Differentiating instruction, using blogs for student sharing

12th March 2007

Differentiating instruction, using blogs for student sharing

posted in blogs, edtech, literacy, schoolreform |

What’s the right word to describe the virtual pathway you follow to find a resource or idea? I am not sure, but whatever that word is… my pathway to the following resources included:

- David Warlick’s Hitchhikr site for METC2007
– Rob Jacklin’s blog post on and podcast of Amy Vejraska’s METC 2007 preso “If the Shoe Fits….”
— Amy Vejraska’s classroom website
—- The V Posse Journal - Mrs. Vejraska’s 3rd grade student blog site for student responses to topics discussed and studied in class

The podcasts of Amy’s METC 2007 presentation “If the Shoe Fits” are wonderful– Her session is broken into two parts (one and two) linked from Rob’s blog post. Amy’s PowerPoint file from the presentation is also available from her classroom website.

The strongest messages which come through (at least to me) from her presentation were:

The vital need for classroom teachers to differentiate instruction for students to the greatest extent possible: To help each child stretch and “go” as far as they can during that year when they are together in school.
The importance of teachers “letting go” of the idea that they can or should strictly CONTROL everything that happens in the classroom every second of the day. Amy talks about “getting over it” and “letting go,” not in the sense of allowing the classroom to become completely chaotic, but rather getting comfortable with her role as a facilitator of learning rather than a strict purveyor of knowledge.
The importance of standing up to administrators, parents, or other appropriate parties to advocate in the best interest of the students. She tells the story of making the case (with other teachers in her building) for block scheduling, so they could have more than 45 minutes per day for language arts. The kids weren’t “getting it” and going to the higher levels of thinking with just 45 minutes per day, so the teachers needed (and requested) more flexible scheduling to permit more differentiation.

In the PowerPoint file for her presentation, Amy shared the following diagram describing how she meets the needs of diverse learners:

This is what differentiation is all about. Learners have different skills, different interests, and different background experiences which they bring to the learning environment. The challenge for the teacher is to build a relationship with each learner, understand where each one is coming from, and then develop learning opportunities which both engage and challenge each one to rise to new levels of understanding and mastery.

She also talks (in part 2 of the podcast) about how valuable digital writing has been to help discover the individual voices of students– to give them permission to share their ideas and reflect their authentic understanding. In her session near the end she mentions the value of blogging not only for student learning, but also parent communication, and the potential of sites like Blogger to permit MODERATED commenting on a classroom blog. Yes! The power of blogging and the digital word revealed by the professional teaching methods employed in a 3rd grade classroom!

Being a big fan of Bloom’s taxonomy and learning interactions which go beyond the base levels of knowledge/comprehension fact recall, I loved Amy’s use of the following graphic in her presentation to illustrate how she incorporates the ideas of Blooms into her instructional designs:

Amy maintains separate webpages of customized links for each of her 3rd grade students. I showed this to my own 3rd grader today and he was just blown away. What a great way to not only differentiate learning during the school day, but also permit students to extend and continue their learning experiences when they are at home, their grandparents’ house, or another location where they can get online!

In her presentation Amy referenced flow theory (“Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) in terms of engagement for her 3rd graders. Some days, the level of intrinsic motivation and engagement in her classroom for all students is just AMAZING. Her story about the student who won’t check out a nonfiction book from the library, but is ravenously consuming webpage content about Olympic gymnasts and making PowerPoint presentations about what she’s learned there is precious. Based on these stories and ideas, it seems clear that Amy not only understands the value of differentiated instruction but also regularly makes differentiation a REALITY for the learners in her classroom. What a precious gift!

This year is the first year Amy has been involved in the eMINTS project in Missouri. Amy is the second person I’ve heard present about the impact of eMINTS on student learning– Dr. Monica Beglauâ€™s MacWorld 2007 presentation “Building a Better Mousetrap: How Technology WILL Improve Achievement” also referenced the powerful impacts of the eMINTS approach to learning in Missouri and elsewhere across the nation.

I know what some secondary and university teachers/professors are likely to say to a blog post like this: That’s all well and good for third grade, but I teach older kids and you just can’t build relationships or differentiate instruction at higher levels of education like you can at the elementary level. Certainly the number of students you teach IS a huge factor in your ability to do both these things. If teachers are not building relationships at school with students, however, it begs the question of why those students aren’t just taking their class online from an automated course management system? Relationships are the foundation for learning, and I think too often at secondary and college levels we forget or deny that idea.

I think we all can learn a great deal from Amy Vejraska and other dedicated educators like her. Many thanks to both Amy and Rob Jacklin for sharing this presentation as a podcast and all these links. I attended METC 2007 but missed this presentation “live.” How wonderful to be able to tune in a couple of weeks later thanks to a recorded podcast. Thanks also to David Warlick and Hitchhikr!
I posted a 3.5 min video of feedback for Amy to YouTube as well:

This is only the second time I’ve done this, I also used YouTube back in November to share some feedback with Frieda Foxworth, Ron Bosch, and John Geanangel for their K12Online preso. Using YouTube in this way again drives home the idea that we live in an era when anyone can publish almost anything “at will.” That is tremendous power.

How are you and your students using the powerful communication tools of the 21st century today? Hopefully these tools are being used to build bridges and foster understanding, rather than hurt or harm others.

Technorati Tags: differentiation, education, eMINTS, metc, metc07

On this day..

Listen to this post

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 2:03 pm and is filed under blogs, edtech, literacy, schoolreform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.