Differentiation

Differentiation is a tricky thing. What I have noticed is that children are very sensitive to differences in work. They notice when someone is doing something else. The differentiation needs to happen, the changes need to be made, but they can’t be overly obvious.

At the beginning, differentation was something that was keeping me up at night. I couldn’t quite figure out the most effective way to match the wide range of student learning abilities. At first, I made it too complex, typing up separate lesson plans for each student to make sure I was meeting all of their needs. But that didn’t last long because it was too time consuming. And I think that’s where the issue lies with differentiating. Many teachers do not differentiate, because they don’t know how to do it fast and effectively. Differentiating can be done, it just requires a little extra thought, not hours of additional work. Here’s a look at some easy differentiating that I have been doing in centers.