As students complete the assignments posted on our blogs, they are doing so at their own ability level. Many of our students really push themselves to go above and beyond the grade level expectations, while others struggle to meet only the most critical requirements of the job. All of the students receive individual feedback through conferences and informal observations/conversations. All of the students track their progress against their individual goals, and all students participate, ask questions, and strive to improve.
The technology, especially the blogs, help us to differentiate our instruction, our assignments, and our work with the students in general.
Here is one example of this level of differentiation that technology helps provide. We took a simple quiz from a Time For Kids Magazine, and created this post. Students used the voicethread to answer questions from the quiz. Some students simply provided the answers. Then there were others who were able to share additional information they learned from additional resources they found, and they also moved beyond the multiple choice answers that the traditional quiz offerred.
This assignment was just for fun near the end of the year. Although no students were able to complete the job, you can see how differentiation is built in to the assignment.
Other times, we need to give out multiple assignments, or use multiple blogs. An example comes from our guided reading blogs. We have different books going on at the same time, and we sometimes have different blogs for each book or group.
GR Blog 1
GR Blog 2
In some cases, we have even let students create their own space to read, think, work, write, etc. Here's an entirely student created example. It's a Google site created by students as they read a book. They did all of the work; they created and completed the assignments. The navigation is a bit strange, but they learned quite a bit about how to create a Google site. So now our students have taken the concept of differentiation to heart and have the autonomy to use the technology and tools to make the content work for them and to meet our goal of always using authentic audience and purpose.
