Reflecting on Differentiation: My Classroom Practice

Every year, among my students there are a few who enjoy reading and read at a much faster rate than the other students. One of the resources that I have come to value during this course and those preceding it a wiki. According to research done by de Pedro Puente (2007) wikis have proven effective in enhancing the experiential learning and the collaborative knowledge-building skills of students by providing various platform for interaction. I now have two wikis in my classroom, one for 7th grade students, and one for 6th grade students; each wiki is dedicated to a core curriculum novel, and the initial work on the wikis was done by students like the ones I have described. On Monday morning, I am presenting these sites to my fellow language arts teachers as part of our professional development program, and I am hoping to draw some of them in to participate in the wikis, and join me next year in creating a school-wide wki for student exploration of literature.

Other students in my classes have gradually joined in, using tools like Voki, Voice Thread, Slide Rocket and Glogster to create pages that illustrate, query, and discuss aspects of the novels. As a result, I am experiencing a natural process of differentiation, in which students are choosing their sub-topics and their means of expressing opinions and discussing literature online. As this is my first real experience with using wikis, there are some glitches and many things still to learn, but so far the experience has been highly positive. I have made a real effort to apply the UDL guidelines of providing multiple means of presentation, expression, and engagement in my lessons.

This past week I have used differentiation in implementing the lesson plan I wrote last week, using Visuwords and Learner's Dictionary, an online offshoot of Merriam-Webster for English language learners, for students to explore vocabulary such as “external”. “internal” and “reflection”, as part of a new chapter in their year-long autobiographical project. Stemming from the 6th grade curriculum, this lesson prepares students to compare and contrast the way others see them with the way they see themselves. Some students enjoy being photographed, so I took two different pictures of them, one posed and one random, as they kept the assignment in mind. One student who had been disengaged for weeks suddenly came to life, and completed planning for the chapter by describing his two photographs. This turned out to be quite successful with many students, as they were literally able to “see” themselves, and then make the transition to description. This moving from the literal to the abstract is an important part of development during middle school years. Other students were interested in using electronically-produced graphic organizers, and they chose among Inspiration, and two different organizers from Read Write Think (readwritethink.org), one a Venn diagram.

Before they began the planning, however, they used the Promethean board to do a similar comparison, using adjectives to describe how Byron from The Watsons Go To Birmingham sees himself compared to how his brother Kenny sees him, finding similarities and differences. They also used the board to discover transitional words used for comparison. This generated some discussion, and students worked in pairs and small groups to decide on which adjectives were common to both points of view; they also generated more words ,which were shared with the whole class. Groups were arranged by mixed ability levels. As Sabia (2008) states, “This is a critically important aspect of UDL — it recognizes that ALL students learn differently. Therefore, students with disabilities do not have
to feel that they are the only ones with learning differences” (p. 15).

Since many of my students are auditory learners, I played Mp3s of the novel, interrupting for questioning and response; I allowed students who were already doing so to read ahead during this time.This allowed them the space to freely learn at their own rate. Since I do not have enough books to send home with every student, I made the recordings available on the class blog, and gave CDs to students who do not have access to the Internet at home. Some students do have the book at home (having purchased or borrowed it from a library). The school is purchasing more books for next year, although I feel it would be wise to invest in iPads or e-readers of some kind. Amazon Kindle, for example, not has a lending library which would make investing in e-readers all the more cost effective. I am going to apply for another grant through our district foundation to acquire either ipads or e-readers of some kind. I also plan to use the UDL tools for creating a class profile and for setting goals.

All in all, this course has prepared me to truly integrate technology with the curriculum. I had been struggling to understand just how to do that, but with the introduction to UDL that this course has provided, along with the deeper understanding of how to differentiate with the use of technology, I feel far better equipped to deal with all of my students on a more individualized basis.

References
Canter, L., & Winberry, K. (Directors). (2001). Program 2: Introduction to learning styles, part two [DVD]. In C. Arnold (Producer), Learning differences: Effective teaching with learning styles and multiple intelligences. Los Angeles, CA: Laureate Education, Inc.

Curtis, C. P. (1995). The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963. New York: Delacorte Press.

de Pedro Puente, X. (2007) New method using wikis and forums to evaluate individual contributions in cooperative work while promoting experiential
learning: Results from preliminary experience. Proceedings of the 2007 international symposium on Wikis. Retrieved from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2007/_publish/dePetro_WikiSym2007_ContributionsInCooperativeWork.pdf

National Universal Design for Learning Task Force. http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/index.shtml

Sabia, R. (2008) Univeral design for learning and meaningful access to the curriculum. TASH Connections. 14-21. Retrieved from http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/UDL_TASH_Connections.pdf

UDL Class Profile Maker. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/classprofile.cfm

UDL Goal Setter. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/udlgoalsetter.cfm