“Every student can learn, just not on the same day or in the same way” (George Evans).
Differentiated learning in numeracy significantly refers to adapting numeracy instruction to cater to the diverse needs, skills, and learning styles of pre-schoolers. Pre-school children may have varying levels of understanding, strengths, and learning preferences. With due considerations differentiated learning aims to provide individualized support while fostering the development of mathematical skills. This may focus on the needs of advanced learners as well as for those needing bit size explanations to fill in the gaps.
It is inevitably essential to give the pre-schoolers the chance to enjoy their learning experiences fully by maximising their potential. We need to plan and contextualise their learning outcomes, tasks, and activities in a more realistic manner by matching to their learning styles. The subject matter must have a balanced content that carry the appropriate challenge involving the child’s interests and abilities. Educators must set reachable skills and development goals by integrating strategies that not only follows the curriculum guidelines but also have rooms for every child to participate in the learning experience feeling self-assured.
According to Vygotsky, ‘instruction should be differentiated to provide appropriate levels of challenge and support to learners based on their individual developmental levels, interests, and prior knowledge. The educators as more knowledgeable others must observe the zone of proximal development (ZPD) of the child so as to scaffold accordingly. (Chatsworth, 2010).
