Hannah

Hannah Bonneau

Currently: Math teacher at Williamstown Middle High School 10th grade class adviser Starting work on the Master in Curriculum and Instruction

Education: BA in Mathematics from UVM BS in Secondary Ed from UVM Minors in English and Special Ed

Before UVM: I grew up in the NEK Spent most of the summer at our pond or playing sports

Outside of school: Work part time at Bed Bath and Beyond Play sports

Family: Mom, Dad,1 brother, 1 sister, and family dog Raven

In the future: Hope to travel through Europe with my brother for about a month

Hannah Bonneau EDSS 261 Prof. Charlie Rathbone

What is differentiated instruction (DI)? Talk about a loaded question. My understanding of DI is a classroom that can approach a concept in a number of ways. This gives different learners a chance to gain the same understanding just in different ways. One group of students may build a model to learn the material. Another group may do a worksheet to gain understanding. A third group may create a song or poem about the material. All of these approaches to student learning are different, but the end product is the same. DI is also an approach to teaching where the teacher takes a step back and guides the student instead of the traditional approach many of us are familiar with. The teacher guides the student through activities designed to increase their understanding, but gives the student more control. The student can have more control by being able to choose the activity they want to do during a certain lesson. The teacher may guide or change an activity to ensure student understanding, but the student is given choice. There are a number of ways we, as teachers, can differentiate our classes. We can differentiate by readiness, interest, and learning profile. Weather we differentiate by readiness, interest, or learning profile we need to make sure that we offer our students scaffolding. We need to make sure that we support our students in their quest for knowledge. We need to ensure that our students feel safe in stretching themselves. We can differentiate our content, process, or products. When we differentiate contest we differentiate the way we show students the main points. Differentiating the process puts the focus on what the students does, the activities they do. Differentiating process is when we give students a chance to do the outcome of the lesson or unit a number of ways. All of this is a part of DI but it is missing a big part, probably the biggest part, prior knowledge. To differentiate, no matter how we differentiate, we need to know what our students walk through the door knowing. When we figure this out we cannot only plan out activities accordingly, but we can make sure that we provide the correct scaffolding for our students. At the start of this class DI was a teaching strategy where I would create a couple different lessons for the students around the same topic. I would not even plan multiple activities for different groups to work through. I have done a little differentiation by product, but not a lot by content or process. After completing this course I have so many ideas about what DI is and how I can use it in my classroom. Above I have gone through and explained what it is, but I also want to mention how I might use it. I think I can really use the idea of differentiating by interest in an affective way. A number of my students are interested in sports, I can certainly relate math to a number of sports. I also want to try differentiating by learning profile. I would first have students answer a number of questions about how they learn so that I can group them accordingly. Once I have created the groups I can come up with some good activities to fit each group, making their understanding of the ideas greater and deeper. From my experience I also like the idea of differentiating products. I have seen that it is not necessarily the type of product that really matters; it is what they students demonstrated they know through that product. I have previously mentioned a few realizations I have come to about planning instruction using DI, but there are a few others. When planning my instruction I have come to realize that I do not always pre-assess for prior knowledge. I think I have an understanding of what the student should already know about a topic. A number of times my lesson have flopped, because I started at a place where students did not have the prior knowledge needed at that point. The writing of objectives is not new, but needed some refreshing. The idea of making sure to include an audience, behavior, condition, and degree was great to review. Who knew technology could be so easily used in the classroom? I have used computers (excel and internet) in my classes, but the idea of using wikispaces, blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, and screencasts had never entered my mind. I have never really heard of many of these tools, let alone tried to use them in my classes. This course has opened a whole new bag of tricks, if you will, for me to use. Not only are these tools great ways for students to demonstrate what they have learned, but they are also something students will take a great interest in. I feel that I have gone from a teacher who was not confident in using technology in my classroom to one who is. I was not sure how it would work out and what I could do with it, but now my opinion has changed. After this course I feel that I want to use these tools in my lessons. I am planning on having my students use a wikispace, RSS feed, and podcast this coming year. I still have to play with them a little so that I can model these tools for the students, but they will become very useful. I feel that this course have given me a number of tools and strategy that I can readily bring into my classroom. When I entered this class I thought it would be a lot of discussion and lector. Little did I know that I would walk out of this course feeling that I got the most out of a single education course I have taken thus far.