Practice, practice, practice!

This chapter (chapter 6) starts out by saying that, "All children can learn" does not mean "all children are the same." Furthermore, diversity is not merely about external characteristics. If we're really going to take this seriously, that means we start looking at diversity on the inside as well as diversity on the outside. Making this principle both a moral and intellectual part of the curriculum will require... a diversity of approaches, diversity of techniques, and diversity of teaching strategies (Reeves, 2002).

Throughout this semester, I feel like some of the main things I've heard over and over are:
1. Not all children learn in the same way
2. Learning is not a one size fits all
3. We need to learn about our students interests, backgrounds, and cultures
Although I feel like a lot of this stuff can be repetitive at times, all of these things that i've heard over and over are KEY to differentiation in the classroom. We need to practice all of these strategies plus more and then practice again and again!

Because students matter, the teacher says to the student, and because learning matters to you, I will do my best to:

• Make sure I teach and you learn what is genuinely of value in a subject;
• Pique your curiosity about what we explore, capture your interest, and help you see daily that learning is inherently satisfying;
• Call on you consistently to help you become more than you thought you could become through dedicated work; and
• Be your partner, coach, mentor, and taskmaster all along your learning journey in this class.

This chapter was very helpful to me while reading because I found the information very useful. Throughout this chapter, there are concrete ways in which teachers can make sure curriculum and instruction are important, focused, engaging, demanding, and scaffolded. All of these things are very important not only in order to differentiate but also to help improve the learning of each and every student within the classroom.

I think one of the most important things a teacher can do is engage the students. When students are engaged and excited about learning, they are much more willing and likely to open up to the learning process and learn the things that are important. When what students are learning engages the students, many times, students don't even realize they are learning. Along with engaging students, we need to teach students using real life scenarios. By using real life scenarios, students realize why the information they are learning is useful because they are learning about things that happen in their every day worldly experience.

Students also need work that is demanding and somewhat challenging. We as teachers, don't want the work to be so challenging that our students can't do their work but we also don't want the work to be too easy for our students. When work is too easy, our students will become bored. We need to meet in the middle and give our students challenging work, which can still be completed and give our students a sense of success.