Differentiated Instruction

Differentiated Instruction

            The most important thing to remember about differentiated instruction is that kids notice when you treat certain students different, so integrated differentiated instruction into the classroom must be done very carefully.

Differentiated instruction tends to stand out as a way of modifying lesson plans or activities to fit students who might struggle, such as English language learners or disabled students. But I think it goes further than that, as educators we must understand that all students do not learn in the same way, not even based on styles of teaching, but the content too. Differentiated instruction is part of the mandate of a teacher to try and teach every student to the best of their ability.

            With this is mind I think that it is incredibly important to always be trying new activities, new styles of teaching, and new means of learning. By only teaching in the way that you are comfortable with, you may not be benefitting the students at all. As a teacher, you have to be as comfortable with being outside your comfort zone as you might be asking students to be.

            One thing that I agree with is the limiting pointless activities or tasks that help to ease the transitions in the classroom. By having students do tasks that are meaningless to the learning just reinforces the act of not learning, which is something that teachers need to avoid.

            Another thing that typically is ignored when discussing differentiated instruction is a high achieving student, they need differentiated instruction to continue achieving at that level. That might mean subtly pushing them to do more work, or implying that more work might benefit them.