Hallmarks Part III: Proactivity, Grouping, and Materials

So these are the last of the hallmarks, hopefully you’ve found something you can improve in your teaching as I have for mine. I like these last three because they relate fairly well to planning more with your students and the environment that they are in.

Hallmark #7: Proactive thinking and planning for different pathways.

As a teacher many of you know that you need to think on your feet.
Yes there is planning involved (hopefully), but there are things that come up that make us rearrange how and what we were going to teach. Being proactive helps us to try and foresee those problems and plan for them. If we are constantly assessing our students and we know them so well we can be proactive in planning for any hiccups that may arise when we teach. We also need to plan any different pathways we may foresee with any of our students

Hallmark #8: Flexible Grouping:

We as teachers are grouping our students into many different groups academically most of the time. What if you found different ways to group them? Students begin to recognize after
a while what kind of group they're in. They know whether they are in the advanced or struggling group. So with the hallmarks there is a way to group them on various different things. You can group them for interests, readiness, process, and products. The way you group your students can be random. It could be as easy as saying those who have brown eyes and brown hair are in one group.

Hallmark #9: Flexible use of time, space, and materials. 

This hallmark is all about the extra work that the teacher is willing to put into gathering materials needed to help students understand a concept. There are a lot websites that have tons of different worksheets to help students demonstrate the knowledge that they have, but you need t determine which worksheets are really good and will benefit their students in the best ways. Also the way you set up your classroom plays a
big part in differentiating for your students. Every class you have will be different in the needs that they have. Some classes may need more group seating assignments verse single seats or partners. Some may need partnerships or some may not work well in group seating assignments at all. Make sure that your students are aware of the items in their classroom that can help them in the subjects that you're teaching. This also ties back into grouping. Allow students to be in groups with others throughout the school year just by changing the seating arrangement and having several different groups.

These hallmarks give you a glance into how you can use your classroom environment and the students alone to help differentiate for each and everyone of them. When you're classroom is set up to allow for students to feel like it's part of their classroom, they will take part in their education. I know I've said this before, but I really feel that all of these things together can really help each of your students grow to meet their OWN personal potential. It's so important for kids to know you WANT them to succeed at their pace and not yours! Yes as teachers our "goal" is to get everyone to where they should be by the end of the year and that's a lot of information they've got to know! If we try and force all of the curriculum down their throat instead of really trying to identify how to best teach them we are missing the point of educating children. So I hope you've learned more about how to differentiate more for your classroom. I know that a good teacher does some of these, but a great teacher who differentiates does all of these! 

Here are some websites to help with pro-activity, grouping, and materials:
Ways to Group Students
Flexible Grouping
Proactive Teacher for Classroom Behaviors
Teaching Tips for being Proactive
Differentiated Worksheets
Differentiated Materials