Differentiated Strategies

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This blog post includes differentiation strategies to meet the needs of my students to make sure they are able to access the content that is taught. My kindergarten classroom is focusing on an English Language Arts Standard where the objectives address: asking and answering questions about key details, main idea and supporting details and connections between characters, ideas and events. As explained by McCarthy, 2014) learning is making a cohesive unit out of the what the teacher is responsible for and what the students bring to the classroom. As the teacher I am responsible for: content, process and product, while the students bring readiness (current skill level), interests (choices and background) and learning process (brain/multiple intelligences).

Image (McCarthy, 2014)

 I will ensure that my classroom teaching includes differentiation in content, process, product and learning environments for learning disabled students and students of various readiness levels. 


Readiness levels Modification 
From my formative assessment I found that some of my students are understanding the content better than others. When looking at modifications for readiness levels, one has to think about content, process, product, affect or learning environment. I decided to implement readiness groupings in reading workshops . McCarthy (2014) stated that readiness grouping “succeed when the tasks enable students to bring forth their strengths, such as experiences in the applied area (interests) and different ways to exploring the concepts via multiple intelligences (learning profile)”. In McCarthy’s definition students incorporating their interests directly relates to affect and students exploring concepts via multiple intelligences incorporates students exploring different processes to achieve the product. Using reading workshops gives high fliers a chance to work on extension activities with more advanced content (with access to higher order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation and creation) and produce a different product: If students are using higher order thinking skills in their content then their product will display this by the students’ product being something that is developed, created or designed. It also gives students who are struggling extra practice with the content material so they can reach the objective (Teaching Channel, 2018). It is integral that students know what to do and then have the teacher confer with them individually. 

Disability Modification 

In the collective mind map (module 2) I researched learning disability. Learning disability is characterized by students who have disorders in the process of written or spoken language and how the brain processes and retrieves information. Students with learning disabilities share characteristics (but not limited to just these) of: disorder of attention, language related issues (reading, writing, speaking, listening), poor information processing, and memory deficits (NASET, nd). These characteristics are important to take into account when planning classroom activities, assessments and accommodations. 
 Accommodations (LDA, 2018) 
  • Give prompts (words and pictures) of strategies for the student to use. 
  •  Give regular and prompt feedback
  • Break learning in smaller steps 
  •  Intensive practice 
  • Use pictures, diagrams and graphics for what you also say in words 
 Assistive Technology (LD@school, 2014)
  • Low tech: For reading- sticky notes for main ideas and graphic organizers. For writing- special pencil grips. 
  •  High tech: Reading comprehension assessment (Brain Camp), Text to speech (Kurzweil 3000), Speech to text (Dragon Naturally Speaking), Reading aids (Free books, GoodReader) 
Differentiation will happen based on content, process, product and class environment. Students with learning disabilities will have differentiate content based on lower level skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy (remembering and understanding). While differentiating based on the process, I would allow students to do different things (use assistive technology) to get to the product (Weselby, 2017) that may differ from their peers. It would be helpful to provide textbooks with many pictures, audiobooks, or an online program that they can use (see: assistive technology list). By tiering work students can participate in guided reading with different activities (products that will recall facts and explain ideas) and different books for the different levels in my class. It will also be integral that I provide different class environments to promote learning. Students can work alone, with a partner, have cues to demonstrate they need a break or provide a quiet space with no distractions.


Resources
Resources that I would incorporate to aid the students I am differentiating for would be: 
  •  Assistive technology (low and high tech) 
  • More time for assignments/assessments 
  • Ability to walk around and take breaks 
  • Display simple transition directions (visual and verbal) Provide spaces for students to have quiet/no distractions


References
LDA. (2018). Successful Strategies for Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities. Retrieved on
Janaury 18, 2018 from https://ldaamerica.org/successful-strategies-for-teaching-students-with-learning-disabilities/
LD@school. (2014, June 10). Assistive Technology for Students with Learning Disabilities. Retrieved
on January 18, 2018 from https://www.ldatschool.ca/assistive-technology/
McCarthy, John. (2014, July 23). 3 Ways to Plan for Diverse Learners; What Teachers Do. Retrieved
January 17, 2018 from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-ways-to-plan-john-mccarthy
NASET. (n.d). Characteristics of Children with Learning Disabilities. Retrieved on January 18, 2018
from https://www.naset.org/fileadmin/user_upload/LD_Report/Issue__3_LD_Report_Characteristic_of_LD.pdf
Teaching Channel. (2018). Rick’s Reading Workshop: Overview. Retrieved on January 17, 2018  
from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-readiness-resources-john-mccarthy
Weselby, Cathy. (2017, November). What is Differentiated Instruction? Examples of How to
Differentiate Instruction in the Classroom. Retrieved January 17, 2018 from https://education.cu- portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/examples-of-differentiated-instruction/

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