Day 4 - Marion Small - How to differentiate instruction the "easy" way

Today we were assigned an article about open questions and parallel tasks, two ways to differentiate instruction in mathematics. These are things I heard about before but didn't understand too well. Our group leader said the challenge with differentiated instruction was you have to create different lesson plans even if it's within the same grade (reminds me of how yesterday's post talked about the challenges of preparing lessons for split grades). However, with open questions, it makes this process of differentiation much more efficient, as the differentiation falls upon the student rather than the teacher. As for parallel tasks, it's not a matter of coming up with entirely problems, but rather using the same problem but just changing the values.

The challenge of creating a lesson plan that uses these engaging questions was brought up in our discussion. It's so easy to fall back upon traditional teaching, i.e. paper and pencil work, especially when things get busy, and this applies whether you are a rookie teacher or seasoned veteran. However, we also watched a video by Marion Small, in which she tells a story of how she cotaught with another teacher who was more "traditional", and she saw that some students responded better to that style of teaching than her more open, progressive, "out there" style. So the point she made, was the people who are "linear", have to shift to more "open thinking", whereas the "free thinkers" like her, sometimes, have to revert to teaching where they just tell students what to do and let them do it. The main idea is there needs to be balance in your teaching style, and coming from Marion Small that means a lot.

Our instructor also mentioned how he taught the MYP program, which prepares students for IB. He said there are day by day lesson plans, and he was following them to the letter and felt really good as a rookie teacher. However, when he asked his colleague where she was it, she told him she was way behind. She told him, well you get it, but do they get it?? So that's where our instructor learned, the following principle: "It doesn't matter how quickly you get through the curriculum, it matters how quickly your students get through the curriculum"

Some other points to share:

The following three experts will be referenced throughout the course, and are considered the transformative thinkers of mathematics (so study their work further)

1) Marion Small
2) Jo Boaler
3) Dan Meyer

Our instructor mentioned that anticipating student responses is the most time intensive part of his teaching practice and this is a more recent change, within the last year. The reason for doing this is because if he doesn't, he'll have a tendency to just choose one or two examples. Whereas if he anticipates responses, he'll share a more diverse range of thinking with the class.