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Student-Centered and Differentiated Instruction

Robert Frazier
Regent University
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Student-Centered and Differentiated Instruction

For my lesson plan on evidence, I had to change how I normally teach a lesson, as my

core students were far behind my advanced students academically. I realized this in the last

lesson I taught to the core students, so I made the necessary changes to help them. I changed my

assessment from having the students find scholarly articles based on a claim, to matching articles

and claims for my core students. Additionally, I changed one of my slides that had two directions

in it to two slides with one direction for each slide. Sadly, I only changed this for my A-2 class,

as my A-1 class greatly struggled to follow the two instructions, which prompted this change.

My A-2 class did much better with the instructions when they were split into two slides, so it

seems that it was a necessary change. Also, for the check for understanding section of my lesson,

I provided much more help to the core students, than to the advanced students. My A-1 class has

ELL students and students with 504 plans, so during every lesson, including this one, I reiterated

and walked through the instructions with each of these students and asked them if they

understood the assignments. This lesson also included kinesthetic activities like the interactive

whiteboard. Visual and linguistic learners could see the Google Slides, which had all of the

necessary information written on them, and they had pictures and colors. There were also

intrapersonal activities, such as the independent work, where the students search the web for

articles to support their essay, and the Write Now. Interpersonal learners were benefited from the

group work, such as the discussion section of the Write Now and interactive white board activity.

These adjustments helped meet the needs of most of students in the classroom. During this

lesson, I did try to catch students’ attention through the use of an article about whether video

games were good for learning. This was an important reason that I chose this lesson plan for this

criterion, as I tried to play towards students’ interests. John McCarthy (September 2015) explains
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that “Achieving this goal (leaving the classroom with skills that will benefit their future) means

understanding what the participants value, and engaging them in those areas.” One thing I

noticed with my students was that many of them really enjoyed video games. So, I decided to

include a video game related article. Through using this article, I was able to tie in something

that many of the students’ valued to make them more engaged with the lesson.

If I were to recreate this lesson again, and I did not have to follow strict Covid guidelines,

I would start by changing the anticipatory set. Instead of having groups share at the end, I would

have students do an activity called Mix-Pair-Share, which requires students to stand up and mix

about the class. The teacher will yell “pair” and students will pair up with the person closest to

them. Next, students share with their partner about what they wrote down. To finish the activity,

I would have popsicle sticks with students’ names on them that I could use to call on students to

share to the whole class. For the comma rule activity, I would change that to a whiteboard

activity, where students would write down the correct answer on the whiteboards and hold up

their boards with the correct answers. The students who get their boards up the fastest and have

the correct answer would get candy. Another major aspect that I would change would be how I

instructed the students. I would provide more information about the subject matter I was going

over and be more detailed in the planning process. Additionally, I would provide non-examples

of evidence to illustrate some pitfalls that students can fall into if they are not careful. I would

then have students do the Boss Secretary strategy for the Check for Understanding. This strategy

involves having one student be a boss and another student be a secretary. The boss tells the

secretary what to write down and then the secretary writes it and provides feedback. Students

would trade roles after each part of the assignment. I would have students do this activity with

finding evidence and have the boss in the pair explain how to find a scholarly article/website
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based on a claim and the secretary would follow the instructions on their computer. Once

completed, the roles would trade off and they would find evidence for another claim. I would

also change the guided practice to a group activity, where I would give them a topic, which they

would have to use to find a scholarly article/website and create a claim for it. I would allow more

time for this activity, as I would want students to create an interesting claim and find a good,

scholarly article/website for the topic. For homework, I would have them read through a short

excerpt from “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave” and write a

claim about Frederick Douglas’ life and the struggles he faced as an African American and draw

a piece of evidence from the book that supports their claim. Since many of my African American

students were uninterested in the content, I believe that by learning more about the history of

African American people in history, they may feel more invested and engaged with the course

content. I would also make this lesson plan more detailed, so that a substitute could follow it

without any issue. The final thing that I would change would be to the classroom management. I

would change this to include more classroom rules, such as allowing students to go to the

restroom with a hall pass with 1 boy and 1 girl allowed out at a time, having a place for students

to submit written work and a place for work to be returned to students (cubby holes), including

how I would kindly respond to incorrect answers and provide probing questions to get students

on the right track, and have students wipe down the desks at the end of class, instead of me

having to do this. There were a lot of issues with this lesson and the Covid guidelines did not

help make this any easier. However, I believe that with these corrections, the lesson plan would

have gone a lot better and been much more engaging for the students.

With these corrections, this lesson would be differentiated for many types of learners.

Linguistic learners would benefit from writing their POWER paragraph, from reading the
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Google Slides, from reading the scholarly articles/websites, from writing their own evidence

sentences in their essay, and from writing the 1-Minute Note. Auditory learners would benefit

from the cooperative learning strategies, from hearing their classmates share in the anticipatory

set, and from hearing my instruction. Visual learners would benefit from pictures on the Google

Slides and from seeing students mix about the room. Kinesthetic learners would benefit from

mixing about the room in the Mix-Pair-Share activity. Interpersonal learners would benefit from

the Mix-Pair-Share activity, the Boss Secretary activity, and from the group activity in the

Guided Practice.

These corrections would also make this lesson fit the criteria for some of the other 7

standards, such as Classroom and Behavior Management, Culturally Responsive Teaching, and

Developmentally Appropriate Instruction. With the addition to the Classroom Management

Strategies section, there would be more ways to mitigate issues within the classroom and have a

better system for keeping students on task and help students who answer incorrectly. Through

having students read about Frederick Douglas and his struggles as a slave, African American

students may feel more invested in their learning and feel more connected to the content. For

Developmentally Appropriate Instruction, the activities: Mix-Pair-Share, Boss Secretary, the

group activity in the Guided Practice, and the 1-Minute Notes are appropriate for all students and

would greatly benefit their ability to understand the content and be engaged in the lesson.

My faith is a major factor in why I differentiate my lessons. Though I struggle with

figuring out how to differentiate my lessons sometimes, I strive to better my ability in this area,

due to my beliefs. God created everyone equally and everyone deserves an opportunity to

succeed, as a child of God. In the classroom, teachers have the responsibility to understand their

students and to find ways to meet all students’ needs. Even for extremely difficult cases, such as
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students who do not want to do anything in the classroom, the teacher needs to do their best to

work with those students and to find a way to motivate them. Additionally, my teaching

philosophy greatly influences my want to better each and every student. I believe that the

classroom is a place to train intellect, but there are different forms of intellectual ability, which

can only be met through differentiated instruction. Due to this, I strive to help grow all students’

intellectual abilities and allow them to express themselves in ways that will benefit their mental

prowess. Finally, the data, such as pre-assessment scores, ELL and 504 status, and informal data

from classroom experience, that I have gathered from my core students and advanced students

shows me that I need to change and differentiate my lessons to meet the needs for these two

groups. With the core students being so far academically behind the advanced students and their

maturity levels being much lower, there are many adjustments to lessons that need to be made.

While it is a difficult task to change lesson plans to meet learners needs, it is necessary in today’s

diverse world.
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References

McCarthy, J. (2015, September 9). Student-Centered Learning: It Starts With the Teacher.

Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-centered-learning-starts-with-teacher-

john-mccarthy