Standard 1.5 - Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of strategies for differentiating teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities.
Differentiation allows teachers to understand each students backgrounds, learning needs, strengths, weaknesses and abilities. It assists in teachers catering for all individuals, and it has helped me cater for my students learning and seeing them improve at their own pace. Differentiation has allowed me to track student progress and identify what areas of their learning I need to focus on. Attached below are some differentiated learning notes for some lower level students in some of my year 5/6 science classes. After getting to understand the student's needs, it became apparent that they struggle to interpret information provided to the remaining of the class with worksheets provided. To differentiate the information to those students, I created a smaller list of dot points which i further discussed with the students to determine whether they fully understood the task. In addition to this, I used a differentiated task with my year 3/4's exploring life cycles. Students had to create a 'First, Next, Then, Finally' task which highlighted the phases of an animals life cycle. Information to all students were presented in a visual (picture and video) and verbal manner. For all students their task was to place the phases of the life cycle in order, including the name of the stage on their sheet and draw a picture to represent that stage. I then emphasized that students had to explain to me what happened in each stage. Students were then individually asked what happens or what we might see in each stage, students who I knew had the ability to write down their knowledge were asked to do so. For students who were low level, I wrote down on their sheets exactly what they had told me. To cater for students who struggled to remember some of the information I had drawn the stages on the whiteboard in a random order, and they had to copy the pictures I had drawn, but place them in the correct order.
During my final teaching practicum, one of my classes had a wide range of learning and literacy abilities. To cater my learning assignment for these students, I had developed tiered assignments with the same topic however to complete it, a variation of tasks were implemented with different complexities. Tiered assignments are an effective tool to cater for specific learning needs and abilities within a classroom. (Coleman & Hughes, 2011) As seen in the figure below, students in the lower tier, had an assignment with basic and simple instructions, colour and images, whereas students placed with a higher learning ability, had a generalized assignment task sheet. Allowing students to determine the way they presented their findings for the assignment, allowed those who learn better through interviews, essays or PowerPoint format to reach their own learning needs. The modified assignment was created in order to cater for those students who needed visual cues and aids (larger font), simplified language in order to understand the task, and coloured text with highlighted keywords for students to focus easily on the task.
During my final teaching practicum, one of my classes had a wide range of learning and literacy abilities. To cater my learning assignment for these students, I had developed tiered assignments with the same topic however to complete it, a variation of tasks were implemented with different complexities. Tiered assignments are an effective tool to cater for specific learning needs and abilities within a classroom. (Coleman & Hughes, 2011) As seen in the figure below, students in the lower tier, had an assignment with basic and simple instructions, colour and images, whereas students placed with a higher learning ability, had a generalized assignment task sheet. Allowing students to determine the way they presented their findings for the assignment, allowed those who learn better through interviews, essays or PowerPoint format to reach their own learning needs. The modified assignment was created in order to cater for those students who needed visual cues and aids (larger font), simplified language in order to understand the task, and coloured text with highlighted keywords for students to focus easily on the task.
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