their potential.
The next thing that must be considered before planning the lesson is each students prior knowledge to the topic. Some students may need more explicit instruction that others. Some students may need additional support, while other students may require a more challenging task. Keeping the needs of individual students in mind a lesson can be created based on differentiated instruction.
The use of center based instruction allows students to explore different learning styles and learn at their own pace. Students can be grouped based on ability in order to provide the instruction at various cognitive abilities. In this setting all students in the classroom are working on the same curriculum, but the levels of difficulty for each task range from beginner to intermediate to advanced. The teacher should observe and intervene where necessary. For example, beginner groups may need teacher facilitated instruction. Assignments should vary from hands on activities, to listening activities, and visual activities to address they ways that each student prefers to learn.
I have included a link for you to visualize an example of how this type of instruction works within a classroom, published by Edutopia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg38A1ggYiE
Do you feel that this type of instruction would be beneficial to your classroom? What other strategies have worked in your classroom to differentiate instruction?
Emily - What a great video to illustrate your thinking about differentiation. I really like how technologies are built into the stations in different ways to support knowledge and skill-building across developmental levels. Thinking back to comments about active v passive uses of tech with kids, I also really like how the uses of media & tech are woven together with movement, kinesthetics, and plain old conversation with the teacher and each other as part of the 'station experience.' Everything's carefully selected to optimize learning, and provide for collaboration. I'm eager to gather some video clips with similar differentiation examples for content-area upper-grade classes (middle & high school). Edutopia is a great source...
ReplyDeleteEmily,
ReplyDeleteLoved the video that you included in the link and yes I think this type of instruction is beneficial to individualized learning. In my classroom, which is the gym, we run a similar style although it can be more difficult to create station groups based on skill levels. We utilize stations in PE very often as it provides students with a smaller and more controlled environment for them to focus on the skill of the day. It also allows them to work on multiple skill sets during the same class time. We also try to create that "same skill" setting my pulling "low end" students aside and working with them separately. We may have a period of free choice at the end of a lesson where we take time to work with these students as a group in a smaller setting. A different environment I work in is with my 4th grade students at the swimming pool. Here, I group students based on skill level, and within their groups they have restrictions about where they can go in the water, and what skills they are working on. I think it is always crucial to have some kind of differentiation and individualized learning in your class, as like you said, no two students are ever going to learn the exact same way.
ReplyDeleteI really like the video as well. It is great that the centers are a mix between hands on and online activities. One other thing that stood out to me was in the beginning of the video, she said that this works to make every student feel successful. We talk about this concept a lot in the mentoring program. I work with a lot of college students who are working with students for the first time. The discussion usually leads to how different the students in the group are and how we can plan lessons that help all the students in the group.
One question I would have for this teacher is if she ever switches up the groups. I know she said she grouped the students by their skill level, but I wonder if there are ever times when she might put a higher student with a lower student to encourage peer- based learning.