Implementing Differentiated Instruction (DI) Strategy in Teaching English for Low Achieving Fifth Grade Students of Cuenca Central School

Abstract

Identifying an effective and appropriate instructional strategy to help the growing diverse learners in today’s classrooms reach their full potentials is a goal for educators. Teachers need to differentiate instruction and provide students with different avenues of learning to maximize their learning process. Differentiated instruction has received much attention as a key solution but seems challenging. The current study dealt with the usefulness of differentiated instruction and traditional-based pedagogy in the promotion of male and female learners reading comprehension in separate gender educational system. The purpose of this study was to systematically reflect upon the teaching practices, and to investigate the benefits and impact of this strategy. Fifth grade students of Cuenca Central School were chosen and divided into experimental and control groups. The students of the experimental group were taught through the strategies of differentiated instruction. The students of the control group also received traditional instruction strategies. The outcomes from posttest results indicated that the students of the experimental group outperformed the control one. Findings of this study are presented and highlight the necessity for further explorations on the effect of differentiated instructional practices on enhancement results thus, we hypothesized that students would benefit from the varied instruction. Quantitative data was collected in the form of grades from pretest and posttest. The differences between the results of these tests revealed the positive impact on the implementation of differentiated instruction. Some conclusions and suggestions are proposed for further and practical development of this topic.