Differentiation and Engagement

This week we discussed the importance of engagement and differentiation. Engagement is were the teacher creates a point of interest and relevance for the students. The teacher engages students by activating the correct schema, creating a point of interest, and getting their attention. If a teacher fails to do any of these things their lesson is not going to be as effective as they would like. Students need to be actively engaged in all aspects of the lesson. If they are interested in the lesson they are more likely to remember the lesson and what they learned. The students will be more active in the discussions and projects presented. Everybody remembers sitting in a class in high school and feeling bored all the time. These teachers did not get the students engaged or interested. On the same token, everyone also remembers a class where time flew by, and no one wanted to leave when the bell rang. It is important for us, as future educators, to be mindful of the importance of creating engagement and interest in our lessons.

Differentiation is important to remember as well. Teachers need to keep in mind what kind of students they have in their classooms. What works for some students may not work for others. For Beginning Ells teachers should provide them with sentence stem notes and fill in the blanks so that they still get the information they need to succeed in class. Intermediate ELLs would benefit from fill in the blanks as well, but maybe make it a little more advanced than the handout for the Beginner. Advanced ELLs could be utilized as English speaking buddies. These Buddies would be paired with beginner and intermediate ELLs to help with language acquisition. The buddy system would help raise the beginner and intermediate ELLs to a higher level, while also helping the Advance ELLs to become more proficient in the language.