In the last few years, teaching and learning have moved from one of learning by rote, to one of education for everyone. It has moved from that teacher dictating the content and applying a strict discipline, to that one who places the knowledge of his/her students at the core of his/her daily activity. Most contemporary pedagogy follows an “inclusive” approach considering students with varied levels of learning abilities and achievements, special educational needs and unique personal preferences. The recognition of this diversity amongst learners led to adapt the instruction to the students’ different educational needs.
Adapting instruction to learners needs (DI) is not a new idea. Nevertheless, it has become in recent years, the main topic of teaching discussion.
Therefore the use of successful teaching strategies and practices to ensure that each student in their diverse classroom is fully engaged with learning and is achieving their maximum potential is one of the main responsibilities of professional teachers today.
Differentiated instruction has several drivers that have come together to place it at the forefront of modern teaching strategies. Suban (2006) noted that demands are made by educational authorities, teachers and school administrators are all looking for ways to cope with the variety of learning profiles.
So how to apply differentiation in your teaching practice
These are some of the steps on teaching differentiation
1. Recognizing and embracing diversity
Classroom environments have always been diverse, as acknowledged by Prast (2018) and Tomlinson (2014). Each student comes to the classroom with different prior knowledge, personal interests, and preferences in their learning approach. Teachers need to be able to spot this diversity and adapt their teaching to satisfy these necessities.
2. Assessment
According to some researcher (Roy, Guay and Valois 2013) differentiated is “an approach by which teaching is varied and adapted to match students’ abilities using systematic procedures for academic progress monitoring and data-based decision making”. This approach highlights one key step which is the assessment of students as a starting point for differentiation. Therefore, differentiation needs to be built on student’s needs that is why preliminary assessment of those needs is absolutely paramount.
2. Differentiated instruction
One of the ways of applying differentiation is by given instruction in different ways that all students can understand. It means, writing, oral, images, real examples, break down long instruction etc
3. Differentiation planning
Although our responsibility as teachers is to teach a specific syllabus, we have the freedom to select material, define aims and create our own activities. This freedom allows presenting the content in different ways addressing the kids' s necessities. It does not mean we have to come up with different planning for the same lesson. It means that I cannot plan writing an essay or reading and to answer questions during the whole academic years. Variation and the inclusion of different tasks is the way.
4. Class organization.
Varied from individual, team and pear work it is also considered as differentiation as it helps students to develop specific skills but also help those who learn better when learning takes place in a social environment.
5. Task differentiation
Differentiated content and tasks allow for students of different abilities to share common goals in the classroom. Some more able students may be given content that allows them to explore topics to a greater depth, whilst others have content designed to focus on a key skill.
Overall, differentiation in the classroom is to ensure that all your students have the same opportunity to learn. In other words, no child is left behind. For me, differentiation is more like fairness teaching style which provides everybody with the right tools to achieve a common goal.
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