Running Head: STUDENT CENTERED LEARNING AND DIFFERENTIATION 1

Student Centered Learning and Differentiation

Christina Lewis

Regent University
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Introduction

When teaching classes, being able to ensure every student is learning is a difficult task.

One-on-one instruction and monitoring is difficult to accomplish when a lesson has moving parts

and a dozen or more students need further clarification. However, it is critical for teachers to

measure success by student growth. This does not mean that every student will reach the levels

of achievement that a teacher desires, but it does ensure that the focus of the lesson and

differentiation is aligned to provide an even playing field for all students. This is especially

important to me as a Christian. Paul writes of his ministry that he has “become all things to all

men, so that by all possible means I might save some of them” (1 Cor. 9:22, NIV). As a teacher,

I have the same mindset toward my mission field of the classroom.

Rationale for Artifacts

The first artifact to support my student-centered and differentiation competency is a

photograph of me teaching a lesson on Greek mythology. This displays differentiation through

my use of visual images to assist in my explanation of the story. The class where this photograph

was taken contains five ESL students. I knew these students would not get much out of simply

reading the story. Even though the truth I was hoping to convey was not as life-changing as the

gospel, I expanded my mindset to make the knowledge I had more accessible to the students.

While the visual aids were not part of the lesson plan that day, I co-opted strategies that Petrie

(2003) advocates to increase cognition and understanding in ESL learners. Petrie (2003) writes,

“[ESL] teachers should encourage their learners to become aware of the relationships that exist

between linguistic texts and images” (p. 143). This connection between the visual image on the

board and the text being read by the entire class encourages students to make connections they
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may have previously overlooked. This extended beyond the ESL students and to the rest of the

classroom as well.

The second artifact is a PowerPoint presentation demonstrating different activities

conducted on the same day to achieve the same learning target for advanced and core students. I

am reminded how Jesus often spoke in different ways to different audiences to get his message

across. To the large crowds following him, he often spoke in parables, conveying truths of the

gospel in simple stories. To the Pharisees and Sadducees, however, Jesus was more challenging.

The same can be said of the different achievement levels of my classes. For this day, the lesson

was differentiated to the level of difficulty students in each class might have had connecting the

activity to the learning target. The lower-level classes observed and noted down their inferences

from a cartoon. The advanced class, which contains several gifted students, would have quickly

grasped the concept displayed in the cartoon videos and needed an activity that engaged a higher

level of thinking. They were challenged to create an inference instead of merely observe another

author’s work.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

Students who learn English as a second Language are an increasing majority in public

schools in the US (Batalova & Zong, 2016). Additionally, over nine percent of 25 million

students who speak a different language at home have limited proficiency in the English

language (Batalova & Zong, 2016). Every teacher, especially English teachers, need to be aware

and prepared to face this percentage as well as differentiate accordingly. Having students who

cannot speak English in an English classroom is not ideal, but teachers must learn to take what is

less than ideal and turn it into growth. While ESL students statistically score very low, and may

never be high achievers within the subject of English, they deserve the accommodations and
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attention to create an atmosphere of learning (Batalova & Zong, 2016). It is easy to write these

kids off, but God calls us beyond the easy. To be an ethical, and Christ-minded teacher, I need to

rightly care for and help students, even if I cannot see any tangible result.

It is crucial to have realistic expectations of student’s abilities and allow for a range of

success. In my recent lesson on inferences, the lesson aimed to have students learn across three

stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Eber & Parker, 2007, p. 46-48). The three stages that the lesson

covered were analyze, evaluate, and create. (Eber & Parker, 2007, p. 46-48). The goal was for

the lower-achieving students in core English to reach the analyze level while the higher-

achieving students in core English stretched to the evaluate stage. For the advanced English, the

goal was for the lower-achieving students from the class reach the evaluate stage while the

highest-achieving students could go all the way up to create. The median of these two classes

could sufficiently evaluate inferences in a text, while the higher and lower ends of achievers did

not get neglected.

Differentiation is so important because it takes factors such as intelligence, performance,

personality, or English proficiency and caters to how students can best learn. The goal as a

teacher is not to feel satisfied in the mere transmission of information, but activation of the

learning process for each student. For some, this may look like remediation, but for others this

may mean more challenging projects. It is also important to practice tact when differentiating. If

a teacher does not build a culture of respect, students may feel they are being singled out, treated

differently, or treated unfairly. It is my goal as a teacher to embody Christ’s love to every

student, providing what they need in that moment in a way that lifts them up instead of making

them feel small for their inabilities.

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References

Batalova, J. and Zong, J. (2016). Language diversity and English proficiency in the United

States. The Online Journal of Immigration Policy Institute. Retrieved from

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/language-diversity-and-english-proficiency-

united-states

Eber, P. A., & Parker, T. S. (2007). Assessing Student Learning: Applying Bloom’s

Taxonomy. Human Service Education, 27(1), 45–53. Retrieved from

http://eres.regent.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true

&db=ehh&AN=27875275&site=ehost-live

Petrie, G. M. (2003). Esl Teachers’ Views on Visual Language: A Grounded Theory. Reading

Matrix: An International Online Journal, 3(3), 137–168. Retrieved from

http://eres.regent.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true

&db=ehh&AN=32548756&site=ehost-live