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Kindergarten Differentiation Ideas

Kindergartners display a wide range of knowledge and learning abilities. On one end of the spectrum may be the students in your classroom who can read; the other end may be the students who struggle to write their names. Knowing how to differentiate your instruction will enable you to take your students from where they are at the beginning of the school year and meet their individual educational needs.
  1. Learning Preferences

    • Review your lessons and decide what you expect your students to learn and how you plan to help them accomplish these goals. Give your kindergartners choices regarding the assignment. After reading a story, ask students to create their own endings by drawing and coloring a picture, using inventive spelling to write their own ending or using art supplies to create a project that reflects the new ending.

    Student Abilities

    • Chances are, you have students of varying abilities in your classroom. It is the teacher's responsibility to teach them at their ability levels. For example, when completing an art project for math, students with fine motor difficulties may need to use pre-cut shapes while other students can cut the shapes themselves. For written language arts assignments, some students may write sentences, some may verbalize while you write it for them and the rest may work on word recognition from the story.

    Learning Styles

    • Vary your content and style to reach all of your students. Switch the styles frequently so the auditory learners hear enough stories, the visual learners see enough pictures to stimulate their minds and the physical learners are exposed to hands-on activities. For example, read the story "The Rainbow Fish" by Marcus Pfister. Have the students create their own pictures and alternative endings to the story. Following that, students can form groups and act out their endings.

    Learning Interests

    • During group work, arrange students so they get to know their classmates. Depending on the nature of the assignment, you may find it best to pair students of similar interests, strengths and intelligence while for other assignments, it may be best to mix it up to enable students to teach one another. Cooperative learning and grouping strategies increase student participation. If the same students seem to raise their hands, pick names at random from a jar of Popsicle sticks with their names on them. Students may show more interest in your class if they know they can be called on at any time.

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