Issue 149: Sep 12, 2011 Connections Newsletter
Differentiating your Curriculum to Meet the Needs of all Students
Debbie Cargill
Oct 24, 2011
How do you adjust instruction to meet the needs of individual students?
Each day you are faced with the issue of adapting or adjusting instruction to meet the needs of all students. Classrooms today are filled with a cross-section of students whose needs are as diverse as they are. All students should have access to the same grade-level curriculum. The curriculum should be organized, yet flexible enough to allow for different entry points, learning tasks, and/or outcomes. When students are struggling and not learning what you are teaching, you need to make some adjustments to your instruction to accommodate their needs.
All students are held to the same expectations for mastering the appropriate grade level standards. You must continuously assess, reflect, and adjust instruction to allow for the diversity of the student population. Deciding on the best differentiation strategy depends on the prior knowledge, interests, and abilities that students bring with them. When classrooms allow for flexible grouping, student choice, and access to a variety of materials/resources and you design instruction that is appropriate to students' stages of development, learning styles, strengths, and needs, the emphasis is on what students can do rather than what they can't do.
Some teachers are hesitant to differentiate in math because it may seem too difficult to attempt. In "Beyond One Right Answer," Small (2010) identifies two strategies to think about for differentiating math - Open Questions and Parallel Tasks. Each strategy allows students to think about problem solving in math in different ways and allows you to gather information about the ways in which students approach problem solving in math.
Open questions
* Start with the answer. Instead of asking "What is 36 + 47?" ask instead "I added two numbers and the sum is 83. What numbers might I have added?"
* Ask for similarities and differences. "How are the numbers 10 and 35 alike and different?"
* Allow choice. For instance, "Choose a value for a number in this pattern to work with."
* Ask students to create a sentence. Have students create a specific sentence using the language of mathematics, i.e. length, width, etc.
Parallel tasks
* Allow students to choose between two similar problems.
* Ask common questions for all students to answer which allows for reflection about their own thinking and processing.
Knowing how students solve problems will help you determine how to differentiate in math. When you use your students' thinking processes to guide instruction, differentiation occurs and students begin to develop their own strategies for learning.
Small, M (2010). Beyond One Right Answer. Educational Leadership, Vol. 68, No. 1.
