Student Interests
The goal of differentiating by student interest is motivation. If students are going to persist in rigorous content, they must be engaged. Differentiation according to student interest and culture provides guided choices based upon content standards where such choices are both appropriate and motivating.
Where to Start?
Because differentiated instruction is such a huge field of study, I wanted to
focus this book on just one aspect of differentiating. Even so, just
differentiating by interest can still seem a bit daunting. Here is my best
advice for getting started:
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Assess:
Start by discovering student interests, especially with the
students who don't tend to share this information easily. It's not enough just
to find out, however, we must also be prepared to use this information to engage
students in their learning. Find some way to record this information so that it
is in a system that is easy to retrieve and use.
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Create a classroom environment that supports differentiation:
Teachers
tend to do the getting-to-know-you activities at the beginning of the year but
doing small things all year long helps to recognize and celebrate student
interests and differences. Use literature to continually emphasize the
importance of being unique.
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Start planning using standards:
Begin planning with required standards.
It will help to ensure that choices offered will help students understand the
important concepts. Keeping them at the forefront of planning will also help to
keep them as a focus when planning for assessment.
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Start small:
Set a goal of trying at least one lesson that is
differentiated by interest in the upcoming school year. Observe the response of
your students and build on success. Try using the goal-setting sheet found on
Blackline Master 35.
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Don't reinvent the wheel:
To begin with, it might be easier to use an
existing differentiated lesson or adapt a traditional lesson that is already
written, rather than starting from scratch. With WebQuests, for example, there
are hundreds of them on the World Wide Web. Make sure lessons fit your learning
outcomes and then use or adapt. Once you have tried some lessons, it's much
easier to create new ones, and eventually, it just becomes a part of how you
think about planning.
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Work together:
Much of my work when I began differentiating instruction
was done with my job-sharing partner. It is much easier (and more fun) to
generate ideas together. Many schools work together to create differentiated
lessons, and then compile them into a school binder or online collection that
others can use and learn from.
From Differentiating By Student Interest by Joni Turville, 2007. 1-59667-047-9
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