12 What Primary Sources Teach inviting students to do something that will tie the lesson you delivered to what they previously learned. If students have different personal interests, provide suggestions to the classroom educator for how these could be addressed through a follow-up activity. DIFFERENTIATE ASSESSMENT Differentiation also asks us to provide multiple ways for students to demon- strate their learning. If students find reading and writing challenging, provide a creative response option (such as drawing a picture) rather than a writing prompt. If students are more comfortable with technology than other modes of communication, use online platforms and tools for activities and assignments even when teaching in person. If students are attracted to tactile objects, provide them with things to hold in their hands: magnifying glasses, laminated map keys, white gloves, and so on. If students need a lot of support, plan a final activity or product that can be worked on as a group. If students are easily overwhelmed or find it difficult to isolate smaller observations from the whole, divide a copy of the source into pieces and allow them to concentrate on a small fragment at a time. (See, for example, the les- son on note taking (Chapter 8), where students are asked to take notes on one part of a text, and then every individual’s or group’s work is combined to cre- ate notes on the entire document.) REFLECTING ON DIFFERENTIATION Differentiation is never done. Educators and students alike must engage with Freire’s process of acting on what we know and then reflecting on what we have done. Though no group of students will ever be the same, we may try something with one class that leads us to realize we need to shift our instruc- tion, and/or develop a different set of expectations for how students commu- nicate what they learned. For example, students may respond to a specific source in a different way than we anticipated this is an excellent opportunity to examine, as educators, the biases and expectations we bring to the class- room and how we might slowly shed these. We are never just educators we too are always learning.
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