Reaching All Artists Through Differentiation

Gain confidence in reaching the diverse learners in your art room through proven practices, creative tools, and engaging strategies.

Differentiation is no longer a teaching strategy for the ambitious in education. Rather, it’s an expectation for everyone, including the art educator. There are many ways to meet student needs through various differentiation strategies and tools. Learning how to help students experience success with developmentally appropriate activities will, in turn, help to increase their engagement in art.

During this course, participants will use the appropriate tools to maximize learning for all students: gifted learners, English language learners (ELL), special education students, and struggling students while acknowledging their unique interests. An important component of this approach is for participants to reflect on their current practices through the modification of lesson plans and assessments and creating new tools for their art room. At the completion of this course, participants will have a toolkit of applicable differentiation strategies for the classroom.

See the course syllabus and Graduate Catalog for more details.

Required Materials

Differentiated Instruction in Art Education (2014): Fountain, ISBN-13: 978-1615281213. This Davis Publication text can be purchased in hard copy format or digitally via the Davis website.

Additional Materials

Computer with basic audio and video output equipment
Internet access (broadband recommended)
Basic computing skills (see AOEU’s Technology Requirements)
Access to AOEU’s online learning platform, Brightspace, to view course content, submit assignments, and engage in discussion (provided)
A Google Drive account (not provided by AOEU)
Word-processing platform (Microsoft Office, Pages, Google Docs)

Graduate Credits

All courses will now close at 11 PM Central time on the 27th of each month. Graduate Credits 3 Graduate Credits

Price Graduate Credit $1197.00

Timeline

Mon 9 Sun

Dec 5 Weeks Feb 5

Upcoming Course Run Dates

Dec 5 Feb 5

Jun 5 Jul 30

AOEU Course Code

SPED518

Morningside Course Code

EDUC500 AOE018

Course Objectives

Analyze different types of differentiation and purposes in a learning environment.
Create a management plan for the logistics of the differentiated art room.
Create and conduct assessments and inventories for data-driven teaching.
Reflect on and revise existing art curriculum and planning using the latest research and methods.
Design engaging differentiation strategies for a variety of learner populations.

Course Breakdown

Week 1

Why Differentiate?

Build foundational knowledge and share current professional insights on the topic of Differentiation.
Share differentiated-related goals for future teaching.

Week 2

Getting to Know Your Students

Research strategies used to help identify specific student needs, including understanding IEPs, relying on stakeholders, and the use of learner inventories and pre-assessments.
Design a tool that helps to identify specific student needs, laying the foundation for identifying supports towards student success.

Week 3

Providing Opportunity Through Choice

Evaluate the successful aspects of providing choice in the learning environment.
Accumulate different strategies, presented as providing choice options for students to process and demonstrate their learning
Create a choice-based tool to implement with some of your diverse learners.

Week 4

Mapping Differentiated Curriculum

Analyze the importance of planning out learning activities and goals as successful teaching practice, especially with differentiated student needs.
Design a planning tool to map out learning goals and coordinate strategies in a curricular action plan.

Week 5

Adapting Existing Lessons

Apply learned strategies, tools, and knowledge directly to the classroom by identifying current practices and modifying through a differentiated lens.
Create an applicable differentiated lesson plan, utilizing previous learning and tools from this course.

Week 6

Formative Assessments Through a Differentiated Lens

Appraise current classroom assessment strategies and modify to be more differentiated and, therefore, more successful for identifying student growth.
Create a formative assessment strategy and implementation plan.

Week 7

Differentiating For Learner Populations

Deconstruct a sampling of different learner populations to identify their essential characteristics and the supportive strategies that could lead to their success, in turn, applying processes learned throughout this course.
Create a scenario centric to a learner population, identifying needs assessments, strategies/tools and reflect on the processes of differentiation as a learning stakeholder.

Week 8

Reflection

Reflect on your innovative thinking journey from the beginning to the end.
Accumulate created artifacts throughout the course in a portfolio.

Designing Choice Options

A sample assignment from Week 3 of the class Reaching All Artists Through Differentiation

1. Research

Explore the significance of offering choice options in the art room, including a variety of strategies and tools.

2. Discussion

Share experiences of offering choice, discuss takeaways from research with peers and note choice for this week’s assignment and implementation plans.

3. Practical, Hands-On Application

Create a choice strategy and tool, choosing from a Choice Board, Learning Menu or Scavenger Hunt using Padlet. In addition to creating, explain your rationale for this strategy and how it could be implemented in the art room.

"Reaching All Artists Through Differentiation is completely relevant and I already started implementing differentiation strategies into my current teaching practice. I also have already used some of the instructional tools/ideas I created for assignments in my classroom. This course helped open up my mind to how I could be more accommodating to all students and be more open-minded about gradually implementing more choice."

Paige L., PA

"Incredible course! I appreciated the video feedback in response to the assignment. That was so encouraging. It was a great course and I learn so much about differentiation! I loved all the content that was covered and how it is applicable to my classroom."

Rebecca S., SC

"Reaching All Artists Through Differentiation really helped me understand what differentiation is and how I can incorporate the tools and strategies into my teaching."

Jennifer D., PA

What do past course participants think?

Hundreds of art teachers have taken the course Reaching All Artists Through Differentiation. Here’s what they actually think — without cherry-picking.
(12-month rolling average from all post-course survey respondents – Updated 1/28/2021)

100%

Course content was relevant and current.

80%

Instructor was knowledgeable and provided value-added contributions.

100%

 I achieved the goals I set at the beginning of the course.   

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