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Personalized Professional Development Plan

Megan Gillenwater

PPDP Focus

The focus of my PPDP revolvs around becoming more adept at providing differentiation to meet the needs of my students.

PPDP Focus

What is Differentiation?

What is Differentiation?

" 'Differentiated instruction' refers to a

systematic approach to planning curriculum and instruction for academically diverse learners."

(Differentiation in Practice)

"Differentiation articulates how the classroom teacher

makes important curricular goals accessable to all learners within the same classroom"

(Differentiation in Middle and High School)

What does

differentiation look like?

Differentiation looks like...

"In a differentiated classroom, teachers:

  • create an atmosphere in which students unique qualities and needs are as important as the traits they share.

  • Uncover students' learning needs through pre-assessments and formative assessments and tailor tasks accordingly

  • Plan experiences and tasks that are bound together by common and important learning goals.

  • Present varied approaches and avenues for students to take in, process, and produce knowledge.

  • Vary grouping configurations frequently and strategically as a way of granting access to learning goals, providing support and challenge, and building community"

Differentiation in Middle and High School

Kristina J. Doubet and Jessica A. Hockett

2015

Why focus

on differentiation?

Why focus on Differentiation?

I began teaching in January of 2020, and as a new teacher, differentiation was an idea I struggled to incorporate into my daily lessons. It was a subject I didn't know a lot about, and didn't understand how important of a tool it could be to help my struggling students succeed.

Because it was an area of weakness, I decided at the beginning of the school year to set my professional TKES goal to be to improve in this area.

This PPDP process helped me discover, incorporate, and practice using different strategies for differentiating lessons to meet the needs of my students.

SMART Goals

Goal #1: I will learn three new strategies for differentiating instruction over one week to help meet the diverse needs of my students.

Goal #2: I will implement two new differentiated lessons per week for a period of two weeks to meet the diverse needs of my students.

Goal #1

I will learn three new strategies for differentitating instruction over one week to help meet the diverse needs of my students

Goal #1

For this goal, I read two instructional books and found a PDF resource on differentiation.

Book #1: Differentiation in Middle & High School by Kristina J. Doubet and Jessica A. Hockett, 2015

Book #2: Differentiation in Practice by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Cindy A. Strickland, 2005

PDF from the Tennessee Department of Education:

https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/education/training/access_differentiation_handbook_6-12.pdf

Goal #2

I will implement two new differentiated lessons per week for a period of two weeks to meet the diverse needs of my students.

Goal #2

For this goal, I got ideas from colleagues, past course readings on differntiation, an edutopia.org article, and various youtube videos.

Each one of these resources provided me with valuable ideas on how to implement the strategies my research for goal #1 revealed.

My colleagues helped me identify ways to incorporate differentiation into my weekly lesson planning. The past course readings offered me examples of how different strategies could be incorporated into a lesson. The edutopia article gave me six more ideas on how to scaffold lessons. Finally, the youtube videos gave me visual examples of how some teachers apply the concepts of differentiated instruction within their classrooms.

Data Collection

Data Collection Process

For Goal #1, I spent a week researching all the materials I had found, and selected three strategies for differentiation to use in my PPDP.

The three strategies I selected to implement

for Goal #2 were:

  • a combination of ideas from Differentiation in Practice (Small groups, reading partners, audio support, and graphic organizers);

  • Daily "to-do" lists in the form of daily agendas the students could use as a checklist.

  • A "Jigsaw" activity to research background information for our unit.

Combination of ideas:

Combination

of ideas

From Differentiation in Practice, I combined four strategies they recommended.

The first was to create small group activities that allowed targeted individuals to work together.

The second was to establish reading partners that were intentionally paired to provide challenge and enrichment for each student.

The third was to incorporate audio support in the form of both partner and whole class read alouds of each chapter of our focus text.

Last, I incorporated graphic organizers for Venn diagrams and character tracking charts.

Checklists

Differentiation in Practice also recommended a daily 'to-do' list for students to use as a checklist to insure they are completing the tasks required for the success criteria.

I create and post an agenda for each day of class, which I printed for students to use for this checklist. Included in the agenda are the learning intentions and success criteria for the day, along with an itemized list of tasks designed to help students meet the success criteria. I printed this in addition to posting it to the board, as some students prefer the physical list to check off as they complete a task.

Jigsaw

Differentiation in Middle and High School suggested using the Jigsaw strategy for differentiation. I designed this strategy to be used to help the students learn background information for the focus text. The jigsaw activity was used as a 'divide and conquor' idea for peer learning and teaching of this background information regarding the Holocaust and Hitler's rise to power, so that they would be better able to understand the ideas presented in the book Night by Elie Weisel.

For these jigsaw activities, two to three websites were chosen that gave the background information needed on the topic. Students were first tasked with researching the topic on thier assigned website and creating a summary of that information to teach to their group members. Next, the group was to create a combined summary or a timeline of events that showed key people, events, and concepts that defined the Holocaust era.

Findings:

Findings

All three strategies I incorporated led to increased student participation as well as increases in task completion rates.

The combination of strategies helped my students both comprehend and analzye the focus text of the unit.

The checklist was the easiest to implement each day, as it was a resource I already created. This strategy helped ALL students achieve the success criteria, not just the targeted students.

The jigsaw activity had high student engagement, was fun to do, and gave students the opportunity to practice peer teaching and listening skills.

These three strategies were deceptively easy to design and incorporate into my lessons. All three are ones I now incorporate into my lessons as often as needed. The daily checklist continues to be heavily utilized by the majority of my students.

Most importantly, the PPDP process helped me achieve a TKES goal of improving my differentiation skills.

Reflections:

Reflections

The PPDP process was an incredible way to help me achieve my professional TKES goal for this school year.

The process of researching, designing, implementing, and reflecting helped me understand how to break down goals into managable sub-goals, as well as taught me valuable information to utilize in my classroom to help my student succeed.

In the future, I plan to develop a PPDP for each professional TKES goal I set for myself each year.

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