As a teacher, I feel that every student is unique and comes with his or her own needs to

succeed in the classroom. Students who are higher performing, and understand the concepts

quickly need differentiated material to challenge them, and the students who struggle with the

concepts need the material to be differentiated for them as well. I have done this with my

students specifically when we engage in laboratory activities. At my placement, the biology

content team work collaboratively together. This means that students are often engaged in

leveled labs, meaning that different teachers will be running labs at different levels for the

students. The teachers who will have the struggling students will run a lab that illustrates the

concepts that the students need to know, but will not overwhelm the students with information.

Students that understand the concepts, but need help in solidifying them will have a specific lab

that they perform, and students who are higher performing will engage in a lab that is

challenging as far as procedures, and the information that they are asked for at the end of the lab

(Zubaidah, Fuad, Mahanal, & Suarsini, 2017). In order to decide which group students, belong

to, they were all to take a pretest that determined how much of the information for the upcoming

unit that they already knew. Students who performed at a higher level were put into a group

where they would be challenged and so on. This will help not only the students, but also the

teachers, because it is now possible to meet students where they are, meaning that splitting

students based on prior content knowledge will allow teachers to help students in the best

possible way. This is also possible through strategic seating within the classroom. This was done

when leveled labs were not possible, due to different classes being at different places within the

content. In my class, higher performing students are typically seated with lower performing

students so that they can help their classmates with difficult concepts (Aida, 2016). This may

also motivate the lower performing students to gain a deeper understanding of the material. Since
students are split into three separate groups, each table was given the choice between two of the

three different labs that were planned. This allowed the teachers to ensure that students were

performing and conducting experiments that were at their level, and too high or too low.

When the students finished their experiments, there were reflection questions and

analysis questions for them to answer at the end. The students were to completely answer these

questions, then write a formal lab report illustrating their findings. This allowed the students to

spend time analyzing their data, and the procedures that they used in their experiments. This also

allowed the students to reflect on whether or not their experiment was valid, and what they could

have done better or differently. This allows the students to think like a true scientist would, and

be able to state their findings, even though their experiment was not perfect (Han, Li, Sin, &Sin,

2014). As a teacher, this is important for me to see. While the students do not have to be correct

in their hypothesis, they need to be able to determine the problems in their experiment as well as

the steps that they need to take to not make the same mistake again. This will be important when

the time comes for the students to develop another experiment. They will need to use the

knowledge that they have acquired from previous labs and experiments to inform how they will

proceed with the current experiments. For students who perform higher on labs, the expectations

are that they have thought deeper into the material, and that their lab report shows that deeper

level of understanding (Velsor, 2016). For students who were struggling, the expectation is that

they now understand the material, and the next step would be to deepen their understanding of

the material (Fletcher, Bernard, Fairtlough, & Ahmet, 2015). While leveled labs seem to simplify

the content for some students and not for others, they rather simplify the procedures while

providing the same information. This ensures that all students have access to the same

information, and that no student is put at a significant advantage over the others.
 References

Aida D., S. (2016). THE EFFICIENCY OF DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING -

INDEPENDENT LEARNING SITUATIONS VERSUS COLLABORATIVE

LEARNING. Network Intelligence Studies, Vol IV, Iss 7 (1/2016), Pp 51-59 (2016), (7

(1/2016), 51.

Fletcher, J., Bernard, C., Fairtlough, A., & Ahmet, A. (2015). Beyond Equal Access to Equal

Outcomes: The Role of the Institutional Culture in Promoting Full Participation, Positive

Inter-Group Interaction and Timely Progression for Minority Social Work

Students. British Journal Of Social Work, 45(1), 120-137. doi:bjsw/bct081

Han, N. S., Li, H. K., Sin, L. C., & Sin, K. P. (2014). The Evaluation of Students' Written

Reflection on the Learning of General Chemistry Lab Experiment. Malaysian Online

Journal Of Educational Sciences, 2(4), 45-52.

Velsor, M. (2016). Our own reflections about the late fight--and the lesson to be drawn from it--

with one or two other matters. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, (3-4), 257.

ZUBAIDAH, S. s., FUAD, N. M., MAHANAL, S., & SUARSINI, E. (2017). Improving

Creative Thinking Skills of Students through Differentiated Science Inquiry Integrated

with Mind Map. Journal Of Turkish Science Education (TUSED), 14(4), 77-91.

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