Capturing the Essence of Differentiation
Oh boy! Even though differentiation is non-negotiable, it is currently a HOT TOPIC that is widely discussed in every classroom, conference, meeting,and professional development workshops. Differentiation is tailoring the instructions to meet the needs of various students either through content, process, or product. That is basically the definition that everyone knows about. However, I learned that modifying the standards is what we refer to as differentiation in an advanced level was a bit an extension to the norm for me.
A lot of teachers would confuse accommodating their assignments and assessments by keeping the same standards and expectations in place but altering certain variable as opposed to modifying the standards of the curriculum to meet the students’ needs. As you can see that there is a big difference.
But does it really matter?! I have always had the best interest of my students in my mind. This is my “standard”. It is not about teaching “all” the standards embedded in the curriculum but I extend everything to make it student-friendly. Students are our biggest accomplishments. So all being unique, even the normal mainstream of learners would receive certain accommodations or modifications during their learning journey as the needs are.
I have done it before and always will do it as it shows clearly in the video below. Part of that I would like to demonstrate how teachers best practices can be when it comes to differentiating the content. In this video, examples on how differentiation can be introduced in the classrooms through content, process and product. It goes from extending time, changing the setting to have less distraction, supporting the students with help, allowing them to use open books or calculators or researching for the information they wanted, to modifying the load of the content and thus the product was different to altering the goal of the assignment to adapt the expectation outcome the teacher would be targeting. As an educator,I am flexible so I usually make sure to differentiate my lessons based on my students in a bid to engage them and then we take it from there.
I have done that before not to just hoping that the students would learn at their own pace but I wanted to accept their different academic needs by having their best interest at heart. So I wanted to encourage them to be confident in what they know and learned.
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While school teachers on every level are great at differentiating their instructions, university professors fail to do so. They are not able to adapt the needs of ALL the students in a bid to teach ALL of them. No one should be left out of satisfying their learning needs. Every student regardless of their level of education, should receive the same attention and care they deserve to learn whether at their own pace and according to his current needs or whatever the reason is. Our STUDENTS are our STANDARDS. Nothing matters but them, the students, the learners who are the next generation of humans on earth. Education is a cycle that never stops at any point in our lives and it should be considered our mission to support to secure the survival of US, HUMANS, on our planet EARTH.
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