The Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS) prepare Florida’s students to effectively engage, communicate, and compete globally with students around the world. These new standards stress teaching to depth for long-term knowledge. With an increased emphasis on problem solving, conceptual understanding, and reasoning, teachers are being asked not only to employ the most effective pedagogy for teaching science, but also to respond to each student’s learning needs.
The Differentiating Science Instruction for All Students module focuses on how to use the guidelines for differentiation along with a high-quality science curriculum guided by a responsive decision-making framework so that each student can achieve at the highest possible level.
The Differentiating Science Instruction for All Students module addresses the following questions:
- What is differentiated instruction?
- What does a science classroom look like when instruction is differentiated?
- Does this mean individual lessons will need to be created for each student?
- What are the basic guidelines of differentiated instruction?
- How do I design and deliver effective lessons for teaching of initial understanding to the whole class?
- What do we mean by a continuous assessment process?
- How do I use this process of pre-assessment, ongoing assessment (formative, interim), and summative assessment to design and adjust instruction to meet the needs of all my students?
- What is flexible grouping and how do I use it to move students from initial understanding to proficiency?
- How can I use technology to enhance instruction?