Differentiated Plan

Hey there!
So, the month is almost over and we need to take a moment to recap an put together the information learned along the month. In order to do this I will set an activity according to the California Standards including what I understand are differentiated activities.

For a group of first grade:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.7

Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

To start with I always include a though task that mentions or involves previous knowledge, so the children prepare themselves for the activity and know what to expect. This time since my lesson revolves around Identifying characters in a story and how to describe them I would start with questioning about the word “Character” in a group Participation and Collaboration.This would recover previous knowledge and define the path the activity is about to take.

To follow through and keep motivating the students as well as introducing them to the topic, thus why listening to a story commonly remembered or used(liked) by the group would be the best way to keep the activity going,the story already familiar to them is easy to relate to the information they have to acquire.

For the activity development it is important to start with the mini-lesson using the strategy Think-Pair- Share to set a conversation and participation about what a Character is.

The objective must be set , “Identify the characters in a story” so the task follows the same required path.

Next would be instructed to talk about the characters of the story read before, How are they? What makes them special? What qualities, abilities, “adjectives” can you find for them? How to know they are the characters?

With every group, no matter the age it is important to have visuals around mentioning the progress of the class, some starting questions or the results of the conversation could be written on the board to keep track and continue motivating into the progress of the task.

Individually, they would have to select and describe one of the characters of the story using their knowledge and what aportations they found in the previous collaborations.To help different types of learners and timings the instructor could add specific questionings to answer and with them is understadable the level each student has at that point of the activity.

Different learner question:

1. Why is _____a character in the story?
2. How do you know he/she is? (prove it, describe it)

EL learners

For this learners, I would add the use of dictionaries to look for the words they need at the describing part and different picture cards where the setting of the story could be followed easily.

Special Ed learners
I would have them cooperating in different groups and depending on their needs and the resources available add the story in a video, picture cards or cut and paste work for comprehensive activities.

Assessment plan

As assessment I like to consider many different moments, adding informal ones as observation, the participation, the collaboration opportunities and the products they manage at each stage. Formal ones would include, rubrics to check individual and group work, and the products they add at the end of the lesson as understanding of the objective and tasks.

There are many different ways to include differentiation activities without going too far from the origin and this help the students to go beyond and try their limits for more objectives letting the motivation and interest keep with their objectives.

Group Work

Group patterns to teach writing

Group work can be an effective method to motivate students, encourage active learning, and develop key critical-thinking, communication, and decision-making skills, but it needs careful thinking and planification for it to be effective and fully instructional.

There are many different ways to establish group work, I will mention Two specific group kinds and some other made ups involving Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Heterogeneous grouping:

This kind of group involves students of a very wide range of instructional levels, interests, motivations or abilities. By working together they have the opportunity of exploring their own abilities and understanding the ones of their peers when helping each other through the process of reaching their goals.

Homogeneous grouping

Contrary to the previous groping, this strategy involves setting to work together students with the very same or similar instructional levels, interests or abilities. Within this group different materials can be set for specific topics or abilities, giving the opportunity of grow their own abilities and go beyond the simpler goals.

Garner’s Group Configuration
All this information might seem too complicated or too much to handle around for a group, but this group strategies and more could be set in the same lesson with just a little bit of thought.

Let's pretend we are planning a animals distribution activity, where the students have to know several different animals of different species and how to situate them in their specific habitats.

1. Whole class discussion (Heterogeneous)

With this we include at least intrapersonal, interpersonal, verbal and visual intelligences when the activity works its way to produce at least a small participation form each student. This could happen in oral or written form, and it would produce the global information for the project. It facilitates learning because it allows for everyone to express their previous knowledge plus the understanding they have for the initial information.

2. Small group presentation, where each group has a different habitat to work with. (Homogeneous)

It could be Musical, Verbal, Visual, Kinesthetic or actually any or the intelligences, as in this time we set up the students in small groups with alike intelligences and let them investigate and learn more about a specific group or animal of their choice.

It facilitates learning because as their interest and ability is alike they can work and explore more of their election.

3.  Partner up, set them together. (Heterogeneous)

This time Kinesthetic and Visual intelligences mostly express themselves as for the final product they will set the animals and habitats accordingly with the help of a partner.

By working in groups students are able to get along with others, see another's point of view, and managing one's own emotions help students stay on task and maintain positive peer relationships to achieve group goals. It also turns out that children who have these capabilities are better at paying attention, taking in information, and remembering what they read and hear. 

Rubrics

Hello There!
How is your week going? We are a few weeks away from the summer and I am very happy about it.

For today’s post I am here to “talk” a little bit about Rubrics, they are a great resource for teachers to understand deeply the understanding and progress their students are having on certain activity or topic as they set expectations from the beginning leading them to stronger results.
I did a Rubric trying to include check marks for different types of learners, because I mentioned before I like to plan my activities with at least and task for each type of learner. 

Having said that, if my activity is involving K-1st grade math and the lesson revolves around placing values in their correct places my introduction would include a fun video with a song of numbers to refresh their memories, then a brainstorm of things or places where we could find amounts of. Then a mini lesson explaining how numbers from 0-9 are placed then when the 10 comes the place changes. After that I would have a hands- on activity where they could manipulate and place correctly along with the problem solving task. Then some collaboration time with small teams, individual group and some whole group exposure to the topic, allowing time to process all of what they practiced in their process.

Thus why I can present my rubric which has some specific aspects where the whole lesson plan could be evaluated. 

 

This example of a rubric could easily be adapted and used for different Lessons. I like to have specific aspects and values of what I am evaluating to actually focus on the process my students are experiencing and be able to step in and help them through the activity when is needed or re take the subject and try a different way for them to understand.

A special thanks to RubiStar for making he whole rubric making process easy and fun to understand.