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Differentiation is put in place so that we can support our students in a manner where they can keep up according to their different learning abilities and continue to remain motivated and also challenge themselves for the better. We all know of the short story where different animals are instructed to climb a tree and are rewarded based on their ability to do so. And we all reflect about how that is unfair and that is the same if differentiation is not put in place. Scaffolding is also very important to guide our students and help them achieve academic excellence,in the form of instructions and assignments given.

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I learnt the importance of DI in classroom. DI is vital to cater to learners with diverse needs. It allows us to know the readiness levels and learning profiles of our students. However, it is important to do it effectively, picking the correct frameworks and being critical on reflecting on our experiences.

We can know a learner needs from formative or summative assessments which shows their readiness, interests via observations and learning profiles from the way they receive, process and interact with information and apply DI accordingly.

Flexibility is also key to DI.

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1) In understanding the learner profile, giving variety through during the lessons would give the children sufficient time to process information. I can see this being useful as the children can see the different methods coming to the same conclusion would allow them to draw similarities in the segments to achieve the learning objectives.
2) I was initially hesitant to carry out DI in case of learned helplessness. I can see that good communication and a positive learning environment and having respectful tasks such that the students can decide themselves if they need the extra help would counter the helpless mentality.

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1) I found the slide on personal pedagogy and  DI resonating deeply with me. Often we leave our classroom asking ourselves why despite having taught, our students don't learn. This introspection and reflection as educators are key in understanding if students can't adapt to the way we teach. We need to change our strategy of teaching - to teach the way they learn.

In addition, I always thought the key idea behind DI was to differentiate the product of learning.  However, from the lesson, I learned that DI encompasses far more than that. Before we can actually start the process of DI is it important to understand our learner profiles. This goes beyond just categorizing students based on their abilities but it really means to access their readiness and interest.

Knowing your student's readiness level is key in maximizing the child's learning growth and coupled with an understanding of their preference we are able to pitch the lesson to suit their learning style and this will, in turn, be a huge motivational factor.  Once we have established this basic understanding of the class, only then can we move forth and use the 6 principles of DI effectively.

DI brings about the need for modifying lesson content, processes as well as the final product output in learning.  I like the equalizer concept of differentiating content to suit each learner's readiness level.  It is a good reminder for me when I set a task, to reflect on the purpose and goal of the task. This should match the readiness level of my students.

2) Secondly scaffolding is also key in helping students achieve the desired readiness level. A variety of strategies can be used to scaffold and guide not just the weaker students but to effectively challenge the higher progress students as well.   The Bloom Taxonomy is one way in which we can scaffold learning and help in student readiness.  This is because we can use the different levels in the taxonomy chart to plan objectives, activities, products or instruction according to the different difficulty levels.

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I learnt that scaffolding is need to support students especially when they struggle with the academics. Thus, DI is extremely important to make sure we cater to the needs of this students. We can give DI based on the students interests and how ready they are, rather than focusing solely on their abilities.

I also learnt that teachers have the ability to create groups that are tailored to the students learning. For instance, we can group students based on their interests or based on their strengths to complement the weaknesses of others. This allows space for collaborative learning with everyone and fosters a supportive learning environment, which in turn leads to effective teaching and learning.

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The first takeaway for me is to teach the way students learn instead of imposing our teaching methods on the students. Often, we do not see things as they are, but rather, as we are. The way we view teaching is highly influenced by the style that suits us best as learners. Thus, when we are fixed in our teaching ways, it may not work well with students as different students learn in different ways.

My second takeaway is the importance of creating assignments and tasks with an appropriate degree of challenge for all students. As an UT, I spent more time focusing on the weaker students. Even though my stronger students may get by just fine, the tasks provided may not have been in their zone of proximal development, and thus did not push them to learn further. Hence, I have to be more mindful in ensuring that all my students can be stretched to achieve their fullest potential.

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Aha moments
1.  Dr Carol Ann Tomlinson speaks about three aspects of learner diversity. Her talk provides me a mental framework to think about how to "teach the way students learn".
a) Readiness (growth)
b) Interest (motivation)
c) Profile (efficiency)

2. DI requires a lot of efforts from the teachers to plan and organise different tasks. It also capitalises on the use of ICT. Teacher can then be strategically positioned to help the students who really need more support. It is a move away from "worksheet learning".  The practices I see on the videos (versus worksheet):

- more engaging, greater variety of authentic learning tasks

- more moving around, giving the feeling of achievement

- ICT provides immediate feedback (worksheets only give delayed feedback after marking)

Questions
1. How can Singapore teachers be supported to adopt these DI practices and move away from giving worksheets?

2. Flexible Grouping: Will students be confident to request for upgrade?

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1. One takeaway for me is learning about the different ways we can differentiate students in the class. Especially interest-based (motivation) differentiation and learning-profile (efficiency of learning) differentiation. I think in practice and from what I’ve observed, teachers usually differentiate based on readiness level because possibly, it is the easiest to observe in students based on the quality of work they submit. For the other 2 types, it would require the teacher to really know the students’ interests and their individual learning styles well. As teachers, we have to be cognisant of the 3 needs in students: readiness, interest, learning profile and not neglect any one of them.

