Differentiated room

. each child is approached as an individual
. teacher teaches the whole child
. teacher continues to develop expertise
. teacher links students and ideas
. teachers strives for joyful learning
. teacher offers high expectations and lots of ladders
. teacher helps students make their own sense of ideas
. teacher shares teaching with students
. teacher strives for student independence
. teacher uses positive energy and humor
. "discipline" is more covert than overt

Helthy Classroom - content

. is relevant to students; it seems personal, familiar, connected to the world they know.

. helps students understand themselves and their lives more fully now, and will continue to do so as they grow up.

. is authentic, offering "real" history of math or art, not just exercises about the subject.

. can be used immediately for something that matters to the students.

. makes students more powerful in the present and in the future.

Kids in a healthy classroom

Each kid likes all others and different from all others.
Kids need unconditional acceptance as human beings.
Kids need to believe that they can become better than they are.
Kids need help in living up to their dreams.
Kids have to make their own sense of things.
Kids often make their own sense of things more effectively and coherently when adults colaborate with them.
Kids need action, joy, and peace.
Kids need power over their lives and learning.
Kids need help developing that power and use it wicely.
Kids need to be secure in a larger world.

Students vary in experience, readiness, interest, intellegences, language, culture, gender and mode of learning.

To maximize the potential of each student, a teacher needs to meet each student at hi starting point.

Teachers need to make modifications for students rather than assuming that students will modify themselves to fit the teachers.

Teaching efforts should be based on what "keeps students wanting to learn".

Differentiated classroom, instructions

Assessment is on-going and diagnostic. Teachers need a day-to-day understanding of where students are.

Teacher modifies content, process, and product.
. make up gaps
. change pace
. skip learned stuff

Differentiated Classroom Basics

A teacher begins where the students are, not the front of a curriculum guide. They accept and build upon the premise that the learners differ in many ways.

Different modalities.
Appealing to different interests.
varied rates of instruction.
varied degrees of complexity.
a student competes against himself only.

Math teaching in US

US math teachers do not teach connections but teach procedures.

We need to change. We should change a bit everyday. After a long time, there will be a big difference and it will stay.