Teaching can often be perceived as simply passing knowledge from one person to another, however a teacher’s role is never that simple as students have unique learning needs. As a teacher, how do you address this challenge in your classroom?
We believe that differentiation is key to effective teaching and should be incorporated into lesson plans to ensure every student achieves the intended learning objectives.
How to differentiate effectively in your classroom?
Consider these key elements to cultivate a productive learning environment:
- practice – how you deliver instructions to students;
- process – how the lesson is designed for students;
- products – resources students use to complete tasks;
- content – specific readings, research, or materials students will study;
- assessment – how you measure what students have learned;
- grouping – how students are grouped in the classroom.
Adapting these various attributes to efficiently meet students individual needs requires great skill. Teachers must comprehend student’s unique academic abilities and modify their teaching strategy accordingly. Differentiation is therefore a complex and time-consuming task involving extensive data analysis, lengthy planning time and a wide range of resources. Here at Zzish, however, we understand the challenges of differentiation, therefore we are working towards supporting teachers with a simple and effective solution which could revolutionise classroom teaching.1
Zzish makes differentiation easy!
- Zzish displays students’ results in real-time and offers instant insight into student and whole class learning gaps. This knowledge can then influence differentiated practice, as teachers can accurately adapt their lesson plans to meet their students’ unique needs.
- Zzish provides an engaging whole class team game which motivates all students, regardless of their academic ability. This process of gamified learning enables students to answer questions at their own pace and interact with unique content teachers have created in Quizalize.
- Students engage in personalized learning experiences using individual mobile devices to play their Quizalize quizzes. Zzish then presents their results in real-time via a digital team game and teachers can access this data in a comprehensive dashboard, which groups students according to their success. Using these products not only generates a positive learning environment but is extremely beneficial for teachers as they can diligently track student progress and adapt their future lessons accordingly.
- Quizalize enables teachers to create their own quizzes, therefore the content can be tailored to meet the intended learning objectives. Moreover, it can be differentiated for different groups or classes of students according to their ability.
- Quizalize works as an assessment tool for the classroom as the questions can be easily tagged to curriculum standards. The Zzish mastery dashboards presents the data in alignment with these standards and reveals how successfully students have mastered the various objectives. Students’ quiz results can also be viewed individually, so teachers can observe the specific questions a student struggled with and address any prominent issues in the next lesson (click here to learn more about the mastery dashboard).
- Finally, Zzish enhances differentiated grouping in the classroom as the technology groups students according to their quiz results which can then influence ability grouping for different classroom activities. Through grouping students into ‘Strong’; ‘Almost There’ and ‘Needs Help’ teachers can target students who need additional help and stretch those who are excelling (for more details click here).
Overall, Zzish offers an efficient and simple way to enhance differentiation in the classroom, by providing instant insight into student data from unique standard aligned quizzes. The capacity to group students according to their success and present the results in a comprehensive mastery dashboard saves teachers time and enhances differentiated teaching practice.
Have you tried Zzish yet? Why not sign up today for free at: https://live.zzish.com/
References
1 The Glossary of Education Reform (2013) Differentiation. Available at: http://edglossary.org/differentiation/ (Accessed: 03 August 2017).