Week+8+Journal+Entry

I am currently frustrated with this site. I know it is my own fault, but I lost about 4 hours worth of work that I didn't save and I don't know why. I just hit return to go to a new paragraph and everything is gone. Oh, well, my own fault for not frequently saving. I just didn't want it posted before I finished it. Live and learn. I'm going to go back and try to find all the links I had here and start rewriting with frequent saving. I really liked the way the video, **[|Differentiated Instruction 101 By Clare Kilbane] ** was produced. This would be a way I can have my students show what they know about the math concepts we are learning. I also am glad there was a transcript which I used to review the content. I have attended workshops and read articles on differentiating, but it has been a while. This podcast is a good review. It does a good job of explaining the three variables we can change in our teaching, the learning content, learning process, and the learning product. I like that it stresses that we do not need to expect less from our students, just different ways of getting the needed information to our students as well as different ways they can show us that they have internalized the information. I just hope that there will be more information on how to do this in a middle school math classroom with up to 32 students in a small classroom. I feel challenged by the physical space and small desktops (attached to chairs). I currently differentiate the way I teach my content from class to class, I differentiate the homework assignments, and I use different assessments for different students within the classes. I need to differentiate more within each class. In my honors math class, I have about 10 students that are truly gifted in math, about 12 that need more guidance, but are honors students, and about 10 students that are not honors math students. In our school, we teach in blocks which I love. Unfortunately, due to scheduling, students can take one, two, or four honors classes, but cannot take three. This means that I have students that are qualified for all but math so they would have to drop one of those classes in order to be in the correct math class. My 32 desks take up all the space in my classroom. There really isn’t even enough room for anyone to get on the five classroom computers that are in my classroom when all the desks are being used. I looked at one of the sites that the video referred to, [|Carol Ann Tomlinson’s website] specifically her [|Differentiation Central teacher resources], which included a three week [|pre-algebra lesson]. Although I have finished with this lesson, I believe I will be able to get some good ideas to help me create some differentiated lessons on other topics. The supplemental resources has some great ideas that are worth looking at for other math teachers. There is also a [|powerpoint on establishing routines]. It provides a good review on ways to manage a classroom with differentiation. I used many of these in my large elementary classroom. I need to find ways to do this in my currently nonflexible classroom environment. I do have students work in pairs and small groups which is really difficult in my honors class. Stations really aren’t a reality, but maybe I can do something with my bulletin boards with activities that can be brought back to their desks. This will continue to be an area I have to work on and hope to find out more from other middle school math teachers on what they are doing to differentiate. I looked up differentiated math lessons and found, **[|Improving Achievement in Math and Science Pages 73-78 Creating a Differentiated Mathematics Classroom]  ** which talks about combining ideas from Classroom Instruction That Works (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001) and How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms (Tomlinson, 2001). I really found the section on Mathematical Learning Styles interesting. I will definitely look more into the learning inventories they refer to in this article. I also believe the strategies they suggested will be helpful in developing my lessons. It also validates my frustration when it states, [|Mathematics often seems like a kind of worst-case scenario for differentiation. Both the nature of its content and its largely sequential organization make considerations of student differences seem peripheral.] I would really like to get stations, if I can figure out how to do this in my space, and  [|Math Stations]   gives some good ideas on what types of stations I should have in my math class. I also found a really neat site, [|imiddlemath.org] that includes how to use student-made podcasts which is part of the “Fast Track” where students are placed if they show they know the concepts that are to be taught on the pretest. This week's articles did not have too much in ways to use differentiation in math classes but did offer the basic premise of differentiating. [|Differentiated Instruction] article from ORC has many links, but, after looking at many of them, still felt using it in a middle math class was missing. It does give good reasons to use differentiation but the how to’s were really not condusive to math classes. [|Differentiating Instruction Finding Manageable Ways to Meet Individual Needs] does talk about using differentiation in middle school classrooms. It also further explains the three main ways we can differentiate: differentiating through content (Big Ideas), process (activities), and product (culminating projects). Again, it lacks application in math classrooms. ​