Page 23 - Learning for All – A Guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12, 2013

Instructional Approaches • 21
DIFFERENTIATE PRODUCT
❏❏ Gather achievement data through various assessment tools.
❏❏ Engage students’ interest by involving them in various different types of
projects and problem-solving activities.
❏❏ Foster students’ awareness of their strengths in learning, and their sense of
ownership of their learning, by allowing them to choose the products they will create and the formats or modes of presentation they will use.
Ministry of Education resources on differentiated instruction, developed by the Student Success/Learning to 18 branch, can be accessed on the EduGAINS website at www.edugains.ca/newsite/di2/index.html.
Research findings show a strong positive relationship between engaging students’ particular interests as part of their learning and subsequent improvements in a wide range of skills – from social, emotional, and communication skills to sensory and fine motor skills.
The shared principles of UDL and differentiated instruction support inquiry-based learning, an instructional approach that is gaining increased support and attention from educators and researchers (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010a). The inquiry process involves open-ended learning experiences that are inclusive of all students and offer students real choices and opportunities to develop their own voice. Educators design the inquiry process to respond closely and accurately to individual students’ learning needs.
When participating in ongoing assessment, teachers and students are engaged in cycles of analysis of and reflection on both teaching and learning. The inquiry process empowers teachers and students to learn from, with, and on behalf of each other. Through the inquiry process, students learn to think about thinking and to talk about themselves as learners and make their thinking explicit. They are given the opportunity to explore and understand the cognitive and affective domains of learning – that is, metacognition. In other words, inquiry-based learning helps all students, including those with special education needs,
to become more independent, creative, and metacognitive learners. They learn to identify their own strengths and needs in learning and to value what they are learning (Alberta Learning, 2004).
Collaborative teacher inquiry is rapidly becoming a critical part of the daily practice of educators in Ontario. For example, research findings (Bruce & Flynn, 2013) indicate that Collaborative Inquiry for Learning in Mathematics (CIL-M) – an initiative of the Ontario Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat that involves teachers, consultants, and superintendents in co-terminus boards working together to plan and teach math lessons – resulted in improvement in teachers’ sense of self-efficacy. This in turn led teachers to incorporate instructional strategies on a regular basis that were challenging but yielded more positive