Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 7 Synthesis

Chapter 7 of Meet Me in the Middle discussed the topic of differentiated instruction in the classroom. This is a concept that many of us are familiar with, so it was interesting to see what each of us found important in this chapter. Many of us touched on the point that students have a multitude of interests, strengths, weakness, abilities, and experiences that they are bringing with them when they enter a classroom. Knowing that as a teacher you are responsible for engaging every single one of those students is definitely a daunting task. However, in many of the reflections I found that my peers found this chapter incredibly helpful in providing some strategies and advice to help them in the future. Some strategies that were discussed were using a variety of instructional strategies, giving students more choice on projects, using real world examples, and integrating the multiple intelligences throughout different lessons. In addition to the strategies, one of the key pieces of advice that most of us seemed to pick out from the chapter is that as an educator you need to be flexible. If students are struggling with assignments or are dealing with family issues, you as teacher need to be accommodating to those students. Many of my peers also found comfort in Wormeli admitting that he doesn't always teach the most engaging lessons, and sometimes lessons don’t always go as planned the first time. The important thing is that you are taking risks in your instructional strategies and you are differentiating your instruction throughout your lessons as much as they allow.