I'm super excited to be able to post again about differentiation! :) I'm going to write about student traits because I think they are really important. But first, what is a trait? A trait is a distinguished characteristic or quality, especially of one's personal nature. When I think of a trait a couple came to my mind: Honest, Loving, kind, good, loyal, smart, determined, reliable, hard-working and brave.
When it comes to students they are each going to have their own specific traits some will be the same but some will be different. There are 4 traits to ensure effective learning, readiness, interest, learning profile, and affect. Now lets dig deeper into each trait.
Readiness
Readiness is a student's knowledge and understanding related to a particular sequence of learning. Readiness has a lot to do with a student's schema, prior learning and what they have experienced in life.
Interest
Interest is a topic that causes curiosity and passion in a learner. When a child is curious, they will want to learn and want to understand what is being taught. A good teacher teaches developing interest and also undiscovered interests.
Learning Profile
Learning Profile is how the student learns best. Teachers need to use multiple way of teaching concepts so students have lots of opportunities to learn new ideas.
Affect
Affect has to do with how the student feels about them self, their work and the classroom. Remember to create a classroom environment that is safe and inviting to your students. Compliment their work, offer opportunity for classmates to compliment their work. This will help create an loving environment from both the classmates and the teacher. As a teacher be aware of students feelings and emotions.
In order to have success with differentiation there are also 4 classroom elements that need to happen, content, process, product, and learning environment.
Content
Content uses visuals while lecturing, ask students to role play or use manipulative's, provide audio passages of text, and provide text in a student's foreign language why they learn English.
Process
Process is how a student comes to understand the information and ideas from the lesson. Effective processing ensures that students will be able to apply what they have learned.
Product
Product is assessments, or demonstrations of what students have come to know and understand. Products can for example be a student project, a test, or any type of formal assessment.
Learning Environment
Learning Environment has to do with the operation and the tone of the classroom. Lots of factors contribute to the learning environment. Rules and procedures, furniture arrangement, guidelines, expectations and also the MOOD of the classroom.
As you can see, classroom elements and student traits are part of an everyday classroom. They are each unique in their own way, they each serve a role and purpose and are all very important. Teachers who use differentiated instruction truly understand their students, they know what they are teaching, and they are flexible at teaching in order to match each students needs. To be an effective teacher it takes time, patience and listening.
Great job in explaining what we will be calling the "WHATs" and the "FOR whats of differentiation. The WHATs (the classroom elements you discussed) are WHAT a teacher can differentiate, and the FOR whats (the student traits you discussed) are what a teacher can differentiate FOR. It's probably still confusing -- or more so, because of what I just wrote... but you have the foundation here for really GETTING this! 5 pts.
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