Differentiation Station Reflection

The Differentiation Station experience has helped me realize how easy it is to differentiate instruction using technology in my second grade classroom. One year ago, before my first year teaching second grade, I was really skeptical about using technology in the classroom based on my students lack of technological experience. As the year went on, I began to experiment more and more with technology and found that my second graders are surprisingly really good with technology. With that discovery, I began creating technology-based lessons to use in the classroom that worked really well. During this class, the Differentiation Station helped me discover how easy and effective it is to differentiate using technology in my classroom. My Google Group members and I were able to discuss different resources and strategies to use int he classroom to ensure the success of all students in the classroom. I really valued their ideas, opinions, and criticisms that helped me better understand UDL and DI and how to use it in the classroom.

This next year, I am definitely using more and more technology in the classroom when possible. I have 4 ELL students in my classroom this year and would love to have access to student lap-tops with word recognition, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text software, but, unfortunately, due to our tight budget, that won't be a reality. I am getting that software installed on my two classroom computers so that is a start! For the other students in my classroom, I plan on making numerous lessons that contain options for content, process, and products. I really like the idea of giving my students options for choosing the content they want to learn. I feel that it will really motivate my second graders and will give them a sense of ownership with their learning. I will also work on showing them multiple ways to solve any problem. Usually in second grade we focus so much on showing the basic foundations of everything that we really don't get to show multiple methods to solve problems. I plan on concentrating more on that so students can find early on in their educational careers what methods and learning styles work for them the best. I was really proud of my first year in second grade with all the progress my students made and I made as a teacher. I am even more excited about this year with all these extra differentiating ideas and tricks to use in my classroom.