Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 7

Chapter 7 of Meet Me in the Middle discusses differentiated instruction in the classroom, which is a subject that is very familiar. Differentiated instruction is the key to being a successful teacher and having successful students. According to the author differentiated instruction means that we meet the challenge of the student, or in other words we meet the student where they are at. This does not just mean differentiating assignments for students, but how you instruct and assess as well. There were a couple of ideas that the author discuss in this chapter that really stood out to me. The first is when he says that educators should always be looking at the reasons for our assignments and what we really expect students to get out of them. I could not agree more with this. Not only does this help teachers to avoid the usual question of why students are being as to do certain assignments, but it forces teachers to create more meaningful learning experiences for their students. The idea of varying instructional approaches stood out to me as well. This is something that I became very familiar with during my student teaching and actually became very good at. In fact, I was doing it without even noticing it. As a result of my varying approaches, I saw more engagement in the material and even less issues regarding behavior. If students know that you are going to find a way to teach the material in a way that makes sense to them, then they are going to give you their full attention.