Differentiating Instruction

"How will I be able to accommodate different learners in my classroom?"  An effective teacher needs to make sure that all students in her class are learning, regardless of learning styles.  There are children who learn orally and need the spoken word to be able to absorb information.  I know that I need to write stuff down in order to remember.  There are children who need to move around a lot and there are children who learn visually; they need to see what they need to learn.  Then, we need to also look at which level the children are: who is a non-reader and needs basic instruction, who is an emergent reader and is able to match sounds to letters, and who is able to read?  How to accommodate all these different styles is what makes teaching challenging and rewarding.  

I am using a Kindergarten class with twenty students during a reading block as my example.  How will I differentiate instruction? By setting up stations around the room, at which four or five children at a time will be working.

For example, I just read the story "The Hungry Thing" by Jan Slepian and the stations will have activities relating to this story.   The groups will be set up in a semi heterogeneous fashion.  The children I will group together will be working at different levels, but close enough so there will not be an enormous difference.  I believe this will benefit all students, because if the levels of the children are too far apart, then the lower level children would be leaning too heavily on the higher level children. The higher level children are not learning as much as they would if they were with children who were close to their level.

One of my literacy stations will be a listening station. At this listening station the children can listen to the book "The Hungry Thing", using headphones. The book is available at this station as well, so the children can follow along in the book.  Some children will look at the pictures only, some will look at the printed words, and they all will work on turning the pages from left to right.

Another station is the "lunch bag station".  Here the children will make up their own lunch bags, containing different items.  The purpose here is for the children to cut out pictures from magazines of food items and put them into their lunch bags. They then have to think of words that rhyme with the items they cut out. Let's say the child cuts out a picture of a piece of cheese. She would have to think of a word that rhymes with 'cheese'. After she cuts out the pictures and puts them in her lunch bag, she will share with a partner what she has in her lunch bag. When asked what she has in her lunch bag, the child will say: "In my lunch bag I have a piece of meese."  The other child then has to guess what is really in the lunch bag, that rhymes with meese.  The higher level students will come up with bigger, more complicated rhyming words, and the lower level students will keep their rhyming words simple.

The "Read Around The Room" station is not a stationary station and allows for movement.  Each child gets a special pointer.  With this pointer the child will walk around the room and point to labels he sees around the room, then find a word that rhymes with that word.  This still ties in to our theme of the day, rhyming, and they become aware that you can rhyme any word, even if it is with a silly non-existing one!

The book "The Hungry Thing" is available at another station: the Reading Station.  This is where the children sit shoulder to shoulder with a partner, and read the story to each other. Some children might retell the story by just looking at the pictures, while others will try to read the words.  

One of the stations is the "Teacher Station", and this is where the guided reading takes place. At this station the teacher does not use "The Hungry Thing", but uses the Guided Reading leveled books that the children are working on.  This station is homogeneous: the students are all reading the same book.    The teacher pulls children out of their groups to read at her table.  At this station the teacher can work with the children on their comprehension.

Differentiating instruction in the classroom is crucial to the success of all children. It keeps students interested and challenged.  Differentiation keeps learning interesting and stimulating. It encourages the children to do their best and it empowers them. And isn't that what each teacher wants for their children?