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.