A few weeks into my student teaching experience, I realized that I was not differentiating my

instruction as much as I wanted to. So, I decided to make it a professional goal to figure out how to

translate theory to practice and actually differentiate successfully in my classroom.

When I first learned about Carol Tomlinsons concept of differentiation, I was completely

hooked. I think it is such a strategic, effective way to target all learners particular needs. I came into

my student teaching intending to follow Tomlinsons model by differentiating content, process, and

product. But, I was really struggling to do this, because I quickly found that it was difficult enough to

get all of my first graders (many of whom were not full readers) to follow along with one set of

directions. I couldnt imagine trying to lead activities that had different information, different sets of

directions, or different outcomes.

So, one night when I was particularly inspired, I sat down to go over my course notes and

read online articles about differentiation. This research led me to make a list of ways to differentiate

that seemed realistic given my classroom context, generalizable to different types of activities, and

that dont require too much prep work since I have already been struggling with work overload. I

then was able to consult this list when planning so that I immediately had ideas to draw from. Some

of these include pre-teaching to a small group, strategically joining turn and talks to support

struggling students or push successful students further, giving the option to work alone or with

others, modeling another example of a skill for a student who may need extra support when the class

is working independently, and giving a quick whole group pre-assessment that will determine who

will stay at the teacher time station and who will go to other practice stations. These ideas all met

the criteria I defined (realistic, generalizable, and low-prep) so that I could use them often, but I also

included some ideas on the list that I planned to use every once in a while such as learning menus

and tiered worksheets.

I am proud to say that I really did change my practice! For example, during a lesson on

patterns, I started by using Nearpod to give two questions to the whole group. Nearpod lets you see
all of the students responses and share a certain response back with the students so that you can

discuss it. This made the two questions seem like a warm-up activity to the kids, because I still used

them like they were part of a lesson instead of as a pre-assessment. But, based on what I saw from

the responses, I directed the kids who did not understand to stay with me at the teacher time station

and grouped the rest of the class into other pattern practice stations I had prepared. This way, I could

give more direct instruction and support to the kids who needed it, and I didnt bore the kids who

already knew the material with more instruction about it.

When I was planning to do a whole group lesson on a Friday about the language associated

with reading and interpreting graphs (e.g, more, less, greater than, fewer than, equal to), I used

Thursday to pre-teach some of those concepts to my math group that was at a lower readiness level.

As a result, they had more background knowledge during the whole group lesson which helped them

successfully grasp the concepts.

When I was teaching decoding strategies in my small reading groups, I realized I could come

up with practice words that were targeted towards each groups level instead of using the same words

each time. Even though the focus was on using the strategy rather than reading words with certain

features (blends, digraphs, vowel teams, etc.), I think this approach was a good way to make the

practice authentic and maximally useful for the students. For example, when teaching how to flip

the sound of g from hard to soft, I used words like gum and gem for my level A readers and

words like grumpy and gentle for my level F readers.

All of these things made me feel like a much more effective teacher, so Im excited to

continue adding strategies to my list and thinking of ways to differentiate that work for my students

and me. I know that it is a skill I will have to cultivate over time, but making a paradigm shift from

thinking differentiation has to consist of complicated, high-prep activities to realizing that it can

consist of small but useful strategies has helped me get a good start.