Yesterday, in my class, we were using Google Public Data graphs to examine how different factors affect Infant Mortality Rates around the world. Kids were sharing computers with a partner, if they chose to, and were discussing what they saw on the screens. In this class, I have students from at least 9 different countries, and several students who are new to an English speaking school.
Differentiation at this level is quite difficult for me as I consider the needs of students who are nowhere close to proficient in English but who have to still are to be assessed on the same criteria as everyone else.
Anyway, my point is this. As I was walking around, I noticed that kids had just used the translate option on Google Public Data to put all of the information in their mother tongue! How smart is this? And, how great that this is an option! When what I am after is conceptual understanding, at this point- the language will come later- what a great tool! I didn't tell them to do this. They just did it.
Differentiation at this level is quite difficult for me as I consider the needs of students who are nowhere close to proficient in English but who have to still are to be assessed on the same criteria as everyone else.
Anyway, my point is this. As I was walking around, I noticed that kids had just used the translate option on Google Public Data to put all of the information in their mother tongue! How smart is this? And, how great that this is an option! When what I am after is conceptual understanding, at this point- the language will come later- what a great tool! I didn't tell them to do this. They just did it.
As I allowed kids to choose their own partners, some students worked with a mother tongue partner and some student just worked with a buddy. There are two boys who are new to speaking English but English is the language they have in common. They were then able to take the English definitions of different demographic factors that we had explicitly gone over in class together and match their understanding from their translated graphs. No matter their language abilities in English, this allowed them an access point to be a full participating member of class! YAY!
Using technology is such an easy way to differentiate without having to do anything extra! Thank you, Google!
Using technology is such an easy way to differentiate without having to do anything extra! Thank you, Google!