One way to do this in the classroom can be through flexible grouping where students are given the choice to self-assess and group themselves according to the 3 sets of needs. This way, they do not pigeonhole themselves into a specific group as know that there are different ways of working.

2. My second takeaway is the importance of scaffolding for DI and the multiple ways we can do it such as via:

- Guided notes

- Chunking

- Teacher prompting

- Graphic organisers

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1. Use of Equaliser
Something I planned to use in my future classroom is using the equaliser as a way to differentiate the content, process, product and environment. Using this would help me to better cater to varying student readiness, interests and learning profiles, helping to make DI more effective. Something i appreciated was from the reading on equaliser which talks about how we need to challenge our students. This means that even during DI, the lower progress students still receive a piece of work that can challenge them. Having the equaliser as a framework while planning for lessons would ensure that the students get to learn and grow at their appropriate pace. This ensures that optimal learning can take place, where subject and assessment needs and learner needs are both met.

2. Use of Bloom's Taxonomy
I also thought that it was useful to make use of the bloom's taxonomy levels to structure our lessons. I've always thought that we needed to use either lower levels or higher levels for one lesson, best suited to the learners' profile. However, a more optimal way of conducting the class could be to have a mix of all the different levels, instead of neglecting one. It was also useful to realise that we can start at any level of the taxonomy, instead of unidirectional.

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1. My first takeaway is the equalizer concept. It makes it clear on how to differentiate content based on the learner's readiness. One way I can use this concept is to create some sort of checklist to check how I have set the task based on different readiness levels.

2. I also learnt that a big part of DI is scaffolding and pegging the difficulty of the lesson to the zone of proximal development. And to that, you must know your students. One of the teachers in the videos mentioned that she did research on the students' prior knowledge. I realise that even before the school year start, work is already in force.

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1. I never knew that there were so many permutations and methods to differentiate learning for a class. What I took away from today's lesson is that scaffolding is not just for lower ability learners, but can be catered to help students who have different readiness levels when they come to the class. Not only that, students need not solely rely on the teacher for the scaffolding portion of the lesson. We can plan peer activities such that students can bounce off ideas from each other and learn from one another. We can provide question prompts to help students recall content from previous lessons, and have them discuss with each other. Using materials such as visual aids, chunking and handouts may need a longer preparation time, but it would be beneficial for visual learners.

2. The Bloom's Taxonomy is helpful in helping teachers to plan for lesson objectives, activities, products and instructions. Complex topics can be tailored to help learners think at a level of complexity that is suitable for them. The lower levels of the Taxonomy should be considered in planning a lesson as well, as students would have a firmer foundation. Such examples, I feel, would be referring to the first, second and third level. The first level, remembering, helps our students to recall an idea or fact in a similar form where they learned it (e.g magnets can attract and repel each other). The second level, explaining, is to enable our students to have already understood an idea, and is able to explain it clearly. They would also be able to predict the next effect of things (e.g a magnet would not attract aluminum as it isn't a ferrous (magnetic) metal). The third level, application, would be to expect learners to be able to apply the concepts to new situations, and demonstrating the correct usage of the method of procedure (e.g how can we find a needle that has fallen in a stack of hay?)

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1. I found it interesting that flexible grouping was an option in the classroom. In school, I often grouped the students based on their readiness (whether those of similar readiness go together or those of higher readiness should be paired with those of lower readiness), however, I realised that it is possible to have multiple types of groupings.  Some examples include, grouping based on interest, or based on their complementing strengths. This ensures that students do no associate themselves with a particular group but helps students to mix with others to learn and grow.

2.  I like the idea of how DI involves lettings students choose their own  tasks or resources. Since everyone has different interests, preferences, and passions, giving students such autonomy allows them to be more motivated in their tasks. Hence, this allows for students to connect with the information better and to learn better.

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1. I learnt that bloom's taxonomy is a useful tool that we can use to differentiate the process portion of our lessons. It is the most useful to use at the planning stage where we think about our lesson flow and structure our lesson objectives, activities or products. It is also important to note that we can start at any level in the taxonomy, not necessarily the lowest level first.

2. It was interesting to learn about the various ways of scaffolding which I have never thought about, such as think alouds, chunking and pause-as-pause review. It was also surprising to learn that different ways of scaffolding can be considered as DI.

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I liked the idea of the math lesson where students get to choose which group they should get into (Video 7.1). The idea of flexible grouping and giving opportunities for students to choose which group they should go to allows them to self-assess. For example, there were groups for students who forgot the topic, a practice group and a challenge group. For the group that forgot the topic, they watched a video of the teacher teaching while she worked with the other two groups. Moreover, she also implemented a system of the red and green cups, in which if students had difficulty with the questions, they would display the red cup and they would in turn receive help. I also liked the fist of 5, 5 stating they know what they are doing and 1 stating that they do not know. This is an easy for teachers to know where the students are at, but also students knowing how to self-assess. By also doing an exit ticket, before she starts her next lesson, she knows where to begin.

