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).

We were driving home from my mom’s house a couple weeks ago and the sun was setting. The sky was beautiful with clouds of orange, purple and pink. I point out the window and say to Ryan, “Look at the orange clouds! Aren’t they pretty?”

Ryan: “The clouds are white, mama.”
Me: “No, look up here. See the orange and pink and purple?”
Ryan: “The clouds are just white.”
Me: “Ryan Anthony. Look at that cloud right there. Does that look white to you?”
Ryan: Sigh of frustration. “The clouds are always white, Mom. It’s just the sun that makes them light up.”

So, after laughing for a minute internally, I could say nothing else except, “Well, actually… you’re right.”

His response? “I told you so.”

I am currently a junior at the University of TN at Chattanooga. I am set to do my student teaching in the spring of 2013 and to graduate that May. As I’ve been sitting here going over my schedule for the next two semesters and making sure that all of my graduation requirements are taken care of, the realization hit me that I took SO many classes that I didn’t need while I was at Chattanooga State.

You see, here in Tennessee, we have this great little program called Articulation. It allows students to go to the smaller community colleges to do all of their general education classes at a cheaper rate and then transfer over to a university to finish the bachelor’s. Ideally, the Chattanooga State classes would have just nicely transferred over to UTC and it would have subtracted 60 hours of requirements from my UTC courses.

No. It didn’t.

It took care of quite a few, don’t get me wrong. But had I been at UTC from the very beginning, I would not have needed to take two literature courses, I would have only needed two sciences instead of four, I would not have needed to take World Geography at all, or sociology. Though in those cases I would have needed an additional history and a political science class. I only needed one of the Math for Teacher classes instead of both. I only needed one early childhood development class instead of both. I also would not have needed to take Public Speaking.

That is six classes that would have been totally wiped off the slate had I just STARTED at UTC. That accounts for an entire semester. An entire semester that I’m taking over the summer this year so that I can just be finished with the degree already. A summer that I would not have needed to spend all of my time on had Chattanooga State been with the program or if I would have just started out at UTC to begin with.

The $1000.00 a semester that I saved by going to Chatt State? Yeah, I totally ended up paying for it anyway! Between having six classes that I didn’t need, now I have to take an additional semester that I would not have otherwise had to pay for!

Bah. I should have just stuck to my original plan way back in the beginning… to just take the classes that I knew would transfer easily over to UTC without worrying about the Associates Degree part of the articulation agreement.

Oh well. Live and Learn.

Have you ever realized that you took a class (or several) that you didn’t need at all for your degree?

I have big plans for this blog. First and foremost, I will write about my educational philosophies which are typically directed toward the exceptional learner, particularly the twice exceptional. I am currently attending the University of TN at Chattanooga and my major is in Exceptional Learning K-12. My goal/dream after graduation is to open an independent, non-profit school for twice exceptional kids. If you aren’t sure what all of that is, I’ll explain it in a later post.

My 3 1/2 year old son is amazing. I’ll probably talk about him a lot. He is the inspiration for my school, for he is twice exceptional himself. He’s been given a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, and he is scoring on a Kindergarten level or higher on IQ equivalent tests (they don’t test actual IQ until kids are older). He’s great. He makes me see the world through a new and fresh set of eyes that has not been jaded and exposed to (too much) negativity. He still holds the world in wonderment, and I absolutely love experiencing that with him.

I also have a husband, and as such, I’m sure he’ll get talked about as well. He’s a great guy, for a guy. Above anything else, he is loyal and he fiercely protects not only my beliefs but he stands behind me 100% when I really want to do something. He has his moments, but don’t we all?

On top of my ramblings, you’ll also find reviews. Book reviews, product reviews, movie reviews. Anything that I’ve seen, played with, purchased, or read that kind of fits into the whole education/parent/student/wife thing. I figure that if you’re reading the blog, you must have at least something in common with me… so if I enjoy it, I’ll be sure to pass it along.