Teaching Of A Differentiated Classroom Essay

When an educator walks into her classroom for the first time, she needs to be prepared to encounter students that come from a variety of backgrounds. The children will be in different stages of language development, and the educator must accommodate for each of these students. Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera (2013) state, “The US Census Bureau projects that by the 2030s, children whose home language is other than English will increase from roughly 22 percent to 40 percent of the school-age population” (p. 9). This increase in second language learners will cause the educator to accommodate for those needs. Second language learners “need teachers who welcome them and recognize their unique abilities, what they know, and what they need to learn” (Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera, 2013, p. 10).

Many of the diverse children that are in classrooms today speak, or are learning to speak, two languages. This can become very confusing to the child at times, and make understanding him or her challenging. However, teachers need to recognize that it is important to support the development of both of these languages, because they both make up the identity of a child. Some ways in which teachers can support duel language learning is by, encouraging children to use their home language at school, interacting with duel language learners as much as possible, creating opportunities for peers to interact with the ELL students, developing predictable routines and activities that use the English language, but do not require a response from the ELL student, and concentrating on the meaning of what an ELL child is saying and not on the grammatically correctness of

Like special education, differentiated instruction regards personalized instruction. Each child has an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) with personal goals to work towards. While direct instruction is necessary, I believe it is crucial to incorporate a constructivist approach as well by seeking and valuing students’ viewpoints. Having insight concerning the students helps teachers prepare classroom lessons and differentiate instruction on the basis of students' needs and interests. I cannot force my students to learn. However, I believe I can make them more inclined to learn if the learning is enjoyable, engaging and relevant. While I am not a certified teacher yet, I stick by those beliefs and hope to develop a more clear and profound philosophy of teaching throughout the years. This is just the

Learning a new language can be difficult for anyone. It is especially difficult for students who are expected to learn a new culture and different subjects at the same time. The article this paper references discusses ways teachers can help their students learn a new language and the stages those students experience as they become proficient in their new language.

As an ESOL Instructional Facilitator, an issue that this writer often faces is the struggle of teachers to teach newcomers into the country. Language barriers are often an issue, but the most troubling is the cultural disconnect between newcomers and teachers, as wells as newcomers and their peers. This disparity alienates these newcomers. This writer addresses these issues by educating teachers and modeling culturally responsive teaching. According to Griner (2012), "Culturally responsive teaching can be defined as using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and

Rationale: To make a classroom culturally relevant environment, teachers need to be able to recognize all diverse cultures in the class, and integrate this to the curriculum. Also, teachers teaching these students from different backgrounds, who in the most cases speak other language than English, need to implement instructional strategies that promote language comprehension, and development, so students can be successful in the unit. This artifact demonstrates how language acquisition is promoted for English learners at their different stages. This article explains the four different stages of language acquisition: Pre-production, early production, speech emergence, and intermediate fluency, and present some strategies that can be implemented in the unit to support English learners.

In such a diverse country, educators need to be able to understand and meet the needs of all the students in a classroom. A classroom today is going to have a diverse population and each student will learn differently from the others. The acquisition of language advances through stages. In the USA today, there are many different languages spoken. In our classrooms many children will speak more than one language. Bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages, which has a positive effect on children’s cognitive development (Latham, 1998). Bilingualism can also negative when the students did not accurately developed full proficiency in both languages as this can be very frustrating to the student as well to the teacher. Not being able to communicate in either language can have a negative impact on the student.

Some students will be far below grade level, some at grade level, and still some will be above grade level. How can a teacher effectively provide access to the grade level curriculum when there are students functioning at so many different levels within one classroom? Differentiated instruction is the answer to this problem.

