Curriculum & Instruction Part Two

Don’t we all feel better when we have successfully completed something that was hard and took a lot of work? I know I do, and even though children are young, they feel the same way when they have completed something challenging. We need to give our students opportunities to complete demanding tasks and we should never water down content for our students. Students need to be challenged in order to grow and become great learners. Differentiation can help us do this! We can measure our student’s abilities and then once we know where they are, we can instruct them based on their level of learning. We should also aim to help that student raise themselves up to the next level, always getting better and better. You can do this by giving students challenging work, based on their level. It is important to scaffold your students and assign them things to do based off of where they are, but raise them up just a little bit each time.  This doesn’t mean to take your lowest students and have them work on the exact same things you have your advanced level students doing, it means that you take what they know and a little bit at a time you help them to increase in their knowledge and skill. It is our job to help students grow and progress, not to stagnate and get stuck where they are already at. It is the same for your advanced level students, you need to assign them work that is challenging for them, which is not going to be the same as what is challenging for a lower level learner. Even though they are already advanced and it seems like your job is already done, it is not. You need to give those students opportunities to be challenged so they can grow as well. You will have students who do not think they can do anything; this is where you need to help them to be successful and point out their successes. Give them assignments in their realm of thinking that you know they will be successful at. Doing this may help them to have more confidence in themselves and may make them more likely to persist when they reach a problem that is challenging to them.  Students need to feel successful and it is your job to help them feel that way, no matter the level or kind of learner they are. You need to adapt your instruction to help each and every one of your students meet the learning goals that you set out for them.

Ways To Scaffold Your Students