Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Thoughts Without Words: Differentiated Instruction

Joanne Jacobs has a post on Differentiated Instruction right now on her blog and it made me reflect upon my own classes.

I have already mentioned with my special ed student how they get their own grade scale. And when I mentioned what if everyone had their own grade scale, the dean responded you would have to do it if it was in the IEP.

That's where education is going. Everyone will get their own grade scale and lesson plan. This will never work. Why? Right now I have an average of 36 students. How can I successfully hit all of the student's needs and at the same time cover all of the material necessary for the CSTs?

The school doesn't want "low" classes or "high" classes anymore either. They mix them so none of the students get their feelings hurt being in the "low" class. What does this mean for me? Well in all of my classes, I have at least 2 students with a 100% or higher and at least 2-4 students in the 40%'s or lower. Now how can I raise the low ones without dumbing down the class for the high ones? Answer: I can't.

If classes were created based upon CST scores, then you could see some results and have a better chance to do something like this because, for the most part, the students would all be grouped similarly. Will they? No. Besides if they go to base our pay off of CST scores, who wants to be the teacher with the Far Below/Below Basic students?

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