Topic 5 summer pre-service Differentiated Instruction

This article gave an example of a teacher who was working in a center-based school for students who had IQ's higher than 140 and decided to come back to the general ed classroom. She had a 5th grade class, and encountered many challenges. She had a myriad of different learners with completely different issues. As I started reading this article, I began to think wow this is what I have in my classroom too. We have ELL's, students with special education needs, students at grade level, students way below grade level, and students above grade level all wrapped up into one classroom. Where does a teacher even begin to tackle these different issues? How can teaching for all these groups be done? What I liked about this article is that the teacher in the article took responsibility for the success of each student. No student should be left behind or forgotten hoping that he or she can learn how to swim. We have to figure out what each student needs and what are the strengths of each child and build on those instead of looking at their deficiencies. The end of the article gave six principles for fostering equity and excellence in academically diverse learners. Good curriculum, all tasks should respect the learner, when in doubt teach up, use flexible grouping, become and assessment junkie, and grade to reflect growth are the principles listed at the end of the article. I right now feel overwhelmed with the range of levels that I have in my classroom. I have 80 students so being able to differentiate for that number of students seems overwhelming. Some students' needs are obvious, but some are harder to identify for me. Finally this article made me remember that each deserves to be taught and nobody left behind.