The blog of a professional educator, university faculty member, and data geek. This blog contains commentary on collaborative data driven decision-making in education and assessment for program evaluation and accreditation in higher education. Join the conversation!
Friday, January 23, 2015
So what is differentiation?
So what about differentiation? What does it mean anyway? According to Tomlinson & Moon (2013), "the ultimate goal of differentiation is to ensure that each student has the best possible learning experiences in order to maximize academic growth." Sometimes it makes sense to give all students the same instruction. Sometimes it is more effective to provide students with more than just one prescribed way to learn.
What do I think differentiation is? It's good teaching! It's knowing your students and providing for them in the best way you can every day. It's searching for that strategy, that resource, that connection that will make learning click for a student. Or spark an interest. Or provide appropriate challenge. It's the opposite of the scripted ridiculousness that is thrust upon teachers today.
In my first year as a principal I walked into a first grade teacher's classroom and observed her teaching math. It was the daily math meeting and the teacher was reading questions from a script provided by the textbook company. Later, I asked her about it. Do you need that script to teach the math meeting? She responded that the previous principal required teachers to use the script to teach math.
I can tell you, the people who wrote that textbook probably knew a lot about math. They were probably experts in their field. They provided a good outline for teaching and provided a structured approach to the discipline. But you know what? Those experts did not know the students in that classroom. I wonder if any of them were familiar with Amish culture? Or if they knew about students who grew up in a small farming community? Did they know more about the dynamics of a first grade classroom than this teacher with more than twenty years of teaching experience? Did they know how to connect what was being taught in the other subject areas? You get the point.
A few years later I became the principal in another school in another state. A teacher asked me if she had to use all of the pages in the student workbooks. All of the pages? Workbooks? Why? The last principal marked her down in her teacher evaluation because she didn't use all of the pages in the workbook. The parents paid for it. You have to use all the pages.
I'm a parent. You know what? I want you to use your resources wisely. Please don't spend my textbook rental or tax dollars on junk. But please, please, use the time you have with my children wisely. Make them love learning. Challenge them to learn something new every day. Make their learning real. Use the workbook as a resource to do that because you know what my children need. Don't use it because it is Wednesday, and on Wednesday we do the pages in the workbook, because that is the next lesson in the textbook, and it doesn't matter whether you are ready for this content or if you already know it, on Wednesday we do the workbook pages because your parents paid for this book and we are going to be sure they get every last pennies' worth out of it. Sigh.
Differentiated instruction is how teachers work to be sure ALL students learn. Differentiated instruction is what teachers do when students don't learn. Differentiated instruction is what effective teachers do.
Reference:
Tomlinson, C. & Moon, T. (2013) Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
P.S. I use this book as a textbook for my Assessment course.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment