Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Learning Menues from Differentiated instruction

Today I was looking over different Differentiated instruction videos. I found on the Teaching Channel website a short video about different strategies to use within the literacy activities in a classroom. The instructor for the lesson on modified graphic organizers is named Mary Vagenas and she teaches seventh grade social studies.

 The idea that the classroom teacher came up dealt with 'Learning Menues.' The learning menue comes from the restaurant menues of getting an appetizer and Entrees. The teacher uses each section of the rubric to show the main outlines of a story such as sequencing. The 'appetizer' of the story would include the first outline of the paragraph. These details may include, who is the main character, or which region is being focused on. The next area would then move onto 'Entrees' and so on. In each area, there will then be a break down of classifications of what was read within the text.

With completion of each area of the Learning Menue, there is clarification of what needs improving. Content understanding is developed in each section, which is assessed through quizes and understanding. Since each section cannot be completed until it is checked by the teacher, this allows for more details of what the task needs to have in it. Another good aspect to this method, which is mentioned by the kids, is that it can be done at their own pace, which allows the students time to process and understand the information that they are recieving from their research.

I thought that this video wasn't exactly something that reflected special needs, but could just as well be used as an adaptation in order to help clarify information for any group of students. This could also be broken down into a task analysis at some point, and made even easier within a classroom.

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