Differentiation at My Main Placement School

In my main placement district, the students are dismissed early on Wednesdays to allow time for teachers to work together or receive training. Yesterday afternoon, the focus of the building meeting was math differentiation. We were even assigned a Tomlinson article to read as preparation!

As part of the training, we were asked to create a product that reflected our understanding of four keys elements of differentiation (content, process, product and learning environment). We could choose to work alone, or in a group, to work in whatever place suited us, and to create a product of our choosing. The only requirement was that we share our learning and our product with the group. The facilitators provided several types of graphic organizers for those who preferred a more structured approach. Final products included a Julia Child-themed skit, a military-march type chant, concept map posters, graphic organizers, and some insightful drawings by the kindergarten team.

As a participant in this training, I could not help but reflect upon how much more engaged I felt in both the creation of my group's product and the presentation by other groups than I would have if we had all been handed a graphic organizer and been asked to fill it out before sharing it with the group. We would have all spit back quite successfully the main points of the article, and probably would have soon forgotten them. It's not too hard to make an analogy to the classroom.

Today my MT was inspired to try something a little different in social studies. The kids needed to learn about the Bill of Rights, and rather than simply assign the reading and accompanying graphic organizer, she set up groups, assigned each one amendment, and then asked each group to read the relevant part of their text before preparing a presentation of their choosing. Each group also had to list the most important aspects of their amendment on the graphic organizer in order to share this info with their classmates.

So how did it go? The noise level was certainly a lot higher than usual, and we wondered at times what we had gotten ourselves into. However, I think it was successful. Most of the groups did simple skits, and these were especially well received (after the class was reminded of the necessity of being a good audience). Time will tell what the students really learned, but I am hopeful that a high level of engagement will translate to better learning.