Exceptional Mama

Differentiated Instruction is going to be the framework that Bridgewater will be built upon. Education should not be “one size fits all” because children are not made out of cookie cutters. It is not uncommon for a single-grade classroom to have up to a five year span in ability and mental age across subjects and social development. The reasons for these differences are vast, and many are completely out of our control as teachers. Genetics, family life, home environment and in-school bullying are all things that the child may have to deal with that would have an effect on their abilities in various areas. So, each student is different… what are we supposed to do about it?

Differentiated Instruction has been around for ages; it was, after all, how the old one-room school houses operated. The term itself was coined by Carol Ann Tomlinson in the 1990s and has been growing in educational circles across the country since then. Alright, Erica, get to the point! What is it? How do I do it? How will this positively affect my students and what do I do about those pesky standards that the county/state/country wants me to keep up with year after year?

What is Differentiated Instruction?

Differentiation is the act of working with individuals or small groups of students in different areas in order to make sure that each student gets the best opportunity to learn. When teaching in a differentiated classroom, we can expect to change one or more of four things:

1. Content (the actual curriculum – what the student will learn and/or how the student will recieve the information).

2. Process (the activities the student preforms in order to accomplish mastery)

3. Products (the assessments and final projects that will apply and extend what the student has learned)

4. Learning environment (the physical class room)

When we go to change these four elements, we look at each student’s readiness through diagnostic testing, their interests, and their learning styles. Once we know what a student enjoys, how they learn, and where they are comfortably situated on the scale of academics, we can then begin to adapt our curriculum in order to fit their needs.

Say for instance you are teaching a class of 25 students, ages 8-9. You may know that three of your students are actually reading at a 5th grade level, six of your students are struggling at a 1st grade level, and the rest are somewhere in between with only 4 of them actually on the 3rd grade level. One of the 3rd grade TN state standards in reading is: “Use active comprehension strategies to derive meaning while reading and check for understanding after reading.” and one of the checkpoints for this standard is: “predicting outcomes based upon prior knowledge and adjust as knowledge is gained while reading.”

With that being said, the goal is to make sure that the students understand what they are reading, and will be able to apply something that they already know to the story in order to predict the outcomes. There is nothing that states each student must come to this conclusion through the same reading material, and there is nothing that says that these conclusions must be reached through a universal textbook.

The easiest thing to do here would be to assign different books to different children, allowing them to pick a book which accompanies their level in reading. Perhaps one child has a beginning phonics book and another child has a tween fantasy novel with 15 chapters. As long as the books have some sort of plot, the lesson can be taught.

This example (varying the books each student reads) is one of differentiating process. The content (what the child is supposed to learn) is the same across the classroom, but each child will take a different path to get there.

Here are some other examples of how a teacher might differentiate instruction, taken from the article “What is Differentiated Instruction” on http://www.readingrockets.org.

written by Carol Ann Tomlinson.

Content

Examples of differentiating content at the elementary level include the following:

1. Using reading materials at varying readability levels;
2. Putting text materials on tape;
3. Using spelling or vocabulary lists at readiness levels of students;
4. Presenting ideas through both auditory and visual means;
5. Using reading buddies; and
6. Meeting with small groups to re-teach an idea or skill for struggling learners, or to extend the thinking or skills of advanced learners.

 

Process

Examples of differentiating process or activities at the elementary level include the following:

1. Using tiered activities through which all learners work with the same important understandings and skills, but proceed with different levels of support, challenge, or complexity;
2. Providing interest centers that encourage students to explore subsets of the class topic of particular interest to them;
3. Developing personal agendas (task lists written by the teacher and containing both in-common work for the whole class and work that addresses individual needs of learners) to be completed either during specified agenda time or as students complete other work early;
4. Offering manipulatives or other hands-on supports for students who need them; and
5. Varying the length of time a student may take to complete a task in order to provide additional support for a struggling learner or to encourage an advanced learner to pursue a topic in greater depth.

 

Products

Examples of differentiating products at the elementary level include the following:

1. Giving students options of how to express required learning (e.g., create a puppet show, write a letter, or develop a mural with labels);
2. Using rubrics that match and extend students’ varied skills levels;
3. Allowing students to work alone or in small groups on their products; and
4. Encouraging students to create their own product assignments as long as the assignments contain required elements.

 

Learning environment

Examples of differentiating learning environment at the elementary level include:

1. Making sure there are places in the room to work quietly and without distraction, as well as places that invite student collaboration;
2. Providing materials that reflect a variety of cultures and home settings;
3. Setting out clear guidelines for independent work that matches individual needs;
4. Developing routines that allow students to get help when teachers are busy with other students and cannot help them immediately; and
5. Helping students understand that some learners need to move around to learn, while others do better sitting quietly (Tomlinson, 1995, 1999; Winebrenner, 1992, 1996).