Differentiated Instruction
Current research in the area of cognitive science has shed much light on how people learn. This brain-based research has provided new information on how the brain works in terms of thinking and learning. The goal is to assist students in becoming lifelong learners and provide them with learning strategies to help attain this goal. There is a need to look at how we teach and how to build student competencies and monitor progress for our students’ roles in the Information Age. We must create a learner-centered environment which includes the following necessary components:
- professional collaborative efforts
- hands-on learning
- cooperative learning classroom practices
- non-linguistic representations for modeling and guided practice
- fostering the ability to make connections to “real life”
Differentiated instruction is the educational term for the application of the preceding components in academic settings.
MindWing Concepts visual, tactile, non-linguistic representational tools coupled with our methodology, rooted in oral language development at the discourse level (conversation, narrative, exposition), directly applies to efforts to differentiate instruction for learners of varying linguistic abilities and cultural backgrounds in the areas of comprehension and written expression.
Our approach and tools enhance and serve to develop the components of a learner-centered environment listed in the previous paragraph. Additionally, since social interaction is a hallmark of a learner-centered environment, MindWing’s unique Critical Thinking Triangle® assists students in:
- developing a “feelings” vocabulary
- identifying emotional responses of characters in literature and relating them to life experiences
- developing perspective taking and the use of mental state verbs for expression of “thinking”