Students Taking Outside Classes

Another interesting aspect to this semester has been the two students who are taking this elective because they were switched out of their regular cluster US History class into a smaller and slower moving US History class where differentiation would be challenging at best.  Both students have taken PRISMS before and this looks at how digital learning can be used for effective differentiation.

Background: Both students had taken are in the gifted program and have take this research elective before. They wanted to take it again but were in a US History class scheduled for the same time because it was the gifted cluster class. With permission from the school board and their parents, the students were moved to a different US History class to open the time slot for this class. The new US History period is a small, academically slow-moving group of students. They are racecars in a garage of 4 cylinder cars.

The teacher works with the whole class for the lesson but has the two girls form their own group when group work is required. The girls have been given laptops from the my class and have built a blog to work on a semester-long theme for US History: Strong Women of War. When their work for the day is done, they go to their laptops and drives, see what I have Shared and work on connecting women to the time period being studied. They explore the politics, economy, and society rules as they apply to women at the time.

So far the girls are having a blast learning the broad concepts of US History and then the details that made life different for women from men at the time, and different for women then from women now demonstrating differentiation possibilities not only for gifted students, but for any student whether they need remedial assistance or enriched challenges.