Mind map – differentiated instruction

What I knew What I learned

- Learning
- Individuals - Qualitative over quantitative
- Taking every child into consideration - Multiple approaches
- Different techniques to teach - Student focused
- Clear goals - Based on the needs of the children
- Objectives - Engaging students
- Adjustment to each individual child
- Each student has different educational
needs

Differentiated learning is a concept that teachers should be practicing in their classrooms in

order to prepare their students for academic success. This experience was good for me because it
gave me a better understanding of what differentiated instruction is. When brainstorming for the
first round, I assumed that differentiated instruction was based on each individual student’s need
to learn, whereas it is more focused on having clear goals and objectives. Differentiated instruction
is keeping the needs of your student’s in mind while having clear goals and objectives of what
needs to be accomplished in the lesson. “Differentiated instruction applies an approach to teaching
and learning so that students have multiple options for taking in information and making sense of
ideas” (Hall, 2002). Not all students learn the same way or retain the information needed and by
changing lessons up to cater to other student’s needs, it can be very beneficial to each student. “A
teacher in a differentiated classroom is proactively trying to plan a variety of ways to express
learning” (Tomlinson, 2001). In my classroom, I try to use different methods of teaching in order
to cater to different student’s needs. One that I use often is changing mediums of visual, audio,
and kinesthetic learning. I use videos to aid in my teaching as well as create hands on learning for
my students. This caters to students who have different learning styles. As I learn more about
differentiated instruction, there are many different ideas that I would like to learn more about and
that I would like to incorporate into my classroom. One idea for further learning would be to learn
how differentiated learning is effective at different ages. I work with children at the pre-school age
and as far as I have seen, differentiated instruction has been very effective. I would like to know
if it becomes more effective in higher grade levels, less effective, or remains the same.
 References

Hall, T. (2002). Differentiated instruction. Wakefield, MA: National Center on.

Tomlinson, Carol Ann. How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed Ability Classrooms, 2nd edition,
Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2001. ProQuest Ebook Central,
https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.postu.idm.oclc.org/lib/post/detail.action?docID=280341.