Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

I am curious how much differentiation goes on in schools. My principal is pushing big time for this and I am curious how many teachers really do this.

I know differentiation goes on in elementary school (reading/math) but what about middle & high school?

How many teachers at the high school level use multiple levels of novels in their classroom?

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

I never want to hear the "D" word again or I am going to scream

I am in a middle school and there is a push for it to be in every lesson.

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

I want and really need to, but it's hard. I have a range in one class (ELA) from second grade to eighth grade reading levels in a sixth grade classroom. I don't know if it's me or my training as a 7-12 teacher but it's very hard for me to have multiple things going on, and our professional development doesn't address it, nor does our curriculum, even though we're always told that we need to differentiate.

Message edited 3/28/2009 9:03:48 AM.

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

I will admit, I don't do it often. It's hard, especially if you have never SEEN it.

But what I do is this: Whenever we have units, I make all of the independent work differentiated. We are studying poetry next month. I have something called petry tic tac toe. There are nine boxes with various poetry activities and the kids choose 3.

With our reading chapter books activities, there are little options that they have to choose from.

To me, differentiation is about choices and I try to offer them choices whenever I can.

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

I differentiate in the sense that I use different teaching techniques over the course of a week to try to reach everybody, but I don't differentiate within each lesson... sorry but I don't have the time to be planning several different activities/lessons for each level of student within each class that I teach every day...it's hard enough making one good activity/lesson for each class. Administration even told me I should give different level of difficulty of homework assignments to different kids... I don't think that's practical & the kids will be asking why some have more/harder homework than others.

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

yes, in practically every lesson. it's very easy once you start. it becomes second nature and the kids do so much better.

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

We are required to "tier" which is the new word for defferentiation.

I do it in every lesson.

I tier based on reading and writing abilites. usually, they all have the same assignment and I tier how they get there.

For example, I just finished my non fiction unit. They all had to write research papers.

Tier 1 ( high group) : They were given an outline to follow that included all of the information they must cover

Tier 2 ( middle group): They were given the outline and guided questions to help them orgainize the paper

Tier 3: (low group) They were also given the outline, but were also given a "mad libs" type form to follow.

Becomming a _____________(fill in the career of your choice) is a worthwhile endeavour. This career offers ______,______, and _________. Fill in the blanks with three benefits such as a high salary, long vacations, etc)

and so on. The third group obviously had the best written reports because I formulated them almost completely for them, but they need that much support.

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?

There's a HUGE push for it in my school! Thankfully since there's such a strong push for it, we're not left alone in the dark. We have weekly meetings where we are taught how it can be implemented in the classrooms.

There wasn't a push for differentiation before the state exams though, because as we all know, those tests are NOT differentiated. My special ed students on 4th grade levels were forced to take 6th grade exams. But of course, now that those exams are over, differentiation it is ................

Re: Differentiation.....do you do it in your classroom?