The idea of scaffolding a lesson is not just for the weaker learners but also the better ones. If you teach a new topic, all students would need scaffolding. Often times, i forget that even our better learners need some type of scaffolding. I loved the video of the primary 3 math lesson where students were told to make graphs based on students' birthdays, prices of pizzas, most popular method to coming to school and running an exercise course. The activities used were something that the students could relate to. To conclude the lesson, she asked questions and made sure to ask if they had any questions for her.

Often, as teachers we rush through our lessons and forget to take the time to observe our students. We need to know their readiness level, interest levels and the profile of our students. Only then can we plan our lessons accordingly and teach the content at an appropriate levels where all our students are learning the same things but in different ways.

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1. There are so many examples (videos) of DI in this lesson, yet none of them is from our SG classroom. I am surprised how far we fall behind the idea of DI. Confucius promoted the idea of "因材施教" over 2000 years ago, which translates to "Teaching students with different methods based on their different abilities and circumstances".
Interestingly, in those videos we can see a lot of collaboration between more than one teachers in a class size much smaller than our SG class. This shows that DI is a team effort and teachers must work together to make it more effective.

2. I am surprised that parents are averse to differentiation as they think their child should have the same lessons as their peers. They can also be educated on their perceptions of DI. They should know that what is best for others might not be the best for their own kids.

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I was really engaged by the portion on flexible grouping:
- The fact that flexible grouping can be based on students autonomy - they themselves decide on their readiness and join a suitable group, that they can choose a method to learn a certain concept based on their own preference, is something that is new to me.
- Flexible grouping promotes self-awareness as students have to recognise where they are in learning and taking ownership of the learning process so that they can move on
- As what is stated, the groupings are FLEXIBLE and students can feel free to move on to a different group during the course of the lesson. Previously, I saw flexible grouping as the students having a static group throughout the lesson when working on tasks. The fact that it can be based of the readiness towards a task and change throughout the lesson is something novel.

Some strategies shared during the videos also inspired me to want to try them out during my own lessons.
- "look/say/cover/write/check" is good for vocabulary lessons
- 2-part column worksheets for students to take notes during science lesson explanations
- usage of different manipulatives (can be coupled with small group learning) to help the students learn better

I also really enjoyed the video on station rotation and something new I learnt is that being able to talk to the students for instruction can also be one of the stations! :)

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1. The six principles of differentiated instruction that guide the teacher's response to different learner's needs and profile are useful as a template for future lesson planning.
- Flexibility, respectful tasks, on-going assessment and adjustment, appropriate degree of challenge, clear learning goals
- One principle I was not aware of is flexibility and it was interesting to learn about how groupings can be flexible and changed according to  the type of activities. Students with different abilities can be grouped together not only for collaborative learning, but also during tasks that require different kinds of strengths and this allows the students to have feel successful in different ways.

2. My second learning point is the importance of scaffolding, which was seen in many of the videos. Scaffolding should take place not only on worksheets, but should take place in all classroom activities. An interesting activity was the different learning centre activities in the math lesson, which shows that scaffolding can be done in a variety of ways and we should put in the effort to plan for our lessons with DI in mind.

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1. Differentiating readiness means helping students to achieve same outcomes but with different scaffolding.

What: Stretch n support them appropriately through Zone of proximal development.

How: Guided notes, Chunking, building on prior knowledge and teacher promoting are some examples.

2. Interest based differentiation contributes to motivation to learn. Learning profile is how we interact w ideas. It is about efficiency.

How: Give them opportunities to learn in different ways by observing how they learn better. Importantly, learning is affected by emotion and can help them to remember information better if emotions and senses are involved.

3. Flexible grouping - can have different configurations e.g topics based on their interests, flexibility in allowing students to choose or decided by the teacher. Note: avoid stigmatisation by using neutral names eg blue group, yellow group etc .

4. Technology integration - eg through videos allow them to pace at their own readiness.

5. Positive learning environment-find small things build their confidence, celebrate growth.

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A great diagram on how teachers can practise differentiation. 

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Some of the scaffolds that we can use for differentiated learning are

1. Manipulatives

2. Varied-level readings

3. Learning buddies

4. Graphic organisers

5. Time-management aids

6. Previewing questions

7. Note taking

8. Guided notes

9. Teacher prompting

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I always thought that when it comes to differentiation, we are looking at the learning profiles of the students only, but I now know that we can also differentiate according to readiness levels and interests.

Scaffolding is essential and we should do it well to cater to different readiness levels and to provide a variety of ways for students to explore and make sense of ideas and information. Some of the scaffolding methods:

·    Guided notes

·    Peer support

·    Pre-teach vocabulary

·    Teacher prompts

·    Modelling

·    Visual aids (graphic organisers which may be partially filled, concept maps, pictures, charts)

·    Chunking

·    Think aloud