As I was completing my Learning Summary for EME 5050, I had an A-ha moment. Instead of using one curriculum page for the whole class, we could use modified pages for appropriate differentiation in the classroom. We can create one curriculum page for the majority of the class. Then make a modified page to support and scaffold our struggling learners. This page can modify requirements and provide additional practice of the concepts. This page could also offer review and practice of basic concepts, if necessary. This page could have the option for portions to be read aloud to struggling students.
Finally, make another page for gifted learners. This page could be an extension of what you're doing in class or something completely different if your gifted students have already mastered the objectives you're teaching. We can accelerate or enrich our gifted students through curriculum pages. This would be an incredibly motivating way to differentiate for our gifted learners. Heck, some of your gifted kids could create curriculum pages for other kids!
The initial set up of these pages would be time-consuming. However, appropriate differentiation has always been time-consuming. This wouldn't take any more time than creating differentiated centers for your diverse learners. You could start slowly and create these diverse pages for one unit you tech each nine-week period. Then slowly add pages for additional units of study. Also, teachers can work together and divide the workload to get these done. And once they are done, you can utilize them repeatedly with minor tweaking.
I think that curriculum pages could be a powerful tool in the fight to meet the needs of the diverse learners in our classrooms!
Aly,
ReplyDeleteI think that incorporating differentiation into your curriculum page is a fantastic idea. It is possible you wouldn't actually need to make separate pages for struggling and gifted students, but could embed links on the main page saying "for more help with this skill click here" or alternately, "for more of a challenge with this skill click here" next to each topic. That way the students will not necessarily know they are in the struggling or gifted group because the options are there for everyone. The struggling students will not feel alienated and the rest of the class will have access to more information if they need it. Great idea!
Sam
Sam,
DeleteI love your idea of embedding extra help or challenge. That's perfect. Thanks!
Aly
Aly,
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of using and adapting curriculum pages to meet the needs of diverse learners! At times I have gifted students that finish well before the rest of the class and there have been days that I do not have an enrichment activity to go along with what we are learning or working on. I think adding additional links to a curriculum page would be beneficial for all students, not only the gifted learners. It would be neat to create an "enrichment" curriculum page and any student could access this page or work on it at home, too. I like that Sam suggested the idea of creating help links for the struggling students on the regular curriculum page, so they do not feel singled out. Great thinking and idea! Thanks for sharing!
Kaitlyn
Kaitlyn,
DeleteThanks! I agree that this would be a great idea for those gifted kids who finish early and helping struggling learners without singling them out.
Aly
Aly,
ReplyDeleteWow, using curriculum pages for differentiation never crossed my mind! I agree, that it would be very time consuming at the beginning, but you could divvy up the task amongst your team of teachers. The best part about it all is that you could provide students with links that would take them to videos, pages, etc. that could help them learn. What a great idea!
-Annie