Differentiated Instruction
I differentiate my instruction and assessments in a number of ways:
- Given the small class sizes in my school and the percentage of students with significant learning difficulties, and given that I have my classes engage in a lot of group work, a technique that I use for differentiation is to carefully assign the student groupings so that students’ abilities and disabilities can offset each other and students can support one another. I do expect the same product at the end, so there is no differentiation there. Over the course of the year, I have had to become even more careful in these group assignments as personality conflicts between students have made certain pairings complicated.
- Based on the recommendations of IEPs of a number of my students, I differentiate the process of how they complete summative assessments. I allow some of these students to write tests open book, and some even with their notes.
- As I mentioned in the PEP section on technology in the classroom, I will use technology to allow for the differentiation of the product I expect of the students. The mother of a boy with learning difficulties in my Gr. 6 class came over to me one day to tell me that over the weekend, her son presented an unsolicited dvar torah based on the work he did with toondoo animation. This is a boy who tunes out easily when he does not find the subject matter interesting - every week, he still asks me if he can do a toondoo on the parsha.