Differentiation Blog: Webinar 11

I differentiate my lessons by giving guided notes and trying different strategies during my group work time. As I mentioned in the webinar I like to do point systems during class. I have questions broken up into sections. Each section gets progressively harder and is worth progressively more points. Students must reach a certain number of points to complete the activity but they can choose any level of question they want. For my high students I sometimes challenge them by saying answer all the hard questions or I up the amount of points they must reach to end the activity. For my lower students I lower the amount of points they need. Beyond activities such as this my differentiation skills are lacking. I think that differentiation is really important in the classroom but I haven't found ways to be really good at it. My lowest and highest students get lost among my challenges with management. Currently I struggle more with my high students than my low. I can see them getting bored and annoyed with the classes paces and material. I usually give them their homework earlier but after they complete that I don't have anything else for them to do. I have tried doing peer tutoring but that only works with some of my high students. I think some of my management problems would be fixed if I could have my lower students understand the material better and my higher students be more challenge. I just sometimes feel overwhelmed by it all.