I just finished listening to a podcast entitled “Six high-impact, low-burnout strategies to differentiate your lessons for neurodiverget kids with Dr. Laura Fitzpatrick” (on the Truth for Teachers podcast). With Halloween around the corner I thought it would be the perfect time to share Dr. Fitzpatricks tricks for differentiation with all of you!

In this podcast, Dr. Fitzpatrick a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher, shared her ideas for ways that she has found success in differentiating her instruction without increasing her workload or stress levels. These tricks have provided her and other teachers with ways to streamline teaching and reduce fatigue.

Trick #1: Clone Yourself!

“I wish that there were one of me for every one of my students. That would just make life so much easier. I have found that the closest I can come to that is by screen casting.” Dr. Fitzpatrick

In order to clone herself, Dr. Fitzpatrick has students submit their papers on a Thursday. She does a quick read through of the paper looking for areas of growth. She then highlights the rubric areas that the student will need to work on. She is not grading at this point.

Over the weekend, she will create five short (5 minutes or less) videos based on trends she sees in her students’ work. These videos will walk each student through the rubric and area that they need to work on. These videos can be needs based or strength based to highlight things that students are doing well and push them to the next level.

On Monday, she returns the work. The only thing on the paper at this point is a highlighted rubric (this is why it is really fast for you, and students get a quick turn around time). The students have the day to look over their paper and see the highlights. They will watch the corresponding video and revise. Some students meet up with other students that had similar highlights to work together. And some students meet up with students that had already mastered that rubric to ask for feedback on their revision.

Once the student has completed the revisions, they will turn in their work and she will take a final look at the paper to grade it. This time she only focuses on the sections she had highlighted, which makes the grading go quickly.

Trick #2: Use Stations!

Yes, you can use stations in secondary classrooms! Dr. Fitzpatrick said, “What I love about stations, is that you can differentiate in so many ways. From grouping, to what the actual station tasks are. But the thing I love the most is that you get to partner with the students!”

She shared an example of a math teacher using stations. The math teacher had five stations. Each station was an elaborate word problem with elements that required the students to really connect and discuss. The students were put into groups, and they had five days to go through each of the stations as a group. The teacher then spent the day going to the stations and working with each group as needed. The teacher differentiated by how she grouped the students. She had one group that was struggling with the language. So she knew that when she visited that group she would focus on helping them understand the language when working through the problem.

Trick #3: Let Your Students Choose!

She mentioned student choice can be overdone. But when you manage choice it can be a beautiful thing. One way to reign in student choice so that it doesn’t overwhelm you is by creating choice boards.

A choice board can be a physical board in your classroom or a digital board in google. It looks very similar to a bingo card. On this board you would list out options for the student to choose from. You will let the students build their own learning pathway.

In order to keep track of student progress, she creates a chart and has each student highlight the tasks that they have completed. If a student hasn’t highlighted something, she can have a conversation with that student.

Differentiation is a Treat!

By adding some of these tricks into your daily routines, Dr. Fitzpatrick finds that teachers are able to find the joy in teaching. Teachers will have to spend a minimal amount of time frontloading, but in the end they are able to spend more time with the students. “And that’s ultimately the goal of differentiation that you can work along side [students], that you can be there in those hard moments of learning, and really help them get to the other side of understanding.” Dr. Fitzpatrick

But wait…there’s more!

I highly recommend listening to the entire podcast to hear all six of Dr. Fitzpatrick’s tips for differentiation.

If you are looking for additional assistance in implementing some of these strategies in your classroom, Kent ISD can help! Kent ISD’s Ed Tech Team has several micro PD’s that teach you skills like screen casting and using choice boards. Sign up for Virtual Make and Take or EdTech Cheer to start on your journey to differentiate without added stress.

#DifferientiatedInstruction #HighImpact #LowStress #WeLeadLearning #KentISDpd