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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Differentiation, it never stops

DI doesn't end here.
I just spent most of my day working with a lovely lady from my school district on developing a presentation on assessing diverse learners through differentiation for the Alberta Assessment Consortium (AAC) conference coming up this fall.  I was amazed how even as two professional adults we worked to differentiate this project for ourselves.

The two of us are members of our school districts differentiated instruction team.  We have a bit of a shared history, but haven't really ever worked together on something.  We both have had the privilege of spending two weeks at the University of Virginia working with Carol Ann Tomlinson and her grad students to help wrap our heads around what true differentiation is.

It started when we were asked to present, the entire group was asked and anyone who was interested was invited to participate.  I thought this was a natural next step for myself, and my partner thought is was a good opportunity although it was far out of her comfort zone.  We were the only two who volunteered.  We began by discussing (very briefly) if we were going to work together on this, or divide up the presentation and work solo.

After doing a little bit of ground work on my own, because I like to piece things together alone, we got together today, and magic happened.  We started really connecting and building a truly differentiated presentation, making the most of our strengths, experiences, and worries.  We were able to scaffold the presentation for my reluctant partner, but still allow me to stretch a bit too.  She has a firm background in the philosophical aspects of DI, where I am much more practical, so we were able to play to this balance as well. I left feeling energized and excited about our work.

The best part about this was as we questioned each other, and worked back and forth, we not only were  enriching the DI in our presentation, but also practicing differentiating for ourselves.  Which then led to a nice reflection about how we can instil this idea in our students and staff, to advocate for their own differentiation, but still being open to taking risks and learning outside of their comfort zone as well.

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