Differentiation of Student Products
A great way to differentiate instruction is to allow for diverse outcomes from the same assignment.
By Deborah Reynolds
Students vary in learning abilities, styles, and backgrounds. One way to differentiate your instruction accordingly is to provide students with an assignment that is open-ended. Each student works on the same objective or standard, yet they determine how they are going to construct the final product. This allows students to incorporate their knowledge and unique personal style when completing the given task.
There are a variety of ways that teachers can provide differentiation of products. For example, students that are learning how to write math story problems could be given just the answer and asked to create a story problem with that answer. If the answer had to be 12, some students may create an addition word problem involving 6 + 6, while others may write a problem that involves finding the square root of 144, and others might create a logic problem. Each child is meeting the standard, yet they are allowed to take that activity in the direction in which they feel comfortable and successful. In science, the assignment could be to design a pen for a new class pet that has an area of 24 inches and a perimeter of 20 inches. Although each child has been given the same numbers for area and perimeter, they get to decide how to design a pen within those parameters. Only one assignment was created, and differentiation was accomplished.
This method of differentiation not only works for students, but is also beneficial for teachers. Teachers often struggle with how to diversify a lesson to meet the needs of all the students without adding to their workload. It is a huge challenge to design a lesson plan, and activities, for three or more different ability levels. Differentiation of student products allows the teacher to meet the standard, the goal of the lesson, and the individual needs of all the children, without having to create three or four different lesson plans/activities for the topic. Below are some lesson plans that will show you how to incorporate differentiation of student products into your teaching.
Differentiation of Student Products Lesson Plans:
In this differentiated lesson, students listen to the book "Pigs Will Be Pigs" by Amy Axelrod. After the reading, the class discusses how much money the pigs found. Then, the students work with a partner to create their own word problems based on the book.
Simple Machines and Modern Day Engineering Analogies
Students study six simple machines and how it related to architecture. They compare ancient times with pyramids to more modern structures such as skyscrapers. Students research the kinds of simple machines used to build a modern building. Then, they design a plan for their own building and describe what simple machines they would use in the construction. An excellent lesson!
Students read the book "Charlotte’s Web" E. B. White. To practice story elements, they create their own comic strip of Charlotte’s Web describing the story elements. They share them with the class and create a Charlotte’s Web comic strip class book. This is an excellent example of how to combine art, writing, and language arts into one differentiated lesson plan.
This terrific lesson has students create a multimedia timeline on the American Revolutionary period. The students are given specific guidelines such as; using note cards for research, citing sources, and working with a timeline that runs from 1754 through 1783. Students design the timeline according to their interpretation.
