Ways You Can Reflect on Your Teaching:

* Journal

* Meet regularly with a colleague

*Ask students to reflect on their classroom experiences regularly

* Pair up with colleague for mutual observation-feedback sessions

*Peer videotaping of a DI lesson

*Take turns shadowing with another teacher
Check Your Differentiation Quotient!
Consider what is going on in the minds of your students.

• Are you working on the attitudes of all your students about what is fair?
• Do you celebrate regularly the different strengths of the students?
• Do you have the willingness to ask them if they are being challenged?
• Are you ready to make their comments and ideas a part of your planning for differentiation?
• Have you taken the time to watch your brightest, most able students when you've given them a task?

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Best practice teaching involves positive self-evaluation about the teaching day. When differentiation is a goal, reflecting on how your decisions, your planning, and the ongoing assessments you make for teaching are working can be very valuable. Try journaling, or using a personal tape recording to reflect about:

• is your choice of strategies getting the students motivated?
• how are different students responding to the differentiation?
• is the big idea coming across to them yet?

Collaboration with other teachers creates a balance to your reflective thinking about your teaching. Look at the possibilities!!

• a grade level colleague
• differentiation support teacher
• content specialist
• a cross-grade level colleague
• library media specialist
• learning behavior specialist
• tech support teacher

Knowing how your strategies and decision-making are providing the right struggle and challenge for each child takes skill and knowledge to develop.

Keeping a log of strategies and a personal journal of their effectiveness can help decisions in the future. When a teacher notes the when and how of the differentiated instruction, and how often it occurs (can be noted in a plan book too), the teacher can assess the options created in the classroom for maximum learning.

Asking students to reflect on the level of challenge for the work that was expected can be an eye-opener for many teachers. Ask students regularly how they viewed an assignment, test, or activity. (journal, class discussion, tape record response)
last update
06/21/08