Planning for Differentiated Instruction

Standard 3: The competent teacher plans and designs instruction based on content area knowledge, diverse student characteristics, student performance data, curriculum goals, and the community context. The teacher plans for ongoing student growth and achievement.

Rationale:

This assignment was completed during my Education 216 class. We were challenged to write a paper detailing how we would make the necessary modifications and accommodations for our students with specified needs.

I wrote about students with reading disabilities and how they see reading assignments and materials compared to those without a reading disability. They find things more difficult because not only do they not understand what they are reading but they can't read the words to even begin to understand. It is important to catch these difficulties as soon as possible, so the earlier teachers and parents recognize the disconnect and problems with reading, the more help they will be able to give to those children.

I like this assignment because it gave me insight on how often this disability is overlooked in the classroom. Whether the student doesn't ask for help and is clearly struggling or the teacher just doesn't pay attention enough to catch it and create interventions to help that student, either way the student is at a lost. It is important to make routines in the classroom, and having students read as a class and follow along helps non fluent readers to engage more in the classroom. Pulling those students aside and working with them one on one and in small groups with students of similar abilities can increase motivation and the success rate.

This was an assignment was to create a PowerPoint breaking down task one of the Ed TPA.

Standard Addressed: Standard 3 is addressed because included in this plan is differentiated instruction with my basketball unit. There was a student with ADHD, that I made sure to add accommodations for. Making sure that all students are able to learn at a level they understand is important. All students need to feel included and that they can achieve some kind of success. Planning should not be one size fits all, it has to consider everyone and all ability levels.

I enjoyed working on this because it made me think deeper than the surface to best address all the needs of my students.