Differentiation in limited Chinese time

1. Motivation This school year I have grade levels from kindergarten to fifth grade. I noticed that with the growth of students, students ability difference is more and more obvious. It is important to apply more differentiated instruction in the thirty minutes Chinese time to benefit both the advanced students and slow students.

2. Description of the situation For a language and culture teacher, to be honest, the ideal teaching environment is that students are learning with universalism. That means the gap between top students and slow students is not too big. With universalism, it will be much easier for teacher to control the speed of instruction and adjust teaching content. However, the reality is always harder than ideal.

This year I got a chance to teach both lower elementary and upper elementary. With the progress of learning improvement, the language ability gap between advanced students and slow students is more and more obvious. Some of the advanced students reading, listening, writing, and speaking ability have surprised me. While, some slow learner are still struggling in basic words and grammars. Not to mention the students who are new to this school without any Chinese background. Like last week, I got a new boy in second grade and another in third grade. I may see from their eyes that most of the class time, they were lost.

We had a table work last Wednesday in third grade. There are four pars in that work sheet. Students are required to copy a few words in the first part. The second part is about putting a few words in order. In the back, students may read a dialog by themselves. After reading, they may draw a relevant picture in the last part. After demonstration, students were working individually in their seats.

Most of the students were well engaged in working on this worksheet step by step. However, some slow students were confused except for the first part. I tried to help them. However, it is hard for me to reach 28 students in such limited time. Some of them were frustrated when I did not come to them in time. Meanwhile, some advanced students finished the worksheet quickly and started to read books in my room.

3. Interpretation of the situation By reflecting my teaching and observation of students and other teachers, there are three hypotheses may contribute to this situation.

Firstly, students Chinese background is very different. Some students may have learned Chinese for sustained four years. However, some of them just get to know Chinese a few weeks ago. Some of them may have a relative who has some Chinese knowledge. Some of them have no idea what is Chinese. As a result, the starting point for each student is very different.

Secondly, students have multiple intelligences. Every student may show different reaction to different kinds of instructions. For example, some students may be very sensitive to pictures or videos. Some students may have a better reaction to body movements. Some students may learn quicker with a big group instruction. Some students may achieve more in small group learning. Thats the reason why differentiated instruction may benefit students better as individuals.

Thirdly, one of my biggest challenges is about crowds. As the only teacher with near 30 students in 30 minutes, I cannot equally give one minute to one student. Even though sometimes I try to apply differentiation in the class, I wont be able to make it to everyone. Thats why sometimes I jealous of classroom teachers who may spend more time with one group of students.

4. The stakes To apply differentiation in teaching, in the short term, teacher will spend much more energy and time to learn students prior Chinese knowledge and learning style. Also, teacher needs to design each class carefully to meet each students multiple intelligence with various teaching strategies. More energy will be devoted to gather materials and train students group work ability.

In the long run, slow learners can catch up with the speed of instruction and will get lost and feel boring in the class. For the advanced students, as they keep helping with others and have some challenge task to do, their high level thinking ability and problem solving can be better developed. The motivation for both groups of students will be stronger. For the teacher, more achievement will be gain as every single student gets improvement.

5. Deliberation on Alternatives There are two Alternatives I may borrow to address differentiation in my room.

The first alternative is that I try to reach every student, especially the slow ones who need extra assistant. It is hard for me with limited instruction time in each class. So I may design some individual work which contains choice tasks. The advanced students can work on the harder tasks to avoid boring time. When students are working individually, I can get time to help the slow students. Also, I may try to find some extra after class time to tutor the slow ones.

However, this alternative is still limited by my time with students. To implement it, I need to spend much more time and energy. With around 250 students daily, this is a huge project to do.

The second alternative is take advantage of peer communication. Some advanced students may be great assistant for slow students. For this idea, more group work can be used in my classroom. Advanced students can help slow ones in pair work or group work. It is also a great opportunity for advanced students to practice their communication and problem solving skills. For slow students, it would be fun to learn from different persons.

The problem of this alternative is that not every advanced student is great guidance for others. The demonstrations and scaffolding will be very necessary to make group work benefit students most. That means time and energies will be spent on training students.

After consider the both sides of the two alternatives, I decide to combine both of them in my class. Both individual tutor time and group work will be applies to improve differentiation.

6. Develop a Plan According to the hypotheses above, I will take following steps to better my differentiation.

Firstly, get to know students Chinese background. Formative assessment such as observation in class, checking students worksheet and tests will be conducted. Group some students with better Chinese and poor Chinese background. Encourage them to help each other. For the students who

come to my class without any Chinese knowledge, I may find time to improve them after the thirty minutes Chinese class. Also, I can provide them my websites and other useful links to help them learn Chinese at home.

Secondly, I will learn students different learning needs. According to different learning needs, provide students different teaching strategies. This will also help me to group them to learn. For example, two kids (one is advanced student, another one is slow) may need more manipulative and visual aids to understand instruction. I may put them in one group, and provide them more picture materials. The two students can learn with these materials as a group. As they are both more sensitive to the visual aids, these materials will work better in their group.

Last, but not least, interview experienced teachers and observe their classes to borrow some strategies about differentiation. Even though the classroom teachers situation is very different from mine, I believe that there are some great ideas which will work in my room. Also, it would be great if I may participate in workshop focusing on differentiation.