DIFFERENTIATING LESSONS AND ACTIVITES

You entered the teaching profession because you have a strong desire to impart your knowledge on future generations and make a difference in the lives of the students in your classes. You know your subject well and continue keeping up with the latest research so that your content knowledge is excellent. You have taken the required teacher preparation courses and know all of the teaching and learning theories. When your first day of teaching begins, however, you realize pretty quickly that you were not as adequately prepared for what you are expected to accomplish.

If you have ever questioned how it is possible to teach one lesson to a classroom full of students who all bring unique learning styles and different interests and abilities, you are not alone. Through this WebQuest you will take part in a number of activities that will increase your understanding of different learning styles and how to use this new understanding to create differentiated, student-centered lessons and activities.

You main task is to create your own WebQuest that you could use with your students. You will learn about each of the individual components of a WebQuest. You should design your WebQuest for the grade level and subject you teach.

Step One: 
Identify your own preferred learning style. Often the way educators teach and the strategies they rely on the most are rooted in their own preferred learning style. Being aware of your own learning style may shed light on the educational decisions you make in the classroom. To begin learning how to differentiate your lessons and activities you should know what your style is and develop an understanding of how it influences your teaching style.

Take this quick, non-scientific survey to get a picture of your personality type. Click here.

Here is a short questionnaire to give you an idea of your learning style. Click here.

Step Two: 
Identify how learning styles impact the best way that students learn.
Look at this embedded chart. Ask yourself, when your students perform the tasks in the first column how do they approach the task? Their preferred approach at performing typical classroom tasks can give you a good indication of their dominate learning style.

Step Three: (Group Activity)
Use a search engine of your choosing and search for the keyword WebQuest. You can add more keywords if you would like to narrow your search. For example WebQuest Social Studies Grade 7

In groups of four analyze a WebQuest and pay attention to the structure, formats, and content. Discuss with your group what you think worked well and what did not work so well. Were the instructions clear? Was the task something realistic that the students could actually complete? Were the scaffolding activities used to help complete the task varied enough so that multiple learning styles could benefit from the work?

Watch the You Tube Video on creating WebQuest- Click Here

Step Four: (Individual Activity)
Begin thinking about the end result. What do you want your students to take away from your WebQuest? You should also think about what evidence do you want that demonstrates that your students have fully understood what it is that you want them to learn. Bernie Dodge, the father of WebQuests provides some great descriptions of different tasks that can be the foundation of your WebQuest. Review his descriptions and begin formulating a task for your WebQuest.
Click here for tasks.

Step Five: Connect the dots (Individual Activity)
Now that you know what you want your students to do what scaffolding activities can you present to them that will help them perform this final task? Each activity you assign them in the WebQuest should lead them toward their final product. The activities should vary in complexity and incorporate multiple dimensions. Remember that all of your students learn in different ways and bring unique learning styles to their tasks. As a result, "multi-dimensional teaching models should be used" as often as possible (Duman, 2010, p. 2078).

Step Six: (Individual Activity)
WebQuests need to include some form of evaluation. A rubric is the best way to evaluate how well the students were able to perform the task. The rubric should be available at the onset of the work being done to complete the WebQuest so that the students know how they are being evaluated and what is expected of them. The rubric for this WebQuest is included below in the Evaluation section. A quick Internet search of the keywords "WebQuest rubrics" produces over 90,000 hits. Some of these sites offer rubrics created by other teachers, suggestions for effective rubrics, or websites to help you create your own. Click here for search results. 

Whether you are simply looking for ideas, suggestions to improve an existing rubric, or need help creating one from scratch this is a good starting point. 

After you have reviewed some sample rubrics create one that best suits the task you outlined earlier. 

WebQuests are a great way to create activities that are student-centered, differentiated, and require students to use higher-order thinking skills. A good WebQuest task is something that is challenging, but not too difficult as to frustrate the students. The activities you design should take multiple forms and present students with choices. As you design your activities keep in mind that each activity, while separate, connects to the over all task you presented at the start. Notice that the task in this WebQuest is to create your own WebQuest that differentiates the activities to meet all of your students learning styles. The activities in this WebQuest include mini tasks that helped you understanding your own learning styles as well as those of your students. As often as possible you were given choices and opportunities to work individually and in small groups.  

Dodge, B. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://webquest.org/

Duman, B. (2010). The effects of brain-based learning on the academic achievement of students with different learning styles. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 10(4), 2077-2103.

Modified by HWenthold

Permissions

We all benefit by being generous with our work. Permission is granted for others to use and modify this WebQuest for educational, non-commercial purposes as long as the original authorship is credited. The modified WebQuest may be shared only under the same conditions. 

Whenever teachers offer students a variety of ways to explore curriculum content, they are differentiating instruction. In this Webquest, you will explore a sampling of some of the aspects related to differentiated instruction. Read the information through the scholarly sources provided, and use what you have learned to create a webquest for your students.