Running Head: STUDENT CENTERED AND/OR DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION 1

Student Centered and/or Differentiated Instruction

Emily Simmons

Regent University

In partial fulfillments of requirements for UED 495

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Student Centered and/or Differentiated Instruction

Introduction

When you become a teacher, you assume the role and responsibility to make sure your

students succeed to the best of their ability. For some it may be easy for your students to succeed,

they understand content and are quick learners; for others though there may have to be some

differentiated instruction along with extra time spent working with them. When you get a class at

the beginning of the year it is your responsibility to teach your students all year so that they are

ready to go onto the next grade level at the end of the year. E. B. White states “always be on the

lookout for the presence of wonder.” (A quote by E. B. White) As a teacher, we should always

be looking for a way our students are succeeding and ways that we can push them even farther in

their learning; this is where differentiation comes into play.

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

Differentiation was something that I noticed within my first week of being at Malibu

Elementary School. The class that I was placed in was a gifted cluster class, almost half of the

students in this class are labeled as gifted, so there is a lot of differentiation that needs to be made

daily. There are also times throughout the day where some students pick up on what Mrs.

Simeone or I am teaching faster than others. I am learning the more I am in the school that

differentiation and student-centered instruction are very crucial in your everyday life as a

teacher. As stated in Titus 3:14 “Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is

good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives.” (New International

Version) We always need to be on the lookout, just like what E. B. White’s quote stated. We

always need to be on the lookout for where there is a need that we can fill. Once we see the need
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or gap in a child’s understanding of a topic, this is where we need differentiation and

remediation.

The first artifact that I want to delve into is my daily sheet where I track where each one

of my students are at. Mrs. Simeone has a clipboard in the back of her classroom that has all the

student’s names on it and then has each day of the week, with math and LA categories for each

day. When we are working on a certain problem or type of learning, we can gauge where the

students are at by either walking around to see if they understand what they are doing or by

looking at graded assignments. On this sheet you can see that for Monday we have where

students are at for their research project that they are working on, but also which students were

struggling with equivalent fractions and comparing and ordering fractions. As we plan for our

remediation groups and differentiated instruction, this daily sheet is where we get our data for

who we need to be keeping an eye on or pulling aside for extra practice. In an article that I read

recently, it talked about how as a teacher you need to have a student-centered mindset; meaning

you need to be tracking where each of your students are, if you are not doing this, some students

are going to fall through the cracks. It is also so crucial to have this time where you can pull your

kids who are struggling and give them that extra work that they need, this is where this daily

sheet comes in handy.

The second artifact that I wanted to include is a photo of one of my students who is

working in one of our remediation groups. This student had struggled on the school net test for

language arts on identifying various parts of speech. Mrs. Simeone and I had pulled our data and

had a few students who we knew struggled with this. The next week we were able to pull these

students to our back table to do a few activities to work and practice identifying various parts of

speech. In the photo, the student is working on noun, verb, adjective, and adverbs.
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The third artifact that I wanted to include is my lesson plan for language arts for the week

that the picture above was taken. On the lesson plan you can see that we arranged our language

arts block to include time for the students to work on writing, time for small groups, then also

forty-five minutes to pull remediation groups. Our data was all pulled for this week from their

school net test, then for the latter part of the week, we pulled kids who were struggling with

anything worked on Monday to Wednesday.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

While attending Regent University, I believe that I have truly been shaped into a better

leader, teacher, friend, and citizen. Their mission statement says that “Regent University serves

as a center of Christian thought and action to provide excellent education through a biblical

perspective and global context equipping Christian leaders to change the world. Our vision is to

be the most influential, Christian, transformational university in the world.” (Vision, Regent

University) We are called to excellence in everything that we do, and we are raised to be leaders

that can change the world. To change the world, we need to make a difference but if we are just

sticking with the routine of what everyone is doing we aren’t going to be able to change the

world. No one has become famous or invented anything without trial and error or changing

things up. Differentiation is so crucial in so many aspects of life. There were a lot of classes

where we would be assigned projects but not everyone was doing the same topic, the teachers

would give each group a different topic to study then report back to the group. If everyone in the

class did the same topic, then presented on the same topic, it would get boring and people would

lose interest. We should be trying to reach everyone and sometimes to do that, we need to

differentiate to meet the needs of all our learners and students. Colossians 3:23 states “Whatever

you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” (New
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International Version) We are called to excellence and to do everything as though we are

working for the Lord. When it comes to teaching, this means we need to do our very best to

make sure that our students are learning what needs to be learned but also are being pushed to be

the best students that they can be. Regent prepared me for this because all my teachers always

expected excellence in my work. When I would turn in any assignment I would get feedback

from my teachers on what I did well and what I needed to improve on. In my curriculum and

design class I remember sitting with my instructor going over the things I was struggling with to

make sure I was able to submit an assignment to the best of my ability at the end of the semester.

As a Christian, our faith should impact and flow into everything that we are doing. This means

doing our best in everything that we do. When we have a class or a few students who are

struggling with a certain topic, we need to make sure we pull them for a remediation group or

differentiate their instruction so that they can be successful. All your lessons should be centered

around the students because this is who is learning from you. As a teacher, you should pick

activates that are not only fun but will push the students to learn what needs to be learned, then

you can find things that would be fun to incorporate.

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References

A quote by E.B. White. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2018, from

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/33989-always-be-on-the-lookout-for-the-presence-of-wonder

The Holy Bible

Vision | Mission. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2018, from https://www.regent.edu/about-

regent/vision-mission/

Wasserman, L. (2017, August 23). Strategies for Meeting All Students' Needs. Retrieved

February 23, 2018, from

https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/04/24/tln_wasserman_strategies.html

Artifacts

Artifact 1
Picture of daily sheet,
week 6
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Artifact 2
working on parts of
speech-remediation

Artifact 3

Included in external link

Language Arts Lesson Plan February 12-16