3. Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.

After a few whole-group lessons on Measurement (Mass), I decided to try my first small-group instruction with Kindergarten students. Based on students’ performance on previous lessons, I carefully divided students into mixed abilities groups and gave the same task to every group. The aim of setting up mixed ability groups was to encourage collaborative learning and scaffolding structure between high ability students and low ability students. However, it was not successful. Students lacked collaborative skills, and they were too ‘independent.’ For example, many students wanted to do a work all by themselves, or high-ability students wanted to finish the work quickly and move on to more challenging problems. In addition, one or two aggressive students took over the activity, leaving slow-learning or shy students not having an opportunity to engage in a group activity.

From this lesson I learned that I should know my students as learners and as social beings. Knowing where my learners are at academically, emotionally, and physically helps me design optimal teaching strategies for the students with different needs – differentiated instruction.

With this in mind, I employed a new instructional strategy, a within-class ability grouping, in the next lesson on Measurement. I grouped students based on their immediate needs and social skills, and then I provided differentiated instruction to one group while other groups engaged in more play-based instructional activities. A difficulty level and depth of lesson were adapted to meet the needs of students within each group. For example, in a low-ability group I provided a direct and basic instruction on how to use a scale to measure and compare the weight of two objects. High-ability groups received a challenging problem, which was finding out which object weighed the most among a multiple objects they found in the classroom. After I gave differentiated instruction to every group, I spent extra time with a group of English Language Learners students, who struggled with the vocabulary and expressive phrases to demonstrate their knowledge.

It definitely required a lot of time to plan differentiated instruction for different small groups, but it was absolutely worth my time and effort. Students’ level of participation and excitement were higher in an ability-grouping learning environment, and that naturally led to the increased comprehension and achievement of students on the specific skill area. This artifact shows that I care about every student’s difference in growth and learning development by being sensitive to students’ needs and successfully providing differentiated instruction.