Differentiated instruction is very applicable to my own practice. In fact, every student can benefit from the instructional methods used for lower achieving students.

In my classroom, I use a lot of visuals and realia to help students connect an abstract word or concept to a real tangible object. These visuals help students to understand the vocabulary and concepts in a way that they would not if I just explained it to them. Before reading a story about sea creatures, we went to the aquarium where my students saw with their own eyes the sea creatures we were reading about. Thus, they were better able to understand how these creatures use camouflage. This was not apparent by just looking at the illustrations in the story.

For students who have a more limited vocabulary, I preview, in small group, the unit or stories before we read them in class. I pull out vocabulary especially the academic language from the stories and talk about them in depth. To challenge the higher achieving students, I encourage them to find more information about the topic to share with the rest of the class. I leave out books about camouflage to read and have my high achievers write new things they have learned on sentence strips.  These strips are then posted on the concept side of my concept/question board.

In addition, I incorporate a lot of discussion and think pair shares. Before any writing activity, I would ask the students to discuss with a partner what they were going to write about. In this way, the students exchange ideas so that when it came time to write, they would know what things they could write. Also, I use a lot of graphic organizers. These graphic organizers help students especially ELs to organize their thoughts and help them to know what to write. Furthermore, I have started to color code sentences. This helps students to structure their paragraphs.

I also utilize writing conferences. I have students sign up for a conference with me. During this time, we look at the progress of their writing. Depending on their strengths and weaknesses, I will help students on a certain aspects of their writing. These conferences help me to focus my instruction on the student’s individual needs.

Furthermore, I use a lot of cooperative groupings. My students sit in groups instead of rows. I have found that sometimes students understand the task better if another student explains it to them. Also, students also gain better understanding of the concept when they explain it to others. In addition, they also gain confidence because they are able to explain it to others. Also, I pair the low achieving student with the high achieving students so that students can receive more support.

Lastly, I implement flexible, small grouping to further target students’ individual needs. During workshop time, I ask students who have the same weakness to come to the teacher table so that I can re-teach them the concept. The groups are flexible since students have different strengths and weaknesses even within a certain subject area. Also, depending on their reading level, I will choose various passages to work with to improve their reading fluency. To further challenge high achieving students, I also set out various centers that they may do when they are finished with their class work. These centers reinforce content areas but challenges them in various ways other than just completing a worksheet.