Post-MSA DI Work Time Session

Now that MSA is complete, I conducted a March DI work time session. I had 6 in attendance; all except 1 were repeat attendees. The person that was a new attendee is a math teacher that normally tries to figure out technology for herself, but is one of the top teachers at our school that uses differentiated instruction on a regular basis in her classroom. She is a math teacher and co-teaches. Her techniques have been noticed concerning D.I. that she presents on a regular basis on how to implement D.I. into a math classroom.

She attended this session in order to get help on how to present her next session. She wanted to use all of her files and technology effectively, and wanted my assistance during the work time session. I helped her plan, layout, and explained that she could present her material just like she sets up her D.I. session by “D.I.’ing” the session. I showed her to have links to each file that she needed to present in her session. For professional development purposes, I think that this type of chain events to encourage more teachers to use D.I., on the principles of U.D.L., is now branching out of our school, into others across the county.

Most teachers in this session did not have too many questions for me; it was more shooting ideas off of me, asking or getting suggestions for their D.I. lessons. This was wonderful because teachers that are not always comfortable with technology were now on their own trying to figure out different ways to use the technology in their classroom to make their D.I.’ed lesson as before when I first started these work time sessions. Originally, I had to walk many teachers step-by-step on how to use the technology. By this session, they wanted to just discuss what to include in their lesson and the technology is now the secondary piece of the lesson. The SMARTboard technology and Web 2.0 tools are being used to help the lesson, instead of being the “bells and whistles” of the lesson. Now the technology is just helping their students meet the standard that they are teaching within the lesson. It’s not about using the technology for the sake of using it.

I also found out that there is grant money for the department chairs and co-teaching teams to create D.I. lessons after the year ends. I told the Special Education department chair that I am willing to present information on using technology for those D.I. lesson creation days. This way even more information on how to use the SMART technology and other Web 2.0 tools, like Discovery Education services can be used for these lessons. I am so glad to see that the efforts I made at the beginning of the year are now paying off. Hopefully, they have helped to ensure that our school makes AYP this school year.