Tasks, in my mind would be the most difficult way to differentiate because you are setting different tasks for the students depending on their ability level. One way to remedy this is to create a worksheet that gets progressively harder to accommodate the many different learning levels within the classroom, but the question to ask myself is, “Will this assignment be beneficial to my students?” If yes, then I assign it, if it’s just busy work, then there’s no point in making my students do the assignment. Grouping is probably the easiest way to differentiate in the classroom, because as the teacher I can decide as I’m assigning an assignment how I want to group, do I want to let students pick their own or do I want to assign groups? With grouping though, I have to make decisions based on the individual class I am teaching at the time. I have to know my students well enough to know who works well together, those who will just talk and not stay on task, are there any cliques that will make others feel left out, etc. With this knowledge I can easily make the decision of how I want to group students. While using grouping, I also make decisions about what type of resources students can or will use. If it is a class that will get off task using computers because they would rather look up anything else on the computer than what we are learning, this probably isn’t the best idea, so they will need to use their textbooks or other print resources that are available. Discussion within grouping also comes with decisions that need to be made by the teacher. If students are discussing, but staying on track, I would let them discuss rather than do their written group assignment, because I think you can learn just as much by discussion. This also allows me to determine pacing of an assignment based on the amount of time students are spending doing meaningful work.
Pacing is an easy for me to differentiate as I can make my decisions based upon the student or group of students. I can easily ask myself questions such as, “Is this student lazy or not understanding? Can I tell they are really trying?” “Is this a normal thing for this student to be behind or a rare occurrence?” “Do the actions this child display in the classroom really warrant being given extra time? Are they on task or do they just daydream? If they do just daydream why are they?”, which leads back to the question of laziness or not understanding. Pacing plays a role with dialogue and support, constantly communicating with students and understanding where they are at in school, how their daily life is going, etc. is what helps me make most decisions when it comes to differentiation. When making decisions about outcome and assessment I usually give all students the same type of assessment, but grade the process of the assessment rather than the answers (Tomlinson, C., 2005). Of course, if they get the wrong answer they can’t get full credit, but the process in which they did the question is more important to me (this applies specifically to math in my case). I can look at the assessments in this way and know which steps students understand and what needs to be re taught or practiced more. Assessment allows me to have a guide in my teaching, the curriculum is not my guide anymore (Tomlinson, 2001).
When it comes to differentiation in the classroom, the argument for student responsibility needs to play a role in decision making (Tomlinson, C., 2004). This goes beyond the area of can this student handle this assignment, if we are making decisions based on the responsibility of our students, are we encouraging good responsibility skills or poor? As teachers, I believe one of our responsibilities is to teach a young person to become independent. While they are young we give them a lot more guidance, as they continue to mature, the guidance decreases as the student’s responsibility increases. Just as they are going to be responsible for their own life one day, it is a lesson they learn in school using tasks and assignments as a tool to facilitate. I think this leads to the area of intervention in looking at how responsible the student is being. If the student is not doing their work because they don’t understand, it’s time to intervene with differentiating assignments, but if a student is not doing their work because they are lazy, I don’t think as a teacher I could justify differentiation. Their class work is their job, if they are lazy and we change things for them, what are we really teaching them, in my opinion we are teaching them that laziness is okay. The teacher must play into this role by taking the responsibility to get to know his/her student well enough to make a justifiable decision (Tomlinson, C.,2004).
One important criteria for intervention (at least in my case, teaching at a private school, that has no connection to the government) would be meeting with the parents and developing a plan. This might look something like an IEP, but not necessarily meeting with “specialists.” I have a student in two of my classes right now, one being science, and her mother doesn’t want her work specialized for her. She meets with a tutor twice a week and they work on different subjects together and she works with her mom a lot at home one-on-one. The mother and father want their child to be introduced to every assignment and graded just as everyone else so she doesn’t feel as though she is being treated differently. They don’t mind the fact that she may not receive as high of grades, for them her maintaining a “C” average is fine with them. They don’t want her to feel like she is being treated different academically with the social challenges she faces as a junior high girl. While differentiation, if used properly in the classroom, does not seek to label and segregate students, but to instead give them each an equal opportunity for learning in the classroom setting (Wu, E., 2013), parents and students do not always realize this or think this to be true. I realize that in public schools this approach may not be able to take place, but where I am at now it can be so this would be one of my criteria for intervention.
Letting learning happen and the decision of when to let this happen and when to intervene, for me, simply depends on the student’s attention span and the discussion we are having. I think as far as discussion it is easy to let learning happen, because the teacher can guide the discussion, ask prompting questions, and keep the discussion on track. Discussion is one of the easiest ways to let me know what the students know and don’t know. The classes I teach are all under ten students, all of my students are comfortable with each other, so it is easy for all students to say their input without feeling put down by others. Once the discussion turns purely to me lecturing, they have come to the end of their supposed knowledge and I need to incorporate strategies, if needed, for students to learn the rest of the required learning.
Bibliography
BBC (n.d.) Methods of differentiation in the classroom. http://www.bbcactive.com/BBCActiveIdeasandResources/MethodsofDifferentiationintheClassroom.aspx
McCarthy, J. (2014). 3 ways to plan for diverse learners: What teachers do. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-ways-to-plan-john-mccarthy
Tomlinson, C. (2005). Grading and differentiation: Paradox or good practice? Theory into Practice, 44(3).
Tomlinson, C. (2004). Sharing responsibility for differentiating instruction. Roeper Review,26(4).
Tomlinson, C. (2001). How to Differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms. Alexandria: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Wu, E. (2013). The path leading to differentiation: An interview with Carol Tomlinson.Journal of Advanced Academics, 24(2).