Diving Into Your Q&As: How Can I Better Differentiate to Reach All of My Students?

Picture this: you are in the middle of a well prepared mini-lesson and it’s going great. When the time comes to start a written response, all of your students get started right away working on the exact same assignment and moving at the exact same pace. Hah! That would be nice, right? The reality is, it’s far more likely that you will have students at all different levels. The solution to this challenge is to differentiate your instruction. But how? 

This week’s question comes from Karina! Karina wrote, “I struggle with differentiating. I have some advanced fourth graders and others at a kindergarten level. How can I better differentiate to reach all of my students?”.

Do you share Karina’s challenge? Today I’m diving into all things differentiation to give you new ideas and strategies to take back to your classroom.

In this episode we discuss:

• The very first thing to do when making a differentiation plan
• Celebrating each student’s growth throughout the year
• 4 ways to implement differentiation when your students are grade levels apart
• My #1 favorite way to support students

Resources mentioned:

• Reading Graphic Organizers
• Reading Response Sentence Stem Anchor Charts
• Reading Response Stem Cards Bundle
• Reading Response Question Rings
• Episode 15, The Power of Sentence Stems

Connect with Megan:

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• Watch my YouTube channel

About The Literacy Dive Podcast:

Do you find yourself seeking new ideas when it comes to literacy instruction in elementary classrooms? The Literacy Dive Podcast was created to offer actionable steps and to share information for teachers, like you, who are always looking to improve their craft! ELA is our jam and we are excited to dive into all things reading and writing with you!

Your host, Megan Polk, is the creator and owner behind Miss P’s Style. She is a literacy specialist and loves to support students and their teachers with curriculum, literacy instruction, best practices, and engaging literacy activities. Through this podcast, she will share literacy tips and strategies that she has learned from the many years of experience she holds from being an elementary teacher and literacy specialist. Megan has taught all elementary grades (K-5), but an intense passion and love for upper elementary came about!

Dive in with us every Monday for a new episode from Megan! She, and her guests, will chat about various literacy topics and will bring you tips and tricks that can easily be implemented in your classrooms… immediately!

You can tune in wherever you get your podcasts! Listen to The Literacy Dive Podcast on platforms like Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, and more! If you find value from listening to this podcast, please rate this show, leave a review, and follow!