Challenge of Differentiation

What might be the greatest challenges to providing a differentiated classroom, as you see it now in the semester?

One big challenge to creating a differentiated classroom is knowing what each of your students need. It's one thing to know how to provide different levels of instuction, but quite another to know exactly where each of your students is at in terms of ability in each subject. As an elementary school teacher, I won't be just working with students in a particular subject, I'll have to be fully familiar with their ability in every subject. It's equally important to know the learning preferences of your students: whether they like to work in groups or alone, with music or in silence, etc. This helps to optimize their learning experience.

Another big challenge is making all options equally appealing. It's difficult to make a three-tiered lesson in which students are equally likely to want to do each activity. If you assign one group of students to watch a movie, another group to read articles, and another to write a paper, all of the students will obviously want to watch a movie, even if that's the activity for your lowest ability students. In the same vein, if you have your high ability students creating a model and your lower ability students doing worksheets, the lower ability students will feel slighted.

How might you address those challenges?

I think the answer to these challenges is just putting in more time. In order to know your students abilities and preferences for learning, you just have to get to know them, both academically and socially. Pay close attention to students' academic performance both in your classroom and in the past in order to form them into ability groupings for a particular subject. It is also important to be flexible with your grouping so as to meet all students' needs. In order to learn about students' learning preferences, the easiest option is to just ask them what they like in the classroom. A simple survey about their ideas towards group work, creative vs. analytical vs. practical assignments, noise level, etc. can be very helpful.

In terms of making equally appealing instruction for all students, you just have to be creative and hard-working. And if it's absolutely necessary for one activity to be more appealing than the other, make sure that it's not the same group of students who get the more appealing activity every time. Switch it up!