Chapter 8-10 Lindi

Chapters 8-10 talk about the 3 characteristics of student guide differentiation. In chapter 8, when it talked about readiness, I love how it compared it to fine tuning the lesson like you would music. You have so many different elements to music that can be adjusted, many aspects of a lesson for students need to re adjusted based on the student. It might be a slight adjustment, but that slight adjustment can sometimes mean the difference between nails on a chalk board and Beethoven for that student. I had one student today when learning about rounding, who could not see the practical implications to rounding. So I asked her if she ever went shopping with her Grandmother and she said yes. I asked what her favorite store was and she told me it was Old Navy. I then gave her a scenario of what if I gave her 50 dollars to spend on clothes but, when she checked out she could not go over the 50 dollars and she couldn’t use a calculator. She said she would have to add up all the prices of the clothes in her head. So I asked her what about clothes that were prices like $4.58 or $14.83? How was she going to add up all those in hear head and make sure she doesn’t go over? It was then that the light bulb went on. She said she would need to round up because it would be easier to round to the nearest dollar because it would be easier to add. When I asked her why she would round up instead of down she replied that she would rather have end up with extra money then not enough.
I knew this student knew how to round very well but didn’t understand why she had to learn to do this. She I had to give her a practical application for the concept. This also crosses over into the second characteristic of student guide differentiation which is interest. I used the student’s interest of shopping to help keep her engaged while still helping her to expand her understanding of the concept. This example might not work so well for another student and I might have to come up with a different type of scenario. IN the end, the goal is for both students to understand the core use of rounding in their everyday life.
I also took into consideration the students learning profile under the characteristic of gender. I knew, as a girl, she might enjoy shopping and I also knew that she spends a lot of time with one of her grandmothers in Macon. So based those two aspects, I gave her a scenario that she could relate to.
When I was doing this with my student, I didn’t look at each of these different aspects specifically; they just sort of came naturally. I would say that I often times might need to pay more attention to the Learning Profile.