Mrs. Mohl & Mrs. Foster - Differentiation

Differentiation

Without a structured WIN (What I Need) or Green (Intervention) time, how do teachers meet individual students' needs?

I went to our KPrep and High School Algebra classes to see what it looks like in lower and upper grades. The KPrep class does not have a structured WIN time like the rest of the elementary, so Mrs. Mohl differentiates and individualizes learning with math and literacy stations. Similarly, Mrs. Foster has set up stations in her high school Algebra class to work with students in smaller groups.

Mrs. Mohl

Mrs. Mohl differentiates in math with a variety of strategies. To start with she has varied materials. One math mat said "How Many Frogs?" and another one said "Let's Make Ten". She also adjusts her questioning based on each student's prior knowledge.

How many frogs do we need to make the number on land equal to those in the water?
How many frogs would need to go in the water if half of them jumped in?
Put your frogs in a row, that makes it easier to count them.

One round of math stations was with Mrs. Loften. Students were identifying numbers to 20 and then finding that number on their board. Some students were asked to name the numbers, while others would repeat the number after Mrs. Loften.

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Mrs. Mohl did another round of math stations with frogs and ponds. The activity and questions were adjusted for each group of 2-4 students. Cute little frogs made out of noodles jumped in and out of the pond in this activity.

During one round of math, students scanned a QR code to get a number. Then they put that many rainbows on their 10 frames board.

The fourth round of math stations had students rolling dice that had 20 numbers. Then they found that many "raindrops" to put on their card.

Each group has a designated color - green, yellow, orange and blue. Students rotate through all four stations in one math block of time.

Literacy Stations

One round of literacy stations

Students worked on a variety of skills depending on their instructional needs. Matching letters to words that start with the sound and finding the middle letter were two of the activities.

Write the room

Students that were not working with a teacher were working on the computer or writing the room.

Jolly Phonics games were on the computer. To write the room, students looked for farm words around the room and then copied them down.

With Mrs. Mohl, students were working on CVC words. Writing was another skill being worked on during the stations.

Some students wrote the words independently. Other students sounded out the words and copied from the teacher's example.

Another group of students worked on white boards. They found the letters and built the words on their boards.

Mrs. Foster

Mrs. Foster was looking for a different way to meet the needs of her Algebra A class. Together we explored what stations could look like for this class. WIth research she decided to set up 4 stations that would run over two days.

Day 1 would look a lot like her current class structure. She would introduce the topic and end the period with a quick assessment. Mrs. Foster would take the information from the assessment to determine her station groups for the next two days.

Each student would rotate through four stations - teacher, technology/hands on, practice and video. She has adjusted these stations to be A, B, C, and D to give her more flexibility with the activities.

Mrs. Foster learned that she really likes having the students solve problems and then recording themselves explaining their work during the "video" station. This gives her a deeper understanding of the students' thinking process and it is like additional one on one time with each of them.

Students supporting each other was another benefit of stations. They are expected to help each other in their groups before asking for adult help. No one is done in the group until everyone is done. It is awesome to watch the students help each other understand the mathematical process.

Scaffolding

Supports

Some students struggled with knowing where to put numbers into the equations to solve the problem. A quick support was created to give them a visual cue of where the numbers belong.

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You can watch two of the stations in action.

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