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Post 6 - Differentiation in the Classroom

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Description
Students with different ability levels are better served working alongside their peers, rather than in separate classes.  Peer tutoring and cooperative learning has been shown to benefit both the higher and lower ability students.
Analysis
Slavin (2015) notes that there are four major components of an effective lesson: quality instruction, appropriate level of instruction, high incentives, and quality use of time (pp.216).  No matter the ability level, if the balance between these four components is skewed then the lesson will be less than optimally effective.   Students are diverse in their personalities, interests and their academic abilities.  There are multiple ways of addressing the issue of mixed abilities inside a school.  Course tracking, between-class ability grouping, and within-class ability grouping are all used in some form or fashion in modern schools.  “Untracking” has also become popular.  When untracking, students of different ability levels are mixed together and work together inside the classroom.  With untracking, students are able to get help from their peers, which has been shown to be beneficial to both students, the more expert peer and the learner (Senchibaugh and Senchibaugh, 2016, p.359).
Reflection

Using peer groupings will benefit students with disabilities (SWD) because it would allow them to take advantage of the expertise of their higher achieving peers, while also giving those higher achieving peers the opportunity to tutor the SWD, thereby increasing their knowledge.  Bless and Dessemontet (2013) concluded through a study of two groups of second year primary students from Switzerland that integration showed no negative impact on students without disabilities (p.27).


References

Bless, G. & Dessemontet, R.S. (2013). The impact of including children with intellectual disability in general             education classrooms on the academic achievement of their low-, average-, and high-achieving peers. Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 38(1), 23–30.

Senchibaugh, J. & Senchibaugh, A. (2016). An Analysis of Cooperative Learning Approaches for Students with Learning Disabilities. Education, 136(3), 356-362.

Slavin, R.E. (2015). Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice. (11th ed.). Boston, MA. Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

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