After my last post the semester quickly came to an end and there was all the insanity that entails. I had to write my first final and get final semester grades ready. It was an experience!! After that we had a 3 week break and now it’s back to the grind. Monday we had an in-service day at school and yesterday and today I attended a seminar on differentiated instruction.
The seminar was supposed to be a practical course for instituting differentiated instruction in your classroom. The instructor gave us lots of ideas and actually had us use a bunch of them so we could see how they work. We also got a pretty good sized book with tons of ideas in it. But, much as I was when I started my teacher training, I was pretty much like a dear in the headlights. I could not see how these things could be implemented in my classroom. I’m having trouble seeing how I can do these things in my classes but in talking to another new teacher I realized it is probably just because I’m new and still finding my way. Also, I don’t have to do these things all at once. I can start very slowly, baby steps.
Sitting in the seminar I was thinking about what I wanted to institute in my classes. One thing that is critical is that you can only differentiate lessons when you have done assessments to determine it is needed. I was thinking of all the ways I can do assessments in my classes. For pre-algebra I was thinking of the pre-chapter tests or the skills worksheets their books have. Tonight, as I sat down to get an assessment ready for tomorrow I realized that I do an assessment everyday and didn’t even realize it. Everyday they come in there is a bellwork sheet for them to do while I take attendance and get organized for the lesson. That bellwork is the perfect daily assessment, I just having been using the information those papers contain. So starting tomorrow I am going to have them do bellwork and I am going to review everyone and use them to differentiate if necessary. I’m very excited about this.
For my chemistry classes I got a couple of good ideas also. The instructor had us make these True and False cards. She would then ask questions and we would answer true or false. If we got it right we got to play a bingo game for a prize. This is a great way to quickly assess understanding and to get an answer from everyone in class. There are lots of times I ask questions but only get answers from a couple of students. By using the T/F cards I can see what everyone in the class is thinking….
There are many more ideas that I got from that but those are where I’m starting. I do many assessments but I don’t always use the information I receive from those assessments…. Well, I’m feeling a lot more confident this semester and I’m going to use these things.
January 18th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
At work we are also going through a series of new management training it is a bit overwhelming but the ideas are really sensible. Not trailblazing, but they do make sense and you know you knew them all along but they were just never brought to the fore this way. I just wonder how we will be able to implement it in our own scenarios.