Giving Every Kid A Shot : Make Differentiation Your Friend

1. GivingEvery Kid A Shot:Make Differentiation Your Friend October 19, 2013 Jeff Astor – Simon TechnologyAcademy High School

2. Session Goals • Breakdown Planning Protocol • Use differentiation to make our lives easier and our classes more engaging • Create effective structure for scaffolding math skills throughout Stoichiometry and Solutions units • Students will feel comfortable attacking stoichiometry through dimensional analysis • Students will understand why they must convert between units in stoichiometrical calculations. • Develop appropriate differentiated grouping for each of your individual classes and identify how to most effectively assist students through this rigorous unit.

3. Session Goals

4. Planning Protocol Time • Planning takes a lot of time! Let’s make it easier for ya. • Identify 5 essential components that each lesson must have, and uniform them. • How can I support all students in their academic endeavours? • Am I thinking about advanced students? Basic? Struggling? ELL? SWD? Answer: Differentiate!

5. Wait, I Still Have a Lot of Questions…(me too) Differentiation is not easy! You need resources, and a plan!

6. Show Me The Stuff! • First, it’s important to go through differentiation structure. Open “TFA LA Chemistry Differentiation of Instruction Tool” • Examine the filled out example lesson as well. • How do we produce this for our lessons? How can we use this to support our students in their academic growth? Do we agree with the pedagogy that supports it?

7. What can be done to help our students tackle Stoichiometry? 6 areas to focus on – Read the handout to observe in detail • Content: Provide Graphic Organizers and math manipulatives • Content: Deliver content in multiple forms to allow access for all students. Focus on simple scaffolding: math, checklists, unit conversion breakdown • Product: Students may produce a different result to demonstrate learning • Learning Environment: Group students appropriately to improve academic outcomes. • Process: Students complete problems with varying levels of difficulty or teacher assistance. • Process: During activity, certain students may use support (notes, graphic organizers, examplar model).

8. Differentiate Content • Deliver the same concept in different forms (modalities) to ensure all students have access to content (multiple intelligences) [Look at Ck-12!] • Allow students opportunities to build the content for themselves and take ownership of what they have created (Constructivist Theory).

9. Differentiate Process • Every student needs a different level of guidance, and if provided appropriately, will increase academic outcomes! • Some students want structure in their math – give them the train tracks!

10. Differentiate Process • Teach using video! Teach using pictures! Teach using models! Teach like you want!

11. Differentiate Product It may benefit students to complete different tasks to demonstrate mastery. Assessing students in different methods or difficulty levels helps encourage an attitude of battling and overcoming the struggle.

12. Differentiate Product Multiple choice is not always the answer! Drawing pictures, writing essays, & building models are very effective, similar assessments.

13. Differentiate Learning Environment Something as simple as specific grouping can improve a student’s academic outcomes significantly. Stations are a great way to differentiate as the class is in progress.

14. Resource Party! • Let’s look at a plethora of questions broken into subcategories by necessary skill, and determine where each question fits into our differentiation schema.

15. Short Review Discussion: • How are these concepts organized differently than how you currently teach your course? • What aspects are helpful about the way this is organized? • What might take some time to get used to? • How can we use this in our classrooms each day?

16. Where are we at? • Still need a lot of help differentiating  • This is starting to make sense ------- • Its cool bro, I got this. 

17. What Do We Focus On? • Adding these differentiation pieces to our lesson plans for Units 3 and 4 Do this part now! • Thinking about each individual student and how to plan to support their growth and development each day in the classroom. • Creating a learning environment where students feel empowered to accomplish academic success through persistence and hard work.

18. Building a Network • It’s impossible as a first or second year teacher to be expected to find these resources on your own • Creating a professional learning community increases differentiating power • The more CMs that contribute, the greater the benefit the network will produce.

19. How Can We Help Each Other Differentiate? Wikispaces Network Examples Showcase lesson plans and resources that you find to be the most beneficial. Use Digital Media to highlight the classroom management/culture building tools you use in your classroom. Chemistry videos, pictures, websites, webquests, simulations, labs, virtual labs, gifs, research project, etc. belongs here as well.

20. Closing Time Exit ticket: Please submit a contributing piece to the Stoichiometry and Solutions Wikispaces page to help provide resources for our CMs. Thanks again for all you do!