Plan for differentiation.

Now we understand why we differentiation.
Yet, there is still one thing that I was still a little confused on.

How does a teacher really plan for differentiated instruction?

The Differentiation in Practice reading helped to gain an understanding of this.

There are three components that help the teacher to get the students engaged in the material and help them to better understand.

Student Characteristics, Curricular Elements, and Instructional Strategies

When discussing student characteristics, there are three we need to be aware of.
1. Readiness
2. Interest
3. Learning profile

Readiness discusses how prepared a student is to work with a given set of knowledge or skills.
Two things that stood out to me in this reading were that,
"If the student can complete a task effortlessly, he or she may make a good grade, but will not learn."
and
"If the work is well out of reach of the student's current proficiency, the student has no way to accomplish the task - and frustration, not learning, is the result."

That is so essential for the teacher to remember, because we need to make sure we are providing tasks that are a little too difficult for current level of knowledge, but are possible for them to achieve with scaffolding.

Interest is the motivating factor for learning.
As mentioned in the previous post, no two students are the same. Their interests are often very different.
A wise teacher links required content to student interests in order to hook the learner. You want the students to be interested every day in your lessons. If they aren't interested, they aren't paying attention. If they aren't paying attention, they aren't learning.

Lastly, Learning profile refers to the way that the student learns best.
As the teacher it is important for us to know how each student learns best, because sometimes we may be teaching in a way that can impede the student's progress rather than aid. Our goal is to have each child succeed. Therefore, we have to ensure that we are knowledgeable on how we can help each and every child succeed.

There are three curricular elements that teachers can adapt in response to students' readiness, interest, and learning profile.

These three elements are:
1. Content
2. Process
3. Products

Content refers to what the student will learn and the way that the teacher can modify how the student will gain understanding of the content. Typically, all students content is the same with varied ways of allowing the students to reach the content. However, in some situations, the teacher has to vary what the students are learning to best meet their individual needs.

Process pretty much means activities.
Obviously we want our activities to be fun for the students. Yet that isn't the important part. The most important part is that the activities help the students to make connections to the knowledge.
So, yes, it's important to have something fun for the students that keeps them occupied, so you can let out a few tears from being stressed that day. Yet, the part that matters is that the students are internalizing what they're learning.

Lastly, products provide evidence of what a student has come to learn and understand.

Instructional strategies is the last component to get students engaged in the learning.
This is where the teacher is able to group the students into small groups or individually, so that the information can be directed to them individually. There are so many ways to differentiate when splitting them into groups or individually. By doing this, I, as the teacher, can really meet the needs of every student.

Can I just stomp these things into my brain, your brain, every teachers' brains?
This is how we differentiate. This is how we make an impact on students. This is how they learn.

The reading concluded with the story/metaphor of a baseball camp and a classroom.
Reading this put a grin on my face.
My comparison to a sports team didn't seem so silly after all.
If anything, it made me feel like a GENIUS.
Why didn't I write this book?
Oh, yeah. Because I am just learning about differentiation, not a pro.
Be humble, Mallory.
However, I can say, I will shamelessly use sports team references now, because they do make sense.

See ya later,
- Mallory