When I think about what I’m most nervous about in becoming a teacher, it’s not connecting with my students, or bonding with my fellow teachers, it’s making sure that the lesson I create can be understood by every student in my classroom. Differentiated instruction is something, that on paper, seems very simple, just insert different things into your lesson that everyone in your classroom can understand and learn, and remember. But, in reality, differentiated instruction is a beast that is hard to bring fully into the classroom and make work effectively. As a teacher, you can work for hours on a lesson, make sure that every different learning strategy has something in your lesson that they can use to absorb the information, but no matter how hard you work to include everyone, when it comes to bringing it into the classroom, it could easily fall apart at the seams. Every year, as teachers, we’re going to have a completely new set of learners, some of them might be geniuses, with college reading levels and can compute mathematical problems way beyond their years, and others might be just starting out with chapter books, and still struggle with basic division, and we’ll have countless of students who fall somewhere in the middle.
As a teacher, this concept of not being accessible to everyone, and your lesson not being inclusive to everyone, in a scary idea. But Wormeli gives a few tips for teachers to carry with them, such as being empathetic towards all learners, be flexible with time and lessons, be willing to meet with students who are struggle, and being organized. While, this won’t automatically make us experts at differentiated instruction, it might make the whole task less daunting.
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