Reflections+of+Differentiated+Instruction+by+Samet+Deniz

At the Yüce College Conference, the second session was "Differentiated Instruction" by Deborah Blaz who is a multilingual woman from Illinois. It was a webinar, which was the first one I attended, and its aim was to demonstrate useful strategies for a differentiated classroom. The things I liked about the session were that she opened and closed her speech with Turkish, saying "Merhaba. Teşekkür ederim. Tanıştığımıza memnun oldum.", and the game that we played, which I enjoyed a lot. The things I didn't like were that I couldn't see her clearly because it was dark in her room and that it was late night in the States, about 3-4 a.m., which I think influenced her performance even though she seemed lively. Actually the term differantiated instruction was a new term for me. I heard it once or twice before but I didn't know much about it. With this webinar I learnt a lot about it. I also learnt that students can make their own decisions about what they learn and how they learn. If this is so, we can consider the teacher as a guide on the side. The third thing I heard for the first time is that we can differentiate students by compacting, process, content, product and interest. It is nice that we can have lots of choices while differentiating students. The three main things that were highlighted in the session were strategies for a differentiated classroom, management of tasks and differentiating students according to different criteria. I think the suggestions in the session are applicable to all the language levels as we have lots of choices and strategies. The thing I learnt through this session is student behaviors which may suggest that compacting is necessary. If a student consistently finishes tasks early, usually does the work well and correct, has some advanced familiarity with the material, expresses interest in pursuing alternate or advanced topics, has consistent high performance or motivation and creates his/her own puzzles, games, or other diversions in class, there definitely must be curriculum compacting. To tell the truth, there wasn't any contradictory ideas in the session about the English language teaching methodologies according to me. I found all the strategies, suggestions and ideas quite well.

I agree to the fact that there should be differentiation in classes and it should be according to some criteria, but I don't think that we should have high expectations for all the students as some students may not like the subject, may not have interest for learning a new language or may not have enough intelligence to do so. I would like to know more about the application of differentiation in language classes and some more possible activities for differentiated instruction. I think compacting could be directly applied in English classes at different levels in Turkey as we need it in most of them. There are some students who are better than others and easily get bored with the normal curriculum. If we compact the curriculum for these students, both these students and the rest of the class will have more motivation to learn and perform better in the class. On the other hand, differentiating students according to their interests could be challenging to apply for the students and teachers in Turkish schools and universities because some students may try to spoil the lesson or even though they don't try to spoil the class, the teacher may have lots of difficulty in doing the differentiation.

This session contributed to me in terms of having new insights into the teaching process, styles, strategies and techniques. I learnt how to apply some techniques of differentiation in a language class ad I hope I will be able to apply them in my own classes. The session was strong in the way it was presented since there was a game and it attracted people's attention but it should be improved according to some presentation rules (word number on a slide, not full sentences but key word, etc.). According to me this session achieved its aim in the way it taught people how to use differentiation in language classes with some techniques and how to manage differentiated instruction. I'm planning to integrate the ideas I learnt in the presentation to my own teaching by differentiating the students according to their needs and learning styles. I'm also planning to compact some students' curriculum by taking their level of English into consideration.

__COMMENTS:__ by Gonca DENİZ To start with, I agree with Samet in that Deborah Blaz has provided us with some useful strategies for a differantiated classroom. As I also mentioned in my own reflection, I started using the strategies that I learned from her in my own classroom and I believe I will also use them in the future. Moreover, I also think that these sugestions are applicable to all language levels as we have great many choices to adapt them according to the level and age. Just like Samet, I would be very pleased to learn more about the application of differentiation and some more techniques to use in classrooms. On the other hand, Samet may also be right when saying that it could be challenging to differentiate students by interest in Turkish schools as some students may try to spoil the lesson. However; if the teacher is an effective classroom manager, I think she could be able to benefit from the techniques of differentiation most effectively. To sum up; I found the session held by Deborah Blaz very useful and I agree with Samet in most of the things he has pointed out.

by Birgül DOĞAN First of all, it was the first time that I attended to a 'webinar' and I really enjoyed it besides getting new terminology and methods about ELT. I loved the 'casino' game. It was effective in involving the audience to the workshop since it included competition. Moreover, I liked the way Miss Deborah Blaz presented her topic. She was quite positive. Also, I agree with Samet in his ideas about the the term differentiation. I learned many things about this term which was unfamiliar to me before that conference. I also liked the idea that there should be some criteria in choosing the most suitable differentiation strategies because we cannot address all the students in a limited class hour. To conclude, I liked both the presentation that Deborah Blaz did and the reflection that Samet wrote. They encouraged me to do some research and apply these strategies into real classrooms.

FERUZE İLKATMIŞ //Before Deborah Blaz's Differentiated Instruction webinar, with the help of the Annamaria Pinter who was a presenter in first session I learned the concept of differentiation. Mrs. Blaz's explanations help me how to use differentiation in class. This session once again showed me the necessity of being awareness of difference between learners' interest, level and styles. Although I attended webinar for the first time it was not hard to follow the session and presenter. Techniques and strategies that Mrs. Blaz showed us broaden my perspective about differentiation and I want to learn more about this subject to use in my own teaching. I agree with Samet his ideas about high expectations for all students. Learners have different ability or capacity and expect from all learners the same process may not be helpful for teachers. The ideas and strategies in this session are applicaple to all levels and also applicaple to English classes in Turkey. // //Mrs. Blaz was cheerful during the webinar. The casino game was effective and entertaining way including differentiation strategies. At the end of this session I learned giving learners to choice and differentiate the lesson are important issues for teaching. // //Lastly, the reflection that Samet wrote is detailed and comprehensive. //


 * __//by Mahmut KARACA //__**

Firstly, I want to say that this was my first time that I attended to a webiner. Actually, I hadn't expected something like that, I thought that the presenters would come and present us their presentations but Deborah Blaz's sescion was different from the others. Although it was surprising and different, I found it very interesting and beneficial for me. I think Samet explained the section very clearly and I mostly agree with Samet's ideas about the section. Like Samet, I hadn't heard so much about differentiation before that conference, but thanks to the first presenter Dr. Annamaria Pinter we had some clues about it before Deborah Blaz's section. Also I think most of the English Teacher in Turkey are unfortunately unaware of something like that. I believe that this topic is very important but neglected in our country. As the presenter said, we cannot expect all the students to have the same characteristics, interest needs, personalities, learning styles, etc. so the teachers should be aware of the differences between learners' interest, level and styles. However, I think it can be problematic to apply these tecniques in puplic school because there are very crowded classes in that schhools so the teachers may not be able to give importance to differentiation. Consequently, this presentation made me interested in that topic and I will make some more searches on that topic and try to appy it in my lessons in the future.