Week 3

Essential question: How do we prepare parents for differentiation in the classroom?

Preparing parents for a differentiated classroom really starts from the beginning of the school year.

Tomlinson said, “Your students and their parents may initially need your help to understand and feel comfortable with the new look and feel of the classroom” (2001, 39). One way to ease parents into a differentiated environment is to make sure they understand what it means. Tomlinson gave an example to send home a survey of when children started to talk, walk, crawl, ride a bike … (2001).  This can be used to help the class understand that everyone learns differently as well as help explain to parents that every student is different and might need to learn differently then the student next to him/her. “When learning tasks are consistently too hard, students become anxious and frustrated. When tasks are consistently too easy, boredom results” (Foucault). The parents might also need to understand that the teacher will usually be teaching differently than they are most likely use to seeing. “Instead of standing front and center to deliver instruction, he or she is apt to be on the move, observing, asking questions, and guiding students to make their own sense of the world. “A Parent’s Guide to 21st-Centurary Learning, 2).

I also liked Crowe’s idea for helping parents feel comfortable in a differentiated classroom. She created wonderful Wednesdays where parents were free to come by for however long they wanted and participate in the classroom activity that was going on. One way to make this work is to “keep these days structured around workshop-type activities and ask parents to join us as full participants” (Crowe, 4). She explains that “the purpose is for parents to experience day-to-day life in our classroom in a safe and comfortable way” (Crowe, 4). Wonderful Wednesdays also gives the teacher and parents more time to get to know each other. This is important because “In many ways, differentiated instruction, especially for young children, begins in the home. Parents know their child more intimately than does anyone else” (Smutny 2004). Thus, if the teacher has questions about what a student is interested in or how long they have been learning about a specific thing there can be an in-person conversation about it. Parents will also see that the teacher is truly trying to get to know their child and will create a connection that might be helpful later on in the year.

I choose this picture by Douglas (2016) to illustrate how a differentiated classroom can change a child’s education for the better.  Most students need different ways to learn and if their teacher gives them all the same boxed education, then many will fall behind or struggle the whole way.

References

A Parents Guide to 21st-Centurary Learning . (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2017, from http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/guides/edutopia-parents-guide-21st-century-learning.pdf

Crowe, C. (2004, November 1). Wonderful Wednesdays. Retrieved January 31, 2017, from https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/wonderful-wednesdays/

Douglas, L. (2016). The Elusive Pursuit of Equity. Retrieved January 31, 2017, from http://secondlineblog.org/2016/11/the-elusive-pursuit-of-equity/ (Photograph)

Foucault, A. (n.d.). Differentiation Tips for Parents. Retrieved February 01, 2017, from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/differentiation-tips-parents

Smutny, J. (2004). Differentiated Instruction for Young Gifted Children: How Parents Can Help. Retrieved February 01, 2017, from http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10465

Tomlinson, C. A. (2001). How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-ability Classrooms. Alexandria, Va: Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development.