Differentiated Instruction

The most important part about differentiating in the classroom is to design lesson plans around students’ interests and learning styles. When trying to accommodate for classroom needs, it is often not as complicated as it may seem. Differentiating could be something as simple as choosing a topic that interests students. For example, the students in my classroom were tasked with writing a biography on any famous person of their choosing. Students were actively engaged in this assignment because they had enough freedom to feel empowered, yet there was enough structure to help them succeed. Another simple way I’ve seen my associate teacher work differentiation into her instruction is to work current events into assignments. An example of this was when the students made an art piece based on hurricane Irma. This was also a great example of cross-curricular teaching. The class discussed the idea that “storms don’t last forever” and linked the concept of a physical storm like hurricane Irma to emotional storms that occur in their lives. A third example of differentiated instruction in the classroom was performing student-led experiments. When learning about static electricity, the students were presented an advertisement for a “magical balloon” that could stick to the walls and make paper dance. Students were given a balloon and cut up pieces of paper then asked to decide whether they believe someone should buy a “magic balloon”. In each of these examples, there were multiple entry levels to the activity. No matter what level a student is at, they can accomplish any one of these tasks. In my practice, I will take these examples of differentiation that I am learning from my associate teacher and work them into my own lesson plans.

Example of "storms don't last forever" assignment.