Meeting individual needs with young learners

Meeting the individual needs of each student in a classroom is a challenge for all teachers.

The article “Meeting individual needs with young learners” written by Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold, talks about the meaning of differentiation and gives some strategies to use by teachers to adapt their approach to teaching.

An effectively teacher is the one that is able to reach the individual needs of each pupil in his or her classroom, so that requires to use different strategies according to students. Teachers

Learning goals are more and less the same for all students in a classroom, but differentiation and meet individual needs means that the approach of instruction will vary depending on the children’s interests, abilities and talents.

In terms of practical application Westwood and Arnold report a wide range of teaching techniques to promote a broad range of learning strategies. Some examples that I have found really useful are:

-          Differentiation by classroom organisation: whole-group activities/small-group activities

-          Differentiated Access to Resources: materials with different levels of complexity.

-          Differentiation by Multiple intelligences: Each multiple intelligence has unique strengths and can be used easily for differentiated instruction activities.

Remember to take into account that...  Learners learning at their own pace!!

Charlie & the big green button

The first year of University in Menorca I had an English class where we had to create a story. With some classmates we invented “Charlie and the green big button”. After class, one of our classmates illustrated the story at home with her daughter and husband. The final product you can see under the next lines.

  

What I like it the most from this activity is that as a teacher you can ask to your pupils to create a story all together. Whether children can write or are still at the prewriting stage, they all can illustrate the story.

Digital story books

There are so many tools available on the Net to create digital story books. One example is Storybird, a free storytelling website that encourages creativity helping you to make short stories that you can share and print if you wish.

Children love stories so let them be creative creating stories.

More about the MI

When you are a teacher or you are near to be a teacher (as I am), you can get lost and don’t know how to use the MI theory with your pupils. That’s why I have spent some time reading about the different resources and strategies that any teacher can use as a methodology to reach the best of each of his/her students.

The Learning/Interest Centers

The Learning or Interest Centers is a strategy to use in a classroom, consist in different stations set up within the classroom, each one has a specific focus and children choose the center they want to work with. These areas allow children to learn on their own satisfaction, so that is a hands-on learning and also this methodology also provides a very high level of autonomy for students.

Gardner has been using this method in different classes of elementary and primary grade to his researches for the Spectrum project. Through Learning Centers, children can start with the focus of each area so teachers must to organize the activities and the materials related to the different intelligences.

Two years ago I read a really useful book about the Interest Centers written by David Altimir. This teacher explains different kinds of projects that he have done with his pupils and how they learn by using the Interest Centers. So I recommend you this book: