This past month in EDUC 435, we have been working on our mock edTPA experience. This experience included writing a learning segment for our clinical classroom, teaching this learning segment, and writing all three edTPA commentaries.Throughout this experience, I have learned a lot about differentiating for many different needs in the classroom. My CE and I thoroughly discussed the needs in the class before I taught my edTPA experience, and we also thoroughly discussed what worked for each student and what did not in reference to my learning segment as well.
Differentiation connects directly with standard 2d of the North Carolina Teacher Candidate Standards, which states that "Teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs." Adapting your instruction for the needs of students is extremely important, and edTPA makes that evident. For me, differentiating in a real classroom has been extremely challenging. Throughout my time in the education department, I have learned how to differentiate, and I have even learned strategies for differentiating. Although I have certainly used this learning in the classroom and throughout my mock edTPA experience, differentiating for real students is much harder. The strategies that I've been taught for differentiating for different types of children sometimes work, and sometimes don't. Each child is completely different, and I have learned that sometimes the strategies I decide to use for differentiation may fail. Throughout this process, I have learned that in order to learn what works for each child, there is some trial and error involved. Finding what truly helps the students that need adaptions is extremely important, but challenging nonetheless. According to Carol Ann Tomlinson, "students in the elementary grades vary greatly, and if teachers want to maximize their students' individual potential, they will have to attend to the differences." In order to help our students truly learn and grow, differentiation is a requirement.
In my future classroom, I will work very hard at the beginning of the year to figure out the specific strategies and tools that help each of my students learn best, and differentiate my instruction based on the trial and error that will occur at first. I will also remember that not every learning disability, or learning struggle, is ever exactly the same, and I will make sure that I do not expect the same strategies to always work for every child with the same struggle. This will help me to ensure that my differentiation is successful in the future.
Megan,
ReplyDeleteI can relate to you totally with differentiation struggles. I love how you pointed out that until you are doing it in the classroom with real students it is hard to tell what strategies work and which do not. We have been given several different ways to do this in a classroom, but it becomes totally different when we are actually having to apply them to our clinical classrooms. I am glad that you are learning the makeup of your students and are getting more and more prepared for student teaching.
Megan, I agree that differentiation is much harder than what I thought it would be! I have children in my class that need to be in some differentiation groups, but don't work well with the kids in that group, so they have to be in a different group. It can be a hot mess at times, but I am hoping and thinking it will get easier as we get more experience.
ReplyDeleteMegan,
ReplyDeleteI think we are lucky to have this experience of practicing our edTPA and getting feedback on how we can improve on this for when we do it for real in the spring semester! I agree that differentiating for real students is much harder than making up a student to write lessons for. You bring up a really good point there! I personally struggle with the same thing.
Hey Megan! I also have enjoyed doing the edTPA experience this semester. I am so excited to have had practice with this aspect. I feel like I will be more prepared for the real one during student teaching. I also have noticed to find what is best for each student there is a lot of trial and error. It is also important to assess as much as possible to see how the students level of understanding changes. For kindergarten I have noticed their levels of understanding change very quickly. I wish you all the best in you future endeavors as a teacher!
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