On October 21, 2010, our school had an In-Service in which we discussed the many uses of differentiated instruction. We looked at a variety of ways to include kinesthic learning into our classrooms. We worked on writing "our spelling words" in sugar, solving mathematical problems in pudding, sorting things in plastic Easter eggs, and using clothespins for matching. All of the activities were very enlightening and inexpensive. There are a lot of fun things we can do if we merely use our own imagination.
I have been more and more interested in this idea of differentiated instruction ever since my days in college. I always wanted to know how to make every lesson differentiated for all students. There is just so much to do in so little time and it always seemed more overwhelming. I started to read some feeds on the Scholastic website about differentiated instruction and came across one encouraging post by Mary Blow. She made the comment that "teachers begin differentiating instruction gradually. There is so much to consider." I totally agree with her! There is so much to think about and so many exciting things we can implement into our classrooms!
Hopefully I will find a lot of resources to share and post on this blog as the class goes on!
I attended a series of conferences last year on differentiated instruction but it was geared more towards high school. A lot of what we focused on was having the students being in charge of what they were learning. So, the suggestions that we took were doing more projects than final evaluation tests. Also, incorporating more ways for students to display their knowledge through many different avenues. Also, we discussed playing games or having students create their own games as means of review. It definitely was a beneficial conference!
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