Week 9: March 7-11

This week we learned all about Differentiated Instruction in the classroom. Basically what this includes is meeting students' diverse needs by differentiating the content being taught, the process by which it is taught, and the ways students demonstrate what they have learned through products. There are several ways that we as teachers can use this instructional strategy in the classroom, namely through an instructional process, teaching subject-area content, and basic skills instruction.

To apply what we read previously in our preparation assignment, we broke into groups on Monday and figured out a specific skill that we were able to teach to another group-specifically teaching through differentiated instruction. After realizing what we would teach to our peers, we first gave them a pre-assessment which we used to learn what everyone in the group already knew about the subject we wanted to teach. My group decided to teach about how to do different hairstyles with various types of braids. Each person on my team had a specific braid that they were designated to teach and we were prepared to demonstrate. For our pre-assessment, we had each person in the other group that we were teaching do a self-evaluating on how well they could do the following braids: dutch, french, bangs into a side french braid, fish tail, and an up-do. Through the pre-assessment we knew the strengths and weaknesses of each person and which braid they were most proficient at doing. Roles switched and the group then gave us a similar self-evaluation about how well we could decorate cakes.

The following class period on Wednesday, we were taught by the other group how to do a specific cupcake design for the Easter holiday. They also used a powerpoint presentation to educate us on the various tools and instruments that bakers use for professional cake decorating. We each had a turn at doing the various steps and they were able to do a visual post-assessment of the skills that we learned. Afterwards, we had the opportunity of teaching them all about braids. We differentiated the way that we taught because it was obvious that some of the girls were much more skilled and confident in their abilities to braid, while the classic french braid was more of a challenge for others.

On Friday, we learned all about the different types of Intellectual Disabilities (Mental Retardation). As future educators, we focused on how we could help these students and focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. It was interesting learning about the different ways we could help them reach their academic goals and succeed in the classroom setting, even with this cognitive impairment.