The Wonderful World of Differentiated Instruction
I remember in my first year of teaching (blurry, but still with moments of clarity) we had a presentation during a PD day about Differentiated Instruction. I also remember sitting there and thinking if I wanted to be a GREAT and EXCEPTIONAL teacher, D.I was the light unto my path. This video on the left is my attempt at a stop motion animation film. I have my students do these but have only tried it myself a few times...so here is my attempt! I explain why I LOVE Differentiated Instruction and why it is important (to me). Enjoy!
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Newspaper clippings - SS 8Show me what you know - newspaper clipping generator (fodey.com)
Dodgeball and Social Studies |
In Religion classes, we use poppet for brainstorming (above) and students ALWAYS have choice when it comes to project creation (below). The student who created the padlet below had never used it before!
Tiered Assignments social 7 & 8
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Nouns of History ProjectsUsed to engage students into the wonderful world of history, they choose their own "noun" (person, place, idea or thing) from history and demonstrate their learning from research in a creative/innovative way. They complete three of these in the course of a year and cannot repeat presentation tools. The only requirement? A Source List or Bibliography. Projects have ranged from:
- Scrapbooks - "Perspective" blogs (ex. Amelia Earharts Blog) - BIG IDEAS pamphlets - Mobiles - QR code searches |
Vocabulary Games Social 9To help students acquire the necessary vocabulary in a fun and interesting way, we played a game! DRAW a vocabulary card - explain the word without mentioning the word itself - first to guess the word wins the points.
Anchor Activities -
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Technology + Education |
Using technology is a great way to differentiate your instruction, student learning and demonstrating their learning. BUT! It is only part of the differentiation puzzle and should be used for students to learn through and not on.
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The Flipped Classroom is an AMAZING project that combines differentiating and using technology. I love this project mostly because the students loved doing it. I had a lot of fun creating the podcasts that students would listen to at home and then they would have a critical challenge (problem solving) assignment when they returned to school the next day. It worked very well in my classroom and even though some students did not have access to internet at home, they were still able to access the podcast at school or during lunch hour the day before.
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