After the first day of Differentiated Instruction training, I was a little flustered as to how I was going to fit the documentation into our lesson plan format for the Leveled Questioning and Leveled Reading passages because it seemed like it would be an excessive amount of work. Fortunately, on Day 2 the presenter showed us other ways to differentiate instruction and basically told us that "everything wasn't for everybody" and we could pick and choose what works for us. We were presented with various foldable techniques as well as the format for using Choice Boards to facilitate differentiated instruction.
I was somewhat familiar with using Choice Boards, but now I understand the structure. We had been leveling the actual assignments on the Choice Boards, but the presenter advised us that the goals should be the same. This way, each student is working towards mastery of the particular standard, but at his or her ability level. In addition to Choice Boards, she spoke of Tiered Assignements and centers (Workstations) that we had been using. This workshop was really beneficial for me, because it was nice to have a better understanding on exactly what differentiation looks like and what I had been doing correctly and what needs to be done to better meet the needs of my students. I also was able to collaborate with other teachers in the district and got ideas for my data wall and increasing its value to the students.
I was somewhat familiar with using Choice Boards, but now I understand the structure. We had been leveling the actual assignments on the Choice Boards, but the presenter advised us that the goals should be the same. This way, each student is working towards mastery of the particular standard, but at his or her ability level. In addition to Choice Boards, she spoke of Tiered Assignements and centers (Workstations) that we had been using. This workshop was really beneficial for me, because it was nice to have a better understanding on exactly what differentiation looks like and what I had been doing correctly and what needs to be done to better meet the needs of my students. I also was able to collaborate with other teachers in the district and got ideas for my data wall and increasing its value to the students.