Differentiated Instruction Made Practical

I’ve always known that differentiated instruction is a must-do in a healthy class when you want to see each student thrive – even though that means in different ways and at a different pace. However, before taking this course, I didn’t really know how to conduct a DI class and I was always wondering what a DI class looks like? What do students do? How does the teacher handle the lessons and yet be able to take care of each student’s learning progress and achieve the ALL-ED goal.

Now I am thinking DI is a “teaching habit”. It is more than a lesson plan in which you plan ahead and then the next day you just follow what you have on the plan sheet. Of course, in some steps, you still need to plan such as option board or task analysis or quality criterias…etc. But more than that, DI really stimulates you to observe your class closely and not miss any signals. It makes you be more alert all the time in order to reach all the learners. It challenges you to be more flexible and efficient. Literally, it needs agile thinking skills. To be honest, this can be a bit overwhelming for me who’d like to plan out everything as well as to stick to the plans - not willing to let go of my original plans to make the appropriate change. But now, I am truly glad that I feel more empowered to make differentiated instruction practical in my class because I have the tools OSCAR/ CARR/ SHOP to help me build this habit and I’ve already practiced some over the six sessions.

Since it takes practice to build up this habit, I think my next step would be implementing more routines and the try-outs that I haven’t done in this course to practice my agile thinking skills. Also, another important step is to share what I’ve been learning here with my colleagues. I’ve been learning so much through the discussion and interaction with many educators from our group. I know there are so many teachers in my school who want to do DI or are already doing DI in their classes. I would like to continue my learning by bringing my experience back and discussing with other teachers and making the learning conversation keep going.