Improved Differentiation from Hybrid Learning Experience
As a high school teacher who is six weeks into this school year with all the changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be easy for me to be negative. Our school district started the year with hybrid learning, as many other districts did. Hybrid learning means that we had some students come to school on Mondays and Tuesdays, while others came on Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays everyone stayed home while the school was cleaned. Because we have a block schedule where classes meet every other day, the result was that I saw each student one class day per week and had to teach them remotely on the other class days. Additionally, I had a mix of students that were in person and at home on each class day, making lesson planning and presentation much more complicated. The general assessment of this experience by most teachers has been that it was exhausting and that pedagogy was less than optimum. Fortunately, we are shifting to having almost all students come back to school next week, so the situation should improve.
What I have noticed over the past six weeks is that I have been able to differentiate my lessons much better than I ever did before. This is a positive improvement, and it is worth sharing how it worked. Differentiation is a method of lesson planning where the teacher provides different lesson formats and content to different students. It can mean teaching in a variety of ways to help students with different learning styles become more engaged–this is how I usually have differentiated my lessons. My typical approach is to have a mix of short lectures which appeal to auditory learners, good presentation materials and reading assignments that appeal to visual learners, and hands on activities that appeal to tactile learners. A more challenging way to differentiate is to meet the modifications required for special education students. In the past I often would quietly tell these students in class to modify what everyone else was doing so that they could participate. Sometimes I would give them a different handout, but I disliked drawing attention to them. Hybrid learning showed me a better way to provide tailored lessons to these students.
Hybrid learning forced me to build stand-alone lessons online that students in class or at home could do with or without me. Our school uses Google Classroom, an interactive platform where I post lesson assignments and students can access them, submit their work, and receive feedback. We use this system for both the students in class and the students at home. When I post an assignment, I can select which students receive it. What I have started doing is posting the assignment for my regular education students, then modifying it for my special education students and posting the modified version just for them. Nobody sees the modified lesson, except the students receiving it. Also, because we are now operating in a paperless mode and submitting all work online, the special education students can submit their work privately.
This new situation has motivated me take time to find appropriate reading materials and other media, cut back on extraneous text in my instructions, modify the lesson requirements, and generally meet the special education students’ individualized education plans much more effectively. Two different students’ parents have told me that their child is much engaged in my class, and that they are feeling successful–that is positive feedback! Someday when COVID-19 is a distant memory, I will still use this system to provide my special education students with effective differentiated lessons.
