Prior to this course, I honestly was not doing much differentiation or giving much choice to my students. The differentiation my students received was based on what the curriculum provided. All students were given the same activities to complete with the same resources. Most of their work needed to be completed independently. This was not fair to my students who the activities did not meet their needs whether the activity was too hard or too simple. My early finishers got to do whatever they wanted while my low-achievers struggled to get a few questions done in the entire class period. There was a change that needed to be made for my students but it was unclear where to start.
Prior to this course, the spelling of sight words was tested in the traditional sense. Every student received the same list of 5-10 words on Monday and were tested on these words on Friday. The only change students had from the traditional schedule was that students were pretested on the words for the next week. If a student spelled all of the words correctly on the pretest, they did not have to test on that list of words on the following Friday. However, all students were doing if they did not spell the words correctly on the pretest were practicing their rote memorization skills during the week to prepare for the test on Friday. After the Friday post-test, the students were never tested or checked to see if they were spelling the words correctly in their writing or in a more natural setting. Also with technology and spell check, it has been difficult for students to understand the importance of knowing how to spell.
During this course, we spent time looking at differentiation strategies. Differentiation comes in many different forms, from the product to the process to the physical environment. Carol Ann Tomlinson made a point that stood out to me as a reminder-differentiation is not a curriculum model, it is an instructional model. We as educators need to become more independent with creating differentiation strategies and not so heavily depend on our curriculum to give us differentiation strategies. Just because a curriculum does not come with differentiation suggestions does not mean we cannot or should not differentiate for our students. We, as teachers, are in charge of differentiating, not curriculum developers. We know the kids in our classroom and what they need, not a company creating curricula materials. Also, part of having differentiation in our classroom is giving students choices.
As a result of this course, my students rarely use the textbooks provided by our district. Our classroom contains the necessary materials, anchor charts, and seating to promote student learning and effective classroom instruction. The physical environment within our classroom is very differentiated with flexible seating options. Students get to choose their seat each day based on their needs for that day. My hope is to continue to add to the flexible seating options I currently have since I know students would benefit from me having more than one option for some seating arrangements. Currently within my classroom, students are in small groups for Words Their Way where they are placed in groups based on needs. During math, students are placed in math workshop small groups that were formed more around behavior not academic levels. We are not able to do math workshop every day but I learn so much more about what my students know and what their needs are when I am able to work with them in their small groups. During Social Studies, I have been giving students options between which activities they do or which order they do the activities in. Students have had a direct role in creating student and teacher expectations. I have continued to use the gradual release of responsibility throughout this school year and plan to continue that in all my future years of teaching.
Since this course, students have taken a proactive role to providing themselves with authentic literacy practices. Students have begun a classroom newspaper and classroom news channel. The students completely run both and create them on their own time. They decide what the articles in the newspaper are about and what the headlining stories are for the news channel. They are taking what they have learned within the classroom and are transferring the information in a format that works for them. The students have taken the charge and responsibility to enhance their writing, reading, and speaking to create these news outlets. Each week, students share the newspaper and news report they have created with their classmates. The student-created newspaper has motivated other students to read because it is something their classmates created. This has positively impacted our classroom environment overall. The students interview each other, other staff members, and include student birthdays to enhance the sense of classroom and school community. These are all things the students have come up with on their own without needing any help from me. By using these real purposes for writing, my students are learning about audience awareness and style. By reading the newspaper, my students are able to mirror the type of reading they will be doing in years to come.
As a result of this course, we made some physical changes to our library corner. My classroom library has been completely reorganized to be categorized by genre, author, or topic. Before switching our classroom library to being organized this way, it was organized by Fountas and Pinnell guided reading levels. This severely limited the book choices for students because they felt obligated to only choose books from their reading level bins. Since we have switched the library, I have seen students choose books because they are interested in the book. My students also rarely ask me what level they are at as well. I consider that a "win" since students should not be concerned about choosing books just based on their level. All of the books in my library still have a color-coded sticker on them indicating what reading level that book is but students do not know which color is which level. Using the sticker is a quick way for me to see if students are interested in books and reading books that are actually at or around their level without them knowing it.
After this course, I have taken a new approach to assessing students on their grade-level sight words. The students have the control of their sight word assessment. At the beginning of the year, I assessed all students on all 200 words on their sight word list. After correcting their lists, the students were given the complete sight word list and their corrected sight word assessment to track how many of the 200 words they already know how to spell correctly. Students track which words they know how to spell by highlighting the words spelled correctly. The students have until the end of the year to get all 200 words highlighted. The students create their own individual weekly sight word list of words to study (5-10 words) based on the words that are not highlighted on their list that they will be assessed on a week later. The students track their progress each week and move at their own pace.