Planning for Differentiating
Who’s in My Pocket? Narrative
Kathy is in grade 6 and loves school. She is very good in art and has other artistic talents like dancing and singing , and drama. In school, for English subject, she always seemed to be bored, especially when the teacher was reading literature. Teacher read the whole book by herself to the class chapter by chapter and the class listened quietly. Teacher would then ask questions in between and after the chapter was read. Many students could answer the teachers questions but it was the same students .
Kathy was one of the students who had difficulty understanding the story from the literatures because she was bored and could not continue to stay on the same page as the teacher. .Each time teacher picked on Kathy and asked a question about the literature, Kathy could not answer and seemed disconnected. Each time Kathy could not answer the questions, there were students who called out words to make fun of her and how she was “dumn” . Kathy heard giggles from students and felt the most uncomfortable to be spoted for answering questions where she had no answers to. Also for math Kathy could not focus and seemed disconnected. Kathy was someone shy but cooperative with other students. Kathy comes from a very caring family but at school , for some subjects she shows less interests and has a hard time focusing like English and math.
Learner Profile – Planning for Differentiation
Learning Environment
Kathy is a student who is shy but loves school. Kathy showed less interests in some areas and struggled . In Kathy’s case, The teacher needs to build a better relationship with Kathy and create that respectable, caring place for Kathy where she will belong with the rest of the students. Kathy felt down and less intelligent each time teacher picked on her but it was not her fault. Kathy needed a more where noises and distractions where eliminated. Kathy needed more flexible grouping to have the opportunity to communicate with other students an share thoughts to deepen the understanding of the literature and questions teacher was posing. . On the other hand the classroom multicultural classroom and did not have any cultural identities that connected to students lives. Kathy did not feel valued so she needed to feel more values and have more options to engage in the literature. So teacher could have had the options to give students the decisions on how they could have had discussed the questions for the literature instead of teacher reading aloud for the next one hour. So flexible grouping where students can learn from each other and also students who are shy could have the chance to speak and take notes down.. Kathy was not introduced to organizing skills like how to use graghic organizers and jotting down points during the read aloud. Teacher could have had given these options to see if students are performing better.
Instructional strategy
Kathy favorite subject was art but not only Kathys, there were other students who loved art as well. For Kathy , she needed art based learning where she can enhance her skills and abilities and come out of her shyness. Teacher could have had flexible groupings and put the students including Kathy into four students in each group. For the English class, students could have had the option to chose a character for each students and played it out. Students could have the options of taking decisions in how they could do this activity. So students could take a chapter and change the ending and make it their own story but could have the option to infuse art in English. For example some students could have written poetry while others acted it out. This art based learning would not make Kathy bored and disconnected but she would take English more seriously and create more interest and deepen her understanding in English literature but also could have fun learning a subject through infusing other areas of interests for students .
Resources
Kathy comes from a south Asian background, and her class is diverse. Her class needed more diverse literatures and topics where students are more interested to learn . So instead of teacher picking only on one literature , there could have been a list of literatures for students to pick from where everyone’s agreed to work on . This way Kathy could have picked a literature from her interest and also have the options of either reading the text or maybe having audio with headphones for students to learn differently. The classroom can have students learning information. For example drawing out a community together as a class and putting it on the wall would give a student like Kathy the idea visually what a community is about if teacher was reading a book on community. Instead of Kathy sitting down for a long time and bored of listening to literature from her teacher, there could have been more learning centers where students can chose their spaces where they have access to more resources like hands on or multimedia to help them work . Having many resources is essential and will help Kathy not being bored and have choices for different ways of learning instead of one way .
Assessment
For Kathy ongoing assessment will be necessary to see her progress. So for example once students are working in their flexible groups teacher can come around and observe and also start to communicate to all the students in the group in how they are fining their answers or how they are working together. For the shy student like Kathy, teacher can see that Kathy has had the option to work on her organizing skills to help her develop more understanding of the topics so teacher can now start asking her questions like” Maybe Kathy has some good examples that she can share with the group” to make Kathy more valuable and create that confidence in her to maybe break away from her shyness. Also teacher giving feedback in small groups and also individually to students like helping them with understanding the harder words more from the rubric or questions and breaking it down for the students. Having students to make their own rubric but maybe as a whole class on the board. This way students are involved in their own assessment and know how they will be assessed. Also assessing based on art based so for example students can chose drama to complete their assignments but also can gather as a group where students can chose dance, drama, and so on. Also allow students to have the option to use multimedia for their assignments for assessments. This way, it makes it more fun for students learning’s and develops skills that students can use for lifetime. Kathy is someone artistic, and express her skills and connections to the text. Some visuals like using power point during sharing an assignment would be also valuable for Kathy to demonstrate her topics through a different way of learning. Kathy would also like to share her thoughts on a journal instead of always being picked on so having a journal and write what she wonders about , and her thoughts about the topic would help her and the teacher to give feedback quickly for better improvement. Also teacher can write out any questions to provoke a deeper understanding for Kathy so Kathy can think of it and work on it and then go back re-write her thoughts, this way teacher can give Kathy feedback through writing questions on her journals instead of picking on her in front of the class.
References
Differentiated Learning:The Adaptive Dimension for
Saskatchewan K-12 students
Sharmin Jahan 