Make a difference with differentiation!

I appreciate approaching differentiation from the child and her need to me, rather than from me to the child.  I am a paraprofessional making accommodations and facilitating differentiation every day and have trouble determining appropriate differentiation strategies for my lesson plans.  It makes so much more sense to think of the student first, her needs, and work from there.  How can her needs be met while I teach content?


Common elements of Response to Intervention (RTI) and Differentiated Instruction (DI)

• Student Engagement
• Diverse Learners
• Learning Centers and Stations
• Collaboration
• Data & Ongoing Assessments *current focus*
• Flexible Groupings

Ideas:

• Picture schedules
• Picture associations 
• Technology integration for learning centers as accommodation
• Quiet work stations
• Alternate placement
• Pre-transcribed information at the desk of the student
• Tool to follow instruction (i.e. a special ruler to place for visual tracking.
• Content modification
• Material replacement
• Time allotment
• Audio text reading

Apps that will make my life easier as a teacher:
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2012/12/my-35-favorite-free-apps-teaching

• Dropbox - cloud-based
• Evernote - speak to text
• Sticky Notes - 
• Remind101 - Group messaging from a general source
• Class Dojo - classroom management
• Rover - Educational browser for students
• Flashcards - Create and save flashcards
• ShowMe - virtual whiteboard
• CommonCore - 
• DiscoveryEducation - 
• KidBlog - student generated reading responses
• Homophones
• Fry Words
• Toontastic - storytelling process
• Bluster
• Grammaropolis
• Mad Libs
• Google Earth
• Stack the States

Google Voice!!!  Fun!