Welcome to the Tool Shop

Differentiated Instruction: the teacher assess the student's needs through a pre-survey, observation, or personality test, etc. and uses the data from assessments to design future lesson plans and provide the students with the tools they need to be challenged.

As a science teacher, inquiry based learning is ideal because the students are interested and curious to inquire multiple experiments. This is the ideal situation in a science classroom, questions are presented to students and their answers are challenged. The students are encouraged to defend and provide evidence for their reasoning. The students are being challenged through “inquiry-based learning” because the teacher is constantly using formative assessment in class discussion, small groups, lab, etc. 

In a secondary classroom, I think it is very important to design diagnostic assessment. Each class has certain expectations and benchmarks that should have been mastered before the succeeding class. I think a diagnostic assessment would help refresh the students but also help the teacher design lesson plans to review such information that is not clear. As a student, if a vocabulary term that I didn’t understand was used during class I got confused and lost interest in the subject. If the teacher can make such review lessons or worksheets to raise students to the same level, I think more students will be engaged and retain the information.

In Ms. Duning’s General Motion class she provides some of her students with worksheets to complete during her class. When Ms. Duning uses the whiteboard to work problems and review vocabulary, most students get out their note books and script their own notes. Whereas, some students pull out a worksheet that has fill-in-the-blank options and visual aids. These students were given these worksheets because they have trouble paying attention in class. In order for students to be active during class Ms. Duning had to create a worksheet for those students, and the students will receive credit for completing the worksheet. These students are being provided with this incentive in order to encourage their involvement in class, due to the appeal of more points and the student’s only have to write one word in the blank versus a whole page of notes. Another idea that could challenge students and improve participation could be active involvement. Maybe a review day could include interactive games and students could be presented with a competition and challenges.

The students need to feel challenged in order to be intrigued by the assignment. Through inquiry-based learning the students’ statements were being questioned. But if a student responds to questions with “I don’t know” then the student needs more tools. The teacher needs to assess what concept the student feels comfortable explaining. When I was observing Ms. Ramakers’s Chemistry 1st block class I kept receiving “I don’t know” in response to my questions. The class was reviewing “net-ionic equations” in small groups and one student was struggling to understand the question. In order to assess the student’s content level, I started asking high-order questions. When the response was “I don’t know” I started asking questions that pertained to the previous lesson that the student’s already “mastered.” The student then started to respond to those answers. After finding which level the student was on I started to shape my next questions. This example in Ms. Ramaekers’s class reminds me of the importance of assessment as Wormeli has discussed; if a student is going to be assessed, the results need to be considered and direct the design of future lesson plans. 

I think that differentiated instruction improves the student’s understanding of the material and helps the student’s learning develop. Through differentiated instruction the teacher provides the students with the tools they need in order to be challenged effectively. From my experience as a student, I have learned that I need to be challenged in order to be intrigued by the assignment. But in order to be challenged effectively the teacher has to have a firm understanding of the student’s needs. In order to assess each student’s needs a pre-survey could be administered to gather data about the student’s diagnostic level, content level, personality, tracking of progress, immediate feedback, etc. These methods would be ideal to gather data about a student, but only if the results were observed and used to direct future lesson plans. The teacher needs to commit to differentiated instruction before these methods are employed.