1 Case Study- Differentiated Instruction

Case Study Rachel Kennedy EDU 744: Meeting Student Literacy Challenges June 20, 2011

2 Case Study- Differentiated Instruction Differentiation is the key to having a classroom full of successful students. Knowing your students and their interests is a necessary step creating this environment. As a teacher it is our job to take all that we know about a student, their needs and strengths, their likes and dislikes, and their learning styles, and put it all together to make lessons that are geared toward them, as individuals. This task is not an easy one. It takes time and patience. It also takes trial and error. I try to take risks with my lessons in order to differentiate them for my students. Sometimes it works and sometimes I have to go back to the drawing board. Even when my lessons fail, I am teaching the kids that it is okay to take risks, okay to make mistakes, and okay to try again. In my classroom, I have guided reading groups for the Daily 5 literacy block. Students are grouped according to levels based off of assessments. Within these groups, I try to differentiate lesson strategies for each student. If the student has trouble listening to verbal cues, I will have them use picture clues for the story or have them close their eyes and visualize what is happening. For example, I have a student who has a hard time with auditory processing. Due to this deficit, he has a difficult time listening to a story and gaining comprehension from it. He is a VERY visual learner and excellent artist. Knowing this about him, I often have a storyboard of pictures that go with the story. I am able to have the pictures with the written part of the story and he can follow along while I read. I also tailor the output from him. Using his artistic skills, he is able to retell the story is picture format, usually as a comic strip or graphic-style novel. By utilizing his strengths, I can differentiate the lessons to create a successful environment. With these approaches, his comprehension has improved as well as his participation and confidence. I also have students who have trouble with fluency and transferring their isolated skills to an authentic task. When these students sped through the sight word flash cards but then couldnt read the words in the text, I knew I had to do something. I began to use highlighting with them. We would work with a small set of sight words and find them in the text. They had to highlight each word and say it each time. When they were done, they had to read the sentence with the sight word in it. With this practice, their fluency has increased and they are beginning to look for the words that they already know. I already give many different types of choices for activities. For their writing activities, they have choices between writing words, drawing pictures, listening and then writing, partner or individual work, or using props to help them get ideas. It is very important to me to help each learning style prosper in my classroom. For a writing project on their families, the students had to do a family quilt square. Some chose to write words about their family and some chose to draw pictures. Others still used textured resources, crumpled paper and fabric scraps, to create there quilt square. Some students enjoyed getting feedback from and giving feedback to their peers. While reading the assigned texts and the given resources, I know that I have room for improvement. I do provide many choices in my classroom. From having students choose writing topics to different ways to show how they know something, I take pride in giving my students choices. I also think I do a good job of getting to know my students. I do interest surveys, free choice free-writes in the beginning to check interest topics, and have many conversations individually and as a group. Where I

3 Case Study- Differentiated Instruction need to improve is how I use this information. I have used choice boards when I taught in 3rd grade, but having a kindergarten classroom, I feel like I didnt give them enough credit to handle this. Next year, I would love to introduce choice boards to my students. Our science/social studies units would be perfect and a time efficient way to include more literacy! Instead of only writing their choices on the choice board, I could use picture clues to help them recognize and understand the choices. I would also start out small. They could choose 1 out of 3 choices and we would work up once they understood and were comfortable with the process. I have never really used tiered instruction or compacting, but I think these are very important to having a fully differentiated classroom. Honestly, I am nervous to try these strategies. I am overwhelmed by the work that I perceive them to include. In my differentiation class last semester I learned to take one step at a time. I think this advice definitely applies to these techniques. I can start with compacting and see which students need which type of instruction, how much background knowledge they know (KWL), and where their interests lie. After I learn this information, I need to create tiered instruction. To help me start out, I think I would find a tiered lesson online. I would modify it to my needs and then go from there. Using this scaffolded approach, I can build my knowledge and confidence in this new skill. The case study on one student helped to build my confidence in the assessment/intervention process. By focusing solely on one student, I was easier to see how the information presented itself and how I could interpret it to find a solution. My plan to use this new knowledge is still in transition. I feel that I will need to start with a few students at a time. The formal assessment part is taken care of by the school requirements. I need to get better with running records and documenting the data. This is the only way that I can look at all of the pieces to come up with appropriate interventions that can be differentiated for each student. Many of the interventions can benefit small groups, so I will be able to group students accordingly. I will also be able to use this documented data to help support any Tier 2 recommendations.