getting ready for 2021: Differentiation

Differentiation is one of the hardest things to accomplish successfully in the classroom. This can be due to the large spread you may have in your class of needs or students to meet. Differentiation can look into many areas of a student or your classroom based on:

• English second language
• Gifted and talented
• Learning support needs
• Maori or Pasifika
• Year level
• Age level
• Ability level
• or how students learn e.g. hands on, visual

More recently, there has been a lot of work about UDL - universal design for learning. This is where you can specifically design lessons or learning outcomes to suit all the needs in your class rather than just the major chunks or spread. There is lots of research, ideas, resources and more online about UDL so if you are looking for specifics start here. 

If you are a beginner, differentiation can start by simply thinking about these notions in your classroom. 
Differentiation by content, process, product and environment. These can be thought about with a specific student or group of student to help meet their needs or connect with their learning. I particularly like to think about content and process as these are 'easier' to differentiate with for my little kiddies. Sometimes it a matter of simply creating the same learning in a hands on way to meet their needs.  

In 2020, I had a large class spread covering Year 0-3 students. I needed to differentiate the learning significantly as I had students working in Early Level One of the NZ Curriculum to Level Two. So extreme and not as easy to cover in whole class opportunities. I incorporated a three level success criteria or level system into my classroom for whole class learning opportunities covering three key or main areas of students in my class. It allowed students to work at a goal or level they can achieve, or also push themselves to attempt learning at a higher level. This was made part of my classroom practice and students know exactly what it means when completing their learning. The main area I found I needed to differentiate for was writing, word work and maths hot spots. Those were the main three I began with and used for two terms solidly. 
​Have more questions about differentiation? Email me [email protected] or check out my website for more resources, ideas and freebies!

Number of the week display chart - differentiation

NZ$1.00

Number of the week display chart - differentiation

This template is great for different levels of students in your classroom that could be working on a variety of numbers for your week. I use this alongside my number of the week templates with this chart being on the wall for students to know what number to work on or choose.

There are 4 templates in this pack:

• stars
• teddy bears
• calculators
• blocks

There are 5 resources in this pack. Print off the template you want to use, laminate it to ensure durability and display it for students to be able to see what the number of the week is.

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Writing Vocabulary Mats (differentiated and plain)

NZ$6.00

Writing Vocabulary Mats (differentiated and plain)

These vocabulary mats are a great addition to your classroom. Each vocabulary mat has both a differentiated and plain version. The differentiation provides three different sentence starters for students to choose to help scaffold their writing; or use their own sentence starters to form their ideas. This writing vocabulary mat pack comes with:

• 3 writing paper templates
• 1 blank differentiation table to add your own targets or sentence starters
• 1 pencil (or level) sentence starters
• 2 pencil (or level) sentence starters
• 3 pencil (or level) sentence starters

Vocabulary mats include these in both differentiated and plain (with sentence starters and without):

• insects
• weather
• animals
• actions
• food
• meat
• vegetables
• fruit
• bakery
• breakfast
• christmas
• farm
• halloween
• fairytale
• colours
• emotions
• summer
• school objects
• transport
• places
• A-Z objects

This includes 101 pages in the resource.

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