1. Differentiated Instruction in my Practice (Hopes, Aspirations, Can Do!)
1.1. Hopes
1.1.1. Provide my students with respectful tasks
1.1.1.1. Respectful tasks are those that challenge every student to live in the realm of their zone of proximal development
1.1.2. Maintain a living record of my students profiles (beginning at the beginning of the school year)
1.1.2.1. Collaborate with previous teacher
1.1.2.2. Student & parent surveys & questionnaires
1.2. Aspirations
1.2.1. Create a healthy, productive classroom environment
1.2.1.1. Setting up my classroom routines, rituals of respect, and physical space in a ways that is conducive to learning
1.2.2. Continue to collaborate with colleagues & share resources
1.2.2.1. Collaborate in lesson planning & sharing DI strategies that work and do not work for our students
1.3. Can do! (For the rest of this school year)
1.3.1. Maintain & expand a working checklist for my DI work
1.3.1.1. Student-centered: What do Student Profiles (Readiness, Interests, Learning Profiles) show/tell me?
1.3.1.2. Varied avenues: Is there at least more than 1 way to access the content, process, & product
1.3.1.3. Respectful of all learners: Is everyone being pushed to their zone of proximal development? (Including the teacher)
1.3.2. Work on at least 1 DI practice a lesson, particularly those that focus on student choice
1.3.2.1. Tiered activities, Interest-based process and scaffold myself to interest-based products
1.3.2.2. Honoring my guided reading groups as a space of differentiation (learning how/why students honor this differentiated time and translate that energy to other DI strategies across content)
2. Feedback on DI Cycle
2.1. Continue the use of differentiating for future residents via choiceboards, interaction with manipulatives, and tiered assignments (such as the variability for our blog post responses)
2.2. Encourage next year's residents to maintain an informal document tracking their students readiness, interests, and learning profiles
2.2.1. If DI will be introduced later on, it could be presented as "keep track of your students' learning styles, interests as learners/people
2.3. Providing more support on maintaining learning profiles that are thorough, but also not overwhelming.
2.3.1. I learned a lot from maintaing learning profiles, but often felt overwhelmed by what and how material (student work, tests, discussions, etc) to archive. I need more guidance on how to do this work in a ways that is manageable, thorough, and productive for reflection so that it translates into my teaching
3. Questions
3.1. In what ways are inclusive practices provided for students with disabilities interact, overlap, and support English Language Learners?
3.1.1. I understand that language acquisition is a particular focus of study and reality for English Language Learners as well that there is not one reality for students with disabilities. Still, through our Special Education and SEI course I have noticed overlaps in pedagogy (how we treat & teach students) as well as practices.
3.1.2. How do I develop a teaching practice that honors ELLS and students with disabilities in providing them with instruction for language acquisition and immersion in the content (former), and equitable and access to the content (latter)?
3.1.3. How do the worlds of teaching ELLs and special education relate and understand each other? (I noticed an overlapping sense of understanding at my school site of each field)
3.2. How does differentiated instruction consider emotional and behavioral learning?
3.2.1. Can DI be used to support students' emotional and behavioral being? If so, what are some strategies being employed?
3.3. Where can we continue to search for technology and resources that can support us in our implementation of inclusive practices for special education?
3.4. How do we differentiated products in such a way that cognitive demand is high and all students are held to content objectives?
4. Relationship to BTR Instructional Goals
4.1. #1: Building a culture where everybody matters and everybody participates.
4.1.1. A central focus of DI is to bring in all learners into not just the learning process, but into a supportive, cooperative, and self-motivating community of learners
4.1.2. DI maintains an emphasis in creating a classroom environment that is collaborative through flexible groupings and combinations of working structures
4.1.3. Accepting DI in the classroom as a norm means encouraging students to make sense of how as individuals we process and learn differently, thus we will be introducing varied ways of learning that provide more and more students with enter to our learning communtity
4.1.4. DI presents students with many and different opportunities to enter and create from the curriculum, thus discouraging students from feeling alienated from the curriculum based on their learning needs
4.2. #2: Teach lessons with high cognitive demand, maintaining a consistent focus on student reasoning and enabling students to understand big ideas in academic content areas.
4.2.1. DI is a means of meeting and supporting students at their zone of proximal development
4.2.2. DI strives to differentiate content, process, and product to hold students to the expectations of high cognitive learning, while being respectful of where they are
4.3. #3: Assess students’ learning every day and use assessments to inform instructional decisions and plan cognitively demanding lessons and units of instruction.
4.3.1. As DI ensures that all students are being taught at high cognitive level, we must also keep up with ongoing assessment of our students' learning and the impact of our differentiated instruction
4.4. #4: Ensure students read and write in all content areas, in meaningful ways, and on a regular basis.
4.4.1. Accessing writing means being able to write and provided with a creating space that activates students' writer selves, thus DI provides these opportunities by considering students' readiness, interests, and learning profiles then deriving a plan for their learning in writing across content
4.5. DI is a means of assuring that BTR instructional goals for learning are being met for all students at all times
5. DI Presentations ("aha" moments & questions)
5.1. Differentiated instruction is already present in our classrooms, whether in an intentional or unintentional way in our classrooms
5.1.1. Guided Reading is achieved through flexible groupings, and ongoing assessments. Each group is instructed according to readiness, learning profile, and interest, in decisions we make in what leveled text, and what and how they interact with the text
5.1.2. Providing anchor activities for students to practice their specific skills
5.2. Differentiated instruction maintains that we honor our students readiness, interests, and learning profiles
5.2.1. While it is impossible to meet all of our students needs or always immerse them in their interest, whether via content, process, or product, we can always provide them with choices! Opening up at least one aspect of the content, process, or product to student choice and creativity engages students in learning, but also promote their learning
5.2.2. Honoring our students profiles, means, knowing our students in relationship to readiness, interests, and learning profiles. One way to do this is by keeping a living record of each student. Always acknowledging their strengths and weaknesses. (Ex: my DI Literacy Program Student Profiles)
5.3. Differentiated Instruction is a means of employing Universal Design for Learning
5.3.1. UDl principles of representation, expression, and engagement treaded through our work of differentiated instruction
5.3.1.1. Attention to how we represented information to students (multiple forms of instructions)
5.3.1.2. Attention to the ways students were expressing or putting their knowledge into practice (DI process) via tiered activies, group activities, flexible groupings
5.3.1.3. Engagement was held through attention to flexible groupings (based on learning profiles, readiness, interests)
5.3.2. Autonomy is the central philosophy to UDL and is expressed consistently in differentiated instruction through an emphasis on choice
5.4. Differentiated Instruction would not be possible without the creation of a safe, respectful classroom environment
5.4.1. Safety refers to an individuals ability to feel comfortable to take learning risks, and know that their learning (whether through mistakes or triumphs) will be honored
5.4.2. A respectful environment is created with both what honors where the teacher is in their process of learning and who the students are. A respectful environment provides opportunities for individuals to learn from their mistakes and always with respectful tasks