We are going to look at four tips on how you can incorporate differentiation into your teaching and do it effectively.
- Recognize that every student is an individual.
- Find ways to incorporate what they are interested in with what you teach.
- Understand your modes of teaching
- Be careful not to miss the kids that are accelerated.
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1. Recognize that every student is an individual.
Firstly, as a teacher, you need to recognize that every student is an individual. When I say individual, what I mean is, that every student has a different way of learning. They have a different level of understanding, they have a different context. It could be cultural, family, community or content context; all of that will have an impact on the way that they understand and interpret what you are trying to teach.
So you have to start from the premise that differentiation is essential because you’re teaching 25 to 30 different little individuals. All of them will understand what is going on in a different way. If you just teach in one mode you are only going to hit one group of children or maybe just a few children. So you have to be willing to understand that they are all individuals and they are all going to see things differently and understand things differently.
A lot of it has to do with the families they come from; the communities and the cultures that they have been a part of as they have been developing because that will shape the way that they interpret what you say.
2. Find ways to incorporate what they are interested in with what you teach.
The second thing that you need to look at when it comes to differentiation is this, you need to find ways to incorporate what they are interested in with what you teach. A lot of the time, we as teachers think we know what kids are interested in.
I am a dad of two teenagers and one pre-teen. I have tried to stay abreast of what trends are within young people culture. I think I am fairly attuned to what is going on, but honestly, when I sit down with my kids, I realise that there is a whole world that they engage in, especially through social media, that is completely foreign to me. There is music, youtube and so much more. They have a different language that they speak, different interests and different things that light them up.
Very often, what we think as adults will be engaging for children, is so far from what really engages them. So do not be afraid to engage them in a conversation about understanding their world. Help them to know that you care about the world they come from and you are going to try and implement things that are important to their world.
One great example of this is way back, when I first started teaching. It was when Twitter was first becoming popular. I know Twitter is kind of an established thing now and young people are not so into it, but back then, Twitter was popular and a lot of young people were getting into it. So one teacher colleague of mine decided that he was going to try and incorporate Twitter into his English lesson.
The students were doing narrative writing, so he set a task for his students to write a sentence in no more than 140 characters. Back then Twitter only allowed 140 characters, so he printed out a sheet that had a little tweet box which looked like a Twitter comment. Then he said, “You have to write a sentence that’s only 140 characters.” Because Twitter was the buzz thing at that time, it engaged them. It was their world, they understood what he was talking about and it was a really good device for teaching them how to write concise sentences.
So that is one example; obviously you won’t use Twitter now because Twitter is no longer popular with young people but engage them in a conversation about what interests them. Try and find ways to incorporate that into your lessons.
3. Understand your modes of teaching.
Also, when you are teaching, understand that you have a preferred mode of teaching as much as children have a preferred mode of learning. In uni, you would have gone through all the different learning styles, the hands-on learners, the visual learners and the auditory learners. You can look at all of those learning styles but you also need to ask yourself, ” What’s my preferred way of teaching? How does that teaching mode impact each learning style?” You may find that you drift towards a teaching style that disadvantages certain kids based on their learning style.
Try and adjust your teaching style, not just for the different learning types but also have an awareness of adjusting your teaching style so that you can get better at the teaching styles that you do not prefer. If you can switch between different modes of teaching and be really confident in different modes of teaching, you are going to be more effective in differentiating your lessons. You will not struggle to connect with the kids that prefer a different mode of teaching. You have to practice different modes of teaching as much as you have to cater for different styles of learning.
4. Be careful not to miss the kids that are accelerated.
The fourth key that I want to highlight when you are differentiating a lesson and trying to find ways to engage all the students in your class is; be careful not to miss the kids that are accelerated. A lot of the time we differentiate for low level learners who are below the class average. We give them additional support or additional modes of learning but we often forget about the kids that are advanced and ahead of the class. Those kids can become just as bored and frustrated during lessons that are not differentiated to facilitate their learning capabilities.
I’ll finish with this little story. When my eldest son was only in Grade Three, he was quite a gifted student. He was academically advanced for his class but he had a teacher that was very focused on the many low level kids in the class and so much of her energy went into supporting those low level kids. My son would get his work done really quickly but there was no way for him to accelerate or to move beyond what he was already capable of doing. Even though he had asked and even though we had had conversations with the teacher, she just did not seem to be able to cater for his level of ability.
One day we got a call from the school and we were asked to come into school because our son was in the playground and cut the pocket off his uniform. The school was very concerned about the destruction of their uniform and they wanted to reprimand him for that. I sat down and had a conversation with my son, I said, “Mate what’s the reason that you cut the pocket off your uniform?” It was a really heartbreaking story but it really woke me up to the importance of this. He said, “I was hoping that if I cut the pocket off my uniform, the school would kick me out or would suspend me, then you can put me in a school that’s going to give me work that is interesting for me and will help me to learn the way that I want to learn.”
That was a real wake-up call for my wife and I. We had to recognize that we had to be very careful about the schools that we chose for our children. We had to make sure that they were able to cater for both low students and accelerated students. So that is a little example of why you, as a teacher, need to make sure that you’re catering for those advanced kids as well because they often get neglected and they are usually good kids. Too often they just sit there quietly waiting for somebody to cater for them but if you haven’t got a mechanism for that, then you will find that they can get destructive and disruptive and sometimes detract from the lesson.
So these are four keys to differentiation in the classroom.
- First of all, recognize that all students are individuals. You need to cater for all students because they all come from different contexts.
- Secondly, you need to find ways to talk their language and fit in with their interests. Try to understand their world when you’re using practical examples in teaching.
- The third one is this, understand modes of teaching and what you prefer. Practice the ones that you don’t use often, so that you can teach to all different learning styles.
- Finally, don’t just differentiate for the low kids. Create differentiated opportunities for your advanced kids to also be engaged.
I hope that these four tips for differentiation in the classroom were really helpful for you. If you enjoyed this, please let us know what you thought. Make sure you like it and share it if there’s somebody that you know would benefit from our content.
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