[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 3 | January 18, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]
The difficult part of exercise is getting started and sticking to it. Fitness classes are like school classrooms. There are people at different skill levels of strength and conditioning. The instructor’s job is to provide an experience that challenges all participants based on where they are in fitness. Like good classroom teachers, effective fitness instructors incorporate different levels of movements into each activity so that the participants can gauge where they are and what they need to do during the session.
In classrooms, effective learning happens when teachers provide the conditions that learners find relatable. The challenge is that these conditions will vary for each learner. A common question is, “How do I meet the needs of my students when each has a different level of current understanding and tends to learn at a different pace?” The easy answer is to inform planning with various kinds of assessments, but that doesn’t make the path clear for what to do.
Differentiated instruction looks at instructional planning based on content,process, and products. These areas are familiar to teachers and their assessment practices.