Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Differentiation


As I understand it differentiation is the understanding that all students in one given classroom learn differently. Some are audio learners, and others are either; tactile or visual. Not only that but different students take different amounts of time to complete an assignment. One kid might take an hour on an assignment where the next student will take 2. It all depends on the student's learning ability. Different kids could also have disabilities that require them to take longer. For example, if someone had a learning disability an assignment will definitely take them longer then someone with normal ability. this is because it takes them longer to comprehend things then others

Due to my visual impairment, I have definitely experienced differentiation. On top of that I also have a learning disability. Even without the learning disability aspect, it takes me longer to do assignments because sometimes I have to squint to see something, or I have to convert something to audio so that I can have my computer read it to me, or it just takes me extra time on a test because of the vision and the fact that I get tired easily. Never mind the learning disability, that just makes it worse. Because mine is with reading comprehension, I have to have things read to me over and over before I understand what a particular article or story is trying to say.

From different videos that I've watched, I saw some different computer programs that allow the children to work at their own pace, but still do the same activity as the rest of the class. This program is on the MacBook. For example, I watched this video where first, or second, graders were using a math program. It's a program that has math problems. This program, however, allows the student to do the math problems at their own pace. It's a good thing for the teacher too because there's a little frog on the program that will announce when you've gotten a problem wrong and how to change and, what the correct answer is.