Differentiation

Today I realized that I achieved differentiated instruction.  It’s something that I kind of overlook, but may kind of do with out knowing.  I know some of my lessons can reach different learners (ie: visual, auditory, kinesthetic), but another way emerged today. 

I gave a sheet in the math practice workbook to my 6^th grade students today so they could do more with putting decimals into fractions.  This allowed me to walk around and see how each individual was doing.  One student, who’s very bright, was way farther ahead of the others.  She completed the worksheet and got to the last 2 problems which had a combination of fractions and decimals that you had to put in order.  I didn’t really have an intention to do this part, but it occurred to me that it was something she could achieve.  I told her to either put them all into fractions or all into decimals and then order them.  She chose to put them into decimals and then she had to do the rest for homework.  She came in the next morning and said she wanted to show me.  She thought she put them in order but I realized that this skill wasn’t something she automatically knew.  I now know that I can have her look ahead and somewhat teach herself.  This is something that I’m going to look into because I have one or 2 more students that could be at this level.  Now I just have to work on differentiating for the lower level students. 

7^th and 8^th don’t exactly have this diversity.  Every student in those classes struggle with the material and I might only have to help the lowest students, which is something I work on anyway.  6^th grade seems to be my experimental group that I am really learning from. 

This differentiation makes me think of my own learning.  I am taking 2 graduate classes this semester and one I’m not a fan of and the other is pretty decent.  It could be the fact that I don’t like politics but I have some background in working with special ed.  In any case, I’ve found that the professor for politics is just not understandable to me.  Almost every class I wonder, “what was his point?”  He makes a powerpoint and usually reads off it and seems to make a statement or rhetorical question based on the slide.  I never really get his point, but others in the class sometimes can respond to him.  Sometimes I think it’s my lack of experience and knowledge of politics and other times I think it’s his teaching style.  It makes me reflect on my own teaching and I wonder, how many of my students just can’t learn from me and my style?  So again, how can I differentiate for my students?