Issue 132: Apr 18, 2011 Connections Newsletter
Differentiating Instruction in the Classroom
Denise Burson
Apr 18, 2011
How can I differentiate learning efficiently and effectively in my classroom?
Differentiating instruction is recognized to be an important tool for engaging students and addressing the individual needs of all students. Differentiating instruction means creating multiple paths and opportunities so that students of different abilities, interest or learning needs experience equally appropriate ways to understand, use, develop and present concepts as a part of the daily learning process. The following are some ways to consider differentiating in your classroom:
Vary the learning process: Provide appropriate methods for students to explore the concepts. It is important to give students alternative ways to manipulate the ideas embedded within the lesson. For example, students may use graphic organizers, maps, diagrams or charts to display their understanding of the content learned. Varying the complexity of the graphic organizer can effectively facilitate differing levels of cognitive processing for students of differing ability.
Differentiated by complexity: A rubric is an easy way to differentiate complexity. The assignments should be based on the essential questions, which come from your standards/indicators/objectives you want all of your students to learn. The first step in developing a rubric is to list what content students need to have included when they complete the assignment. Look at your K-U-D Organizer and pull from the list of "knows" on the K-U-D Organizer. Once you have a list of what students must show you they know through their completion of the assignment then you can group any of the items together, and these will become categories that will be assigned points on a rubric. These categories are usually listed on the left vertical column of the rubric. Next decide on the point values for the rubric. These are listed horizontally across the top of the rubric. Most teachers use three or four columns for assigning points. The last column of point values is the lowest score you will accept on the assignment. Ask yourself these questions: Will this show evidence of learning? Is there room for improvement? Is this mastery of the standard? This will make it easier for you to define the points for the other column or two on the rubric.
Adjust Questions: During the lesson direct the higher level questions to the students who can handle them and adjust questions accordingly for student with greater needs. All students are answering important questions that require them to think but the questions are targeted towards the student’s ability or readiness level. An easy tool for accomplishing this is to put posters on the classroom walls with key words that identify the varying levels of thinking.
Tiered Assignments: Tiered activities are a series of related tasks of varying complexity. All of these activities relate to essential understanding and key skills that students need to acquire. Assign the activities as alternative ways of reaching the same goals taking into account individual student needs.
In Leadership for Differentiating Schools and Classrooms, Tomlinson and Allan explain that differentiating instruction is an approach to teaching that advocates active planning for student differences in classrooms. The idea of differentiating instruction is to accommodate the different ways that students learn, as well as a sturdy support in the theory and research of education. Based on theory and research, classrooms using differentiated instruction can meet the needs of most students.
References:
Laurence-Brown, D. (2004) Differentiated instruction: Inclusive strategies for standards-based learning that benefit the whole class. American Secondary Education 32(3), 34-62.
Gregory, G., & Chapman, C. (2002) Differentiated instructional strategies: One size doesn't fit all.
Tomlinson, C. A. & Allan, S. D. (2000) Leadership for Differentiating Schools and Classrooms
Restructuring Instruction through Differentiation
Jennifer Partrick
Apr 18, 2011
How does differentiation support learning?
Tomlinson and Imbeau (2010) quoted Ralph Emerson as saying that if we only learn methods, we are tied to those methods, but if we learn principles, we can develop our own methods (p. 13). They continued by stating that differentiation is a philosophy-a way of thinking about teaching and learning. It is, in fact, a set of principles (p. 13).
A large component of teaching is making sure that your students understand and can interact with any content they are learning. However, what do you do to make sure that your students can interact with the content they are learning? What do you do for your students who are unable to read the book that holds the information they need in order to complete an assignment; for those students who have difficulty writing but must turn in an essay; who cannot complete an assignment because they cannot remember the correct order of steps they are to use in order to complete the assignment? Do you water down the content or water down the task so that your students can complete an assignment and interact with the content? What do you do?
Differentiation is about restructuring instruction in order to make sure that all students are able to interact with the content they are learning. In order to restructure your instruction to meet the needs of your students you must reflect on your instruction, you must know your students, know their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes, you must think about what you do and say; how you instruct, and the result of your instruction on learning. When you do this, you are on your way to differentiating instruction.
Your students come to you with varying degrees of prior knowledge, preferable learning styles, specific feelings about who they would like to work with, the kinds of tasks they prefer to do, feelings towards you and the content, and how long they are able to attend. With this in mind, what can you do to ensure that all of your students not only come to the academic table, but also feast at the academic table? Good teaching takes hard work and long hours. You may not like it but that is how it is. One size does not fit all. You need to think of different techniques that you can use to support all of your students so that they can succeed.
Imagine that you are teaching a math lesson on solving 2 digit multiplication problems with regrouping. Some of your students can already do this before you begin the lesson, some of your students are ready for this lesson, and others struggle with regrouping and are not quite ready for multiplication, but you know that you must expose all of your students to grade level material. At this point, you have 3 different abilities within your classroom, all requiring different support. What do you do? Do you teach them all the same lesson using the same techniques and expect them all to learn? The answer is no! If you teach them all the same lesson, how will that lesson support the students who can already do the work, and those students who are struggling? You must differentiate your instruction if you are going to support all of your students.
Take a closer look at this lesson and attend to how you can use what you know about your students and differentiate the lesson in order to support all of your students. The lesson begins with the Essential Question in order to focus the brain. The lesson then moves right into the Activating Strategy. It could be as simple as having students list all that they know about multiplication, or it could be a Word Splash where there are different terms and students have to discuss which ones they know and which ones they don’t know, or it could be an Anticipation Guide where students are interacting with information regarding multiplication, it could be a discussion about how multiplication is alike and different from adding, and the list could go on and on.
As you move into the Teaching Strategies part of the lesson, begin with modeling the expectation. Then, your students that can already do this work, they work with a group or with a partner, or independently to work out multiplication problems. They could even devise different ways to solve the multiplication problems. Your students who are ready for this information are busy working with a partner or with group practicing what you modeled. They are using manipulatives, may have the multiplication tables in easy reach, or maybe are drawing simple pictures to represent their work. Your students who are struggling, you work with them on the concept of multiplication and share similarities with addition. Share different techniques that they can use to help them understand the concept of multiplication.
Thus you begin with whole group instruction, and then move into small groups in order to differentiate the instruction and the task to meet the needs of the students. After this, you move from group to group giving support as needed. Periodically, you move back to whole group to assess students using Assessment Prompts to make sure that they understand what you have taught thus far.
All groups are working on multiplication but the tasks are differentiated in order to support students so that you know and they know that they understand what has been taught.
So, how does differentiation support learning? Teachers plan lessons and assignments that take into account how their students’ best learn and based on giving students the support they need in order to be successful.
References:
Thompson, M., Thompson, J., and Thompson, S. (2006) Differentiated Assignments. Boone, NC: Learning-Focused
Tomlinson, C. A. & Imbeau, M. B. (2010) Leading and managing a differentiated classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
