Actually, kindergarten IS differentiation.  Instructing students who are making the transition from home to school is an entirely different avenue!  Each student is at such a different point in their transition.  It takes such different points of impact for understanding to hit with the information and instruction.

Looking at the math standards for Minnesota (as well as my school district), each student needs to know six shapes.  All of my students, save four or five of them, have their shapes down pat.  However, one of my students cannot tell a triangle from a square. No joke.  This is my Shaggy.  He tries so hard!  So, to help him in a very visual way, I gave him a little green triangle pattern block to carry in his pocket. We’ll see how it goes! He had it for the second half of the day.  Between teaching instruction I would go up to him and ask him what shape it was.  He could name it 3 out of 10 times.  He would get really excited, scratch his head, and saw he forgot.  ”Miss Urch!  I am just not really that good at memory!”  he exclaimed to me.  At the end of the day, he ran up to his friend’s locker and asked my Dennis the Menace, “WHAT SHAPE IS THIS?!”  When Dennis the Menace said it was a triangle, Shaggy ran up to me and said, “Miss Urch! It’s a triangle!”  I was hoping that being able to physically feel the shape would help him and I’m not ready to give up yet!  He will get it!  (Fun fact: Shaggy drew a picture of Scooby-Doo today in class.  If he only knew!)

Math is HUGE during kindergarten, so we incorporate it everywhere.  Actually, scratch that.  Math is HUGE in life, so we incorporate it everywhere!  This is another great way to challenge the students.  It’s difficult, because I have one student who knows how to multiply, and other students who are struggling to add numbers that are not single digits under six.  There are four daily routines in which we incorporate math: lunch count, calendar time, thermometer time (before recess), and snack math.  We also have math instruction time daily and math workshop two days a week.  I could blog an entire day about this, but I’ll just touch on a way that snack math (or any math) can be used for differentiation.  The kinderchallenge with snack math is really allowing the students to push themselves and be pushed.  For instance, today we had girl scout cookies.  The point of snack math is to discover if we have enough snack for everyone, and how to portion the snack evenly.  Note: if they know the purpose, students will willingly participate in math!  It is just part of the routine!  Our snack today was girls scout cookies.  I had two packages:

We had Do si dos and Trefolds.

So, I looked at the boxes.  Trefolds serving size: 5 and 7 servings.  Do si dos serving size: 2 and 9 servings.

We worked for fifteen minutes to try to figure out how to write a math sentence.  I wrote the first part: seven groups of five.  So 5+5+5+5+5+5+5.  It took a bit, but one of my girls, my Madeline, knew how to write the next number sentence…nine groups of 2!  She had an “ah-ha!” moment!  That is what differentiation does…allows students to have those moments in their ZPD.  The moments in which they can be instructed to reach their full potential.  Once we had our two number sentences, other students could chime in.  One of my boys realized we could count by five’s to find our sum of 35.  Then another boy had an “ah-ha” moment and realized we could count by two’s to get 18.  Snack math success!  If it was only the same students that understood the concepts, I would be worried…but different students have their “ah-ha!” moments each day.  We don’t do snack math the same every day…they would get totally bored.  One of my boys can looked at the number sentences and said, “Miss Urch, why don’t you just write 2 x 9 and 5 x 7?”  Another person could look at him and think he is so advanced, but he really struggles with grouping and renaming numbers…so finding partial sums and sums is challenging for him.

Math really opens up a world of possibilities in kindergarten.  The kinderchallenge of keeping them on their toes and solving problems and feeling successful gives me the feeling of victory each and every day.  Algebra is going to be a breeze!