Effective teachers are always looking for ways to help their students better process content, as well as seek different avenues that will help them demonstrate their understanding.
Differentiated instruction strategies聽allow teachers to empower and engage students by accommodating each of their different learning styles. One helpful tactic to employ聽 is called learning stations鈥攁 way to supply your class with multiple ways to learn and understand concepts. Much like a menu offers patrons a variety of options to satisfy their appetite, learning stations expose students to a variety of strategies and choices that address many learners鈥� needs.
Like聽tiered assignments,聽flexible grouping, and聽differentiated instruction as a whole, learning stations are fluid and can span multiple levels. This gives both students and teachers insight as to how a particular individual learns best. These stations offer young minds the opportunity to learn independently while keeping them engaged in the process.
The Difference Between Traditional and Differentiated Centers
For many teachers, learning stations (also called centers) are a staple in their classroom. Here we take a brief look at how traditional stations compare to differentiated ones.
- Teachers base differentiated stations on聽, whereas a traditional station is based on whole-group instruction.
- In a differentiated station, students work within聽multilevel resources, whereas traditional station resources are not differentiated.
- Differentiated stations have聽tiered assignments, which include varied student responses, whereas a traditional learning station only has one level of response for all.
- Differentiated stations have聽tiered activities, whereas traditional stations do not.
Multilevel Center Activities
Multilevel center activities are teacher-planned tasks that are designed at three different levels 鈥攂eginner, intermediate, and advanced 鈥� enabling students with diverse learning needs to challenge themselves accordingly. Here are three examples of differentiated learning station activities that you can implement into your classroom centers.
础苍听open-ended activity聽is where all students in the group tackle the same assignment, but the end product will differ for beginner, intermediate, and advanced clusters. It鈥檚 a great technique because students will feel comfortable writing within their level.
Example:聽Ask your students in a reading group to draw a picture of the main character. Afterwards, instruct them to write speech bubbles around the character describing what they might say.
础听tiered activity聽is when students are doing the same activity, but it鈥檚 tiered according to their difficulty level.
Example:聽Have your students play a game of memory. This game is easy to differentiate because you can have beginner students try to match a letter with its sound, while more advanced children can try and match a letter to a word. To differentiate this station, assign different bags of cards for each level, and direct specific students to the cards they should choose.
Learning menus, or choice boards, are varied activities that give students options on how they want to learn a concept. They often mimic a tic-tac-toe board where your classroom would pick three activities to complete (one from each row) to form a line. Differentiated instruction menus benefit all students because you can tailor each board to students鈥� readiness, learning styles, or interests, and kids think they are a lot of fun!
Example:聽Set up an exciting learning menu for math with items like 鈥渄esign math flashcards鈥� and 鈥渕easure five things in the room鈥�, or write math facts in expanded form and pay attention to how each of your students prefers to learn.
Today鈥檚 classrooms are not taught with 鈥渙ne-size-fits-all鈥� teaching. Differentiated instruction鈥攁nd learning stations specifically鈥攁llow you to meet the needs of聽all聽learners while maintaining high standards within groups or individually. When you match a variety of exciting activities to a student鈥檚 learning style and preference, magic happens.
