Riverside Township Public School District

Differentiation comes naturally in this fifth-grade inclusion class at Riverside Elementary School. Co-Teachers Ms. Charley and Ms. Starke did a great job of using differentiation techniques and strategies to teach the volume of rectangular prisms during their Math lesson this week. They switched between both whole group discussion and small group discussion while they were exploring a sample of how to dissect a prism on the Viewsonic board. This helped them better visualize and understand volume, and then also supplemented that visual display with hands-on learning using cubes as manipulatives, if needed, throughout the lesson. Ms. Charley and Ms. Starke also facilitated a mini-lesson on the process of calculating volume. The class worked through using addition and/or multiplication as a strategy to find the volume of the rectangular prism.

Throughout the lesson both teachers interacted fluidly with the whole class, sometimes one or both could be seen pulling a smaller group to clarify or scaffold the concepts, and other times the teachers assisted individuals or pairs of students. If students preferred, they were able to work alone or in small cooperative learning groups to better personalize and cement the learning. It was clear that the teachers took every opportunity to get all students to try, connect, and reflect during the lesson.

Shout out to the Ms. Charley/Ms. Starke 5th Grade Inclusion Team for this outside-of-the-box (prism) learning opportunity!!