I am not currently teaching any GAVS classes and have not ever had the opportunity to do so. But I am familiar with differentiation and have read a good bit in the resources provided about the LMS that is used by GAVS. I think as a teacher, a certain level of differentiation is natural. I feel like I can typically see my students weaknesses and strengths pretty easily. As a math teacher, it is easy to notice the difference between careless mistakes and completely not understanding material. When I give assessments, whether they are formative or summative, if I notice problems areas then I know I need to go back over that material. Sometimes I have to wait until a little later in the semester to do so, simply because time does not always allow me to take extra time on topics, but I make a note to revisit it later. Sometimes if there is a small group of students that are struggling, I will get them in a group either at my desk, the hallway, or up front while the rest of the class is working on something else and we can go over the problems they are having. These are just a couple of simple, but usually very helpful, ways to address problem areas.
As far as grouping students, there are several options. And it depends on what the goal of the assignment is. Sometimes it is best to group a higher level student with a mid-level student and a mid-level student with a lower level student. This will usually help some unusual leaders emerge during an assignment or project. But there are times when you feel you want to keep your higher learners together and maybe mix the mid-level student and lower level students together. But like I said, it is all dependent upon the goal of the assignment/project.
Earlier this year, my analytic geometry students were really struggling with factoring quadratic functions and solving quadratic functions. We had done a good bit of work on it, but I gave them a quiz on it and most of my students really did poorly on it. So, we took a few days off from factoring and moved on to the next topic. My students were frustrated, and I probably was too! But at the end of the following week, we used Friday to go back to factoring and reteach and practice. I gave them several options for working on the practice. I had some students working up on my smart board so I could check their work. I had some others working in groups together. I had some students that just wanted to work on their own. I was very flexible with how they could work. But then they had a 10 question graded assignment that was an independent assignment that I would use to replace their low quiz grade. I have shown some screen shots of it below. The grades on this replacement assignment were so much better than the original quiz! This just reminded me that sometimes you have to change your plans up and make sure you are doing what is best for your students.
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