Effective Key Areas of Differentiated Instruction

One of the most important and critical areas of differentiated instruction is the ability to know your students. Finding out about your student’s and their individual needs is very important in deciding what the best approach is to deliver lessons that will best suite the student. It is also important to look at these needs individually and as a whole class. Some students may learn differently than others and in this case presenting the lesson in different ways may be more beneficial. I feel that as I begin to teach a new group of students one of the first things I would do would be to use student learner profiles and interest profiles to find out about the student’s needs, strengths, interests, preferences and ways of learning. It is important to start with a clear picture of where the students are at, so that you are able to help them progress throughout the rest of the year.

As a beginning teacher, it is also critical that I understand the curriculum. This is another key area of differentiated instruction. Knowing the “big picture” and “key ideas” of the curriculum will help in planning different types of lessons for students. Differentiated instruction implies that students are still able to meet the objectives in the curriculum; however individual students may meet these same objectives through different ways of learning. As a new teacher, it is important to be creative and flexible when planning lessons. It is imperative that the student’s different needs be taken into consideration when planning lessons. By becoming knowledgeable with the program of studies, we are able to design different lessons for the same type of learning outcomes to suite each student’s needs.

Another key area of differentiated instruction that I would use as I began to teach a new group of students is the idea of scaffolding the responsibility from me to the students. Because we know that differentiated instruction does not happen overnight, it is important to give the students some lead way when it comes to being responsible for their own success. At first, creating interesting and motivating lessons to get the student’s engaged in learning is key. However, as students grow and become more and more capable it is important to transfer the responsibility of learning to them so that they become capable and motivated learners throughout their lives. It is important that we help students develop strategies and tools that help them communicate, gain ideas, organize information, and critically assess concepts.