Differentiated Instruction

Differentiation: the process of tailoring lessons to meet each student's individual interests, strengths, and needs.  

Homeschooling: see above

It often surprises people that there aren’t many things I can take from my time as a teacher that have helped in our homeschool journey. So, I’m here to share one takeaway from my time in grad school and my experience in the classroom that has helped develop me as a homeschool mom, and that is the process of differentiating instruction. Last week put a spotlight on that in the most beautiful way. This semester in our co op, I’ve been teaching a building class for Charlie’s age group. These little engineers blow my mind every week, and the moments of planned and on-the-fly differentiating happen weekly as well. But recently we had actual building kits. Like hammer, nails, screws, wood glue building sets. With step by step instructions. I was a little wary of how it might go with my little buddies who don’t love directions like that. 

Children inherently think outside the box. Until and unless they’re told not to. The freedom in homeschooling allows for my kids and their friends who I get to teach, is that there isn’t really anyone telling them not to think outside that box. They're actually encouraged to follow their outside-the-box thinking. And let me tell you, it is so very cool to see where it takes them! And while there is a time and place for following stringent directions, my class full of 5-7 year olds isn’t one of them. 

So let me paint you the picture;

After covering all the safety measures of children using hammers, nails and screwdrivers, the kids were ready to open their kits and begin building. In my mind, I thought we would all do the first step together, then move onto the next, and so on. (Take note-I used to teach a classroom full of public school children…following directions to a T was necessary, important and praised.) 

What unfolded in my classroom that morning was certainly not what my holding-on-for-dear-life-teacher-brain had envisioned. Sure, there were a few kids who wanted to follow the steps in order and sought the reassurance they were doing it right and ready to move to the next step. But then there were the ones who didn’t. My son being one of them. He moved himself to an empty table, laid out all the materials in front of him and began putting things together simply because they looked like they should go together. First, I panicked and was a bit annoyed with him, if I'm being honest. They were making binoculars and if he didn’t put it together correctly it wouldn’t work. Then I saw his determination to simply complete a task, just build. 

He had the picture and word directions in front of him but barely glanced at them, so I let him be (after one minor correction of showing that the reason what he was doing wasn’t working was because he was using a screw instead of a nail.) He didn’t want to hear it from me, so I walked away only to glance over my shoulder to see him hammering a nail where he was previously trying to drive in a screw.

Another one of my kiddos asked if he could go on building without waiting for everyone to get to the next step, to which I said of course. This kid was actually looking at the pictures and interpreting them himself. The curve of his lens was backwards and one of the wood pieces was upside down, but he worked diligently. And yet another who was trying very hard to “keep up” until I told him that everyone was going at their own pace and he could too, and that if he needed any help, I was there for him. I saw him relax after that and begin to do his own thing until he came across a problem which he solved himself. The table was shaking from his peers hammering and he couldn’t align the nail properly which was frustrating him. So he took his things and moved to an empty table and completed his next few steps there. 

Meanwhile, back in Charlie land, a complete set was built. Were there pieces facing the “wrong” direction? Yes. Was each piece of wood perfectly aligned with its partner? Nope. But did I have a kid beaming at me with a finished product that he made all by himself? Yes. Yes, I did. And it made me so proud watching these kids figure this all out. Each had a set of binoculars that they were so proud to have built. Were these binoculars going to help them truly see things far away? Doubtful. And my students (which I don't really like to call them, because I see myself as more of a facilitator than a teacher and them more as collaborators than students...but that's another blog post) helped me to see that didn’t matter. These kids are 5, 6 and 7 years old. There will be a time they’ll need to follow the directions closely in order to have a working end product. But they helped me to see I am solely laying the foundation for those future instances.

 

The week prior to this lesson, my kids and I read a book about the man who created the first balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (Tony Sarg, look him up, it’s pretty cool) and what he was like as a child. When he was six years old, his dad gave him a chore to feed the chickens at 6:00 every morning. Little Tony didn’t want to get out of bed at 6 am so he rigged up a pulley system that went from his bedroom window to the door of the chicken coop. He put the food out in the evening before he went to sleep and closed the chickens in the coop. When his alarm went off at 6 am, he sat up in bed, pulled the string from his bedroom window, opening the chicken coop door and letting all the chickens out to eat the feed he left the night before. Without ever leaving the warmth of his bed.

This made us think; most of the books we’ve read about famous inventors, scientists and engineers, all tell a similar story of their younger selves. Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Albert Einstein…all “different” kids who didn't do things the way society (and/or their teachers) said they should. They tinkered and played and made things work in ways people didn’t think they could. Imagine if these children stopped questioning, wondering, tinkering and playing in a way that made sense to them. Their inventions were rarely, if ever, perfect the first time or two, or three, or more! But they kept pushing forward, trying in a different way, skipping over a few steps or adding in their own. But they created the light bulb, an airplane and the freaking theory of relativity! Maybe I should have seen what would happen if I didn't point out to Charlie to use a nail instead of a screw! 

Anyhow, my point is if we are meant to educate our children, why can’t we do that in a way that is most beneficial for them? I used to love coming up with ways to differentiate in my classroom; something for the kids who needed a challenge, something for the kids who needed a little extra time or help. And now? All we do is differentiated instruction! I love that I just continue to recognize more and more ways that homeschooling is right for us. Their world is open, their education is endless and their drive and passion to learn is infinite. And me? I'm just lucky to be part of it.