First, let’s define product as it relates to differentiation.  Products are what students produce and how they demonstrate new learning as a result of instruction.

Many times, the curriculum documents that are provided to teachers, require students to demonstrate their knowledge through writing lengthy paragraphs or essays.  For students with learning disabilities, this can prove to be a challenge dependent on their needs.

Also, many students just do not prefer to write as a means of demonstrating their knowledge.  By offering a variety of methods for students to use to demonstrate their knowledge around a topic or skill, teachers increase student confidence and engagement.

Examples of Differentiating Product  

One example of differentiating products, would be to provide students with tiered assignments that range in complexity and are based on each student’s readiness level.  Some students may have assignments that have different levels of scaffolding, such as simplified wording of a question, boldface or italicized font, addition of visuals, or a few number of questions that they are required to respond to.  

Another example of differentiating products would be for a teacher to give students choice in how they demonstrate their new learning based on learning style.  For example, if a student needs to demonstrate mastery of identifying story elements, a teacher could have them write the next chapter of a book, act out a portion of the text, draw a map that depicts the setting, or create a missing poster that describes the character in detail.   

Students who are good with technology may want to produce a powerpoint or video that demonstrates that they have an understanding of the content from the lesson.  They also may be benefit from using a word processor to construct a paragraph or essays in relation to a topic.

Differentiating Product as Strategy for Special Education Teachers

There are many differentiation strategies that can be utilized in the classroom to support students with disabilities accessing grade level content.  By allowing each student to express their knowledge in a way that focuses on their strengths, we are giving students with disabilities a greater chance at having more success with demonstrating mastery in all content areas.

The post How to Differentiate Product for Special Education Students appeared first on Teach Special Education.

Without this knowledge, we are not going to be able to keep our students engaged in learning, which can result in the achievement gap widening for many students with disabilities.  Since learning styles and interests are the areas which are frequently overlooked by school teams, I am going to share a few tools that can support you in getting to know your students in these areas.  

With this information, you will be able to create lessons that are not only truly differentiated, but also engaging for your students.

Learning Style

This learning style inventory not only gives you information about whether a student is an auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learners, it also provides the teacher and student with information about preferences in different areas such as memory, responding to new situations, and distractibility.  This inventory was based on work by O’Brien in 1985, but still is relevant for today’s teachers and students. It is longer, so may need to be chunked or read aloud for younger students

This learning style inventory by Stetson and Associates is similar to the previous one, but is geared towards elementary students.  

Interests

This is actually a career inventory that is used in Texas to start elementary students with thinking about post-secondary goals.  It is multiple pages and has a lot of great information and different activities for students to engage in around college and career readiness.  Although this is a bit more involved, there can be a lot of value in taking the time to complete this with students in either upper elementary or even middle school.  This would be especially useful for communities where post secondary goals may not be topic of conversation outside of school.

The post Differentiation: Getting to Know Your Students appeared first on Teach Special Education.