“Differentiation is not just a set of strategies; it is a way of thinking of thinking about teaching and learning. Strategies are tools that help us to accomplish the goal of differentiated instructions. Differentiated instruction means tailoring instructions to meet individual needs. Teachers could either differentiate the content, process, product or the environment, and the use of an ongoing assessment and flexible grouping make this successful approach to instruction.” _ Carol Tomlinson. Differentiated instructions strategy helps to teachers to respond to the diverse needs of students, and this is guided by three basic principles. The first principle focuses instructions on the most essential principles and skills. This is because teachers have the skills to identify the instructional goals and outcome for students. The second guiding principle helps Teachers to recognize and attend to the differences in their students. They do not attempt to a one side fit all approach to instruction. And thirdly, assessment and instructions go hand in hand. Teachers pre- assess their students to understand their starting point and continue with ongoing assessment and make adjustment as needed.

When properly implemented, the differentiated instruction theory helps teachers design learning experiences that provide students with access to grade level standards through use of a multi-sensory approach. This multi-sensory approach will help students take ownership of their learning by enabling them (students) to facilitate their own learning. Engaging students in this type of learning will also allow teachers to have more individual, meaningful interactions with students. These individual interactions will provide teachers with opportunities to assess individual student growth and mastery of grade level

Differentiated instruction is a way of provided different opportunities of learning a concept or a skill. I think that it can be used to see diverse needs and abilities or talents in the classroom and have them express themselves in a nontraditional way. This could be done in different ways, from our discussions, I got to hear how different subjects can do creative way to instruct and do assessments. In the field of math from as simple as “think, partner, share”; this is where students individually think about a given topic or an answer to question. Then they discuss their thinking or findings to their partner. Finally, the teacher would have each pair share their ideas with the rest of the class, and open the floor for further discussion.

One area of consideration is differentiated instruction. Although this method of instruction has been encouraged, some individual educators have been resistant in implementing this practice. Perhaps this is because of the time constraints involved for instruction and planning; however, it is an effective tool for nurturing achievement. As classrooms are composed of a wide range of abilities, using reliable assessment data to determine current level of academic performance will help teachers differentiate instruction and prepare meaningful tasks to meet individual student levels of readiness (Moon, 2005).

Every student has their own story, set of experiences, and abilities. Overtime, teachers have quickly realized that they cannot reach all students with a-one-size-fits-all approach to instruction. Therefore, the goal of a “differentiated classroom” is to maximize growth and individual success of each student by providing different avenues for the students to learn the content, to process the information and ideas, and to create a final product. Differentiating instruction needs to be a daily component of my planning and teaching. Some of students need to be challenged with opportunities to expand their mind with advanced learning activities. Other students need extra scaffolding and support in order to understand the basic concepts of the course. Differentiation can be an extremely effective instruction strategy for teachers as they work to meet the needs of English Language Learners.

Due to the ESOL population rapidly increasing within the public school population, teachers will encounter children speaking a home language other than English in nearly every classroom and we, as teachers must be adequately prepared to assist them in reaching their fullest potential. “Many students today struggle to meet high academic standards, but ELLs have the added complexity of having to learn and use high-level academic English as they study challenging content in a new language (Echevarria, 2008).” English Language Learners come from diverse backgrounds and enter our classrooms speaking numerous languages. In order to become well prepared to educate these students, the following domains must be concentrated on: Culture (Cross-Cultural Communications), Language and Literacy (Applied Linguistics), Methods of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), ESOL Curriculum and Materials Development, and Assessment (ESOL Testing and Evaluation). Putting these topics at the forefront is sure to assist all English Language Learners in reaching academic success.

The best way to incorporate differentiated instruction in the classroom is to discover what motivates a student in the classroom. We need to know our students and what motivates them (Tomlinson, 2012). Motivation will be the determination for success in education. When we think about differentiated instruction and incorporating motivation this is just common sense (Tomlinson, 2013). The very existence of learning depends on motivation. It is our job as teachers to meet the needs of our diverse learners (Schmitges, 2014). A little bit of motivation is like a candle in the darkness. It just takes one person to step out and light the candle and the whole room will be filled. To understand how important motivation is to differentiated instruction, three case studies were looked at.