Valerie: Wow, look at all these brave volunteers. Go ahead!
Student: “C”
Valerie: Yes! Nice job.
Valerie: So, the impact of differentiation, the students feel successful. They feel supported. They know if something is difficult for them there’s something that’s a little more in line with their strengths coming up soon. So, it really makes education fun and approachable. I really think it’s the most effective way that I have seen to teach.
Teacher: Yay!
Jane: The vision and the mission of Highlander is to use innovative practice as a social catalyst. We want our kids to be able to do anything any other kid from Providence could do.
Valerie: We use differentiation all across the curriculum here at Highlander and especially in the first grade. Although the content is the same, having the stations really allows me to tailor my lessons to each individual group of learners. So, how the differentiation looks in my classroom, we start off with a whole group lesson.
Valerie: So, let’s get our reading classes on. Let’s get the letter part of our brains activated.
Valerie: This section of our curriculum we have been looking at non-fiction texts.
Valerie: When we’re looking at our book today we’re going to be thinking about where we can get information.
Valerie: And then in the phonics realm we focused on contractions.
Valerie: We’re talking two words and what are we sticking them together with?
Student: Apostrophe!
Valerie: Yes, Karen! Good job.
Valerie: And then we break off into our small groups. So, our yellow group is still learning how to do a lot of our literacy things. The green group is doing pretty well, but has a few things to work on still. And our blue group is hitting all the first-grade standards and needs to be stretched. So, our differentiation kind of takes two forms: The first is by student grouping and the second is by modality of learning. We have twenty minutes per station and there are three of the stations. The students will rotate through all three stations each day.
Dianelys: So, our first station for the blue group is the computer station.
Valerie: The students use a Google form to check in. They’ll normally watch a video or carefully observe a photograph and answer some questions about that.
Jamarie: We watched a video about how to grow a seed. We had to type in our favorite part and why.
Valerie: After they finish that form, they can check out an e-book.
Jamarie: And then you could do this game of reading called “Teach a Monster How to Read”.
Valerie: We’re delivering things in a way that is visual, that is auditory, that is individual to the students through the technology.
Dianelys: After that she rings the bell.
Valerie: Clean-up, switch up, first grade readers.
Dianelys: We switch to the sort station.
Valerie: Our sort station is more of a physical modality. They’re using their bodies, which is so important for first graders. They need to move. Kids are cutting out the words, they’re gluing them down.
Jamarie: We had a contrasting game. It’s fun, because it’s all mixed up and you have to find the right pieces. And then after we do that, we do rainbow writing.
Valerie: That’s another way that we differentiate. If students are able to get through more work, then they have some freedom of choice.
Valerie: Clean up, switch it up.
Valerie: The last station we’re talking to each other and learning from each other. So, that’s more of the social interaction-type of modality.
Dianelys: I like the teacher station the most, because we get to be with Miss Gallagher and we get to learn cool stuff.
Valerie: So, take a look at the illustrations on this page. Right?
Valerie: The content is the same, but it can be differentiated in a number of ways. My blue group, for example, they know what text is. They know what illustrations are. And, so, for them I create a Venn diagram.
Dianelys: You need to make one circle like this and then you make another circle overlapping that.
Valerie: Oh!
Valerie: For the yellow or the green group, I’m just leaving the Venn diagram out of it. We’re still doing essentially the same thing. But just that piece that might be confusing to some of those students, I just leave that out for a later time. They’ll get to it.
Valerie: All right, so, clean up and meet me in the middle of the rug for writing. Nice work, first grade.
Jane: Being able to move through those stations it’s just another level of helping the students learn as much as they can each year. They really feel excited when they make that growth.
Valerie: They’re proud of themselves. They feel like they’re effective learners. As a teacher, honestly, it is a lot of work but the results that you see in the happy faces of the kids and the good feeling that you have in the classroom is worth it.

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Schools That Work

Highlander Charter School