Differentiated Instruction

Process

Products

Learning Environment

Using reading materials at varying readability levels

Using tiered activities through which all learners work with the same important understandings and skills, but proceed w/different levels of support, challenge, or complexity

Giving students’ options on how to express required learning (create a puppet show, write a letter, or develop a mural with labels, etc.)

Making sure there are places in the room to work quietly and without distraction, as well as places that invite student collaboration

Putting text materials on tape

Providing interest centers that encourage students to explore subsets of the class topic of particular interest to them

Using rubrics that match and extend students’ varied skill levels

Providing materials that reflect a variety of cultures and home settings

Using spelling or vocabulary lists at readiness levels of students

Developing personal agendas to be completed either during a specified agenda time or as students complete work early

Allowing students to work alone or in small groups on their projects

Setting out clear guidelines for independent work that matches individual needs

Presenting ideas through auditory and visual means

Offering manipulatives or other hands-on supports for students who need them

Encouraging students to create their own product assignments as long as the assignments contain required elements

Developing routines that allow students to get help when teachers are busy with other students and cannot help them immediately

Using reading buddies

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

Helping students understand that some learners need to move around t learn, while others do better sitting quietly (Tomlinson, 1995, 1999; Winebrenner, 1992, 1996)

Meeting w/small groups to re-teach an idea or skill for struggling learners or to extend the thinking or skills of advanced learners

Students are active explorers. Teachers guide the exploration. Because varied activities occur simultaneously in a differentiated classroom, the teacher works more as a guide or facilitator of learning than as a dispenser of information. As in a large family, students must learn to be responsible for their own work. Not only does such student-centeredness give students more ownership for their learning, but it also facilitates the important adolescent learning goal of growing independence in thought, planning, and evaluation. Implicit in such instruction is (1) goal-setting shared teacher and student based on student readiness, interest, and learning profile, and (2) assessment predicated on student growth and goal attainment.

Flexible grouping is consistently used. In a differentiated class, students work in many patterns. Sometime they work alone, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in groups. Sometimes tasks are readiness-based, sometimes interest-based, sometimes constructed to match learning style, and sometimes a combination of readiness, interest, and learning style. In a differentiated classroom, whole-group instruction may also be used for introducing new ideas, when planning, and for sharing learning outcomes.

Ongoing assessment of student readiness and growth are built into the curriculum. Teachers do not assume that all students need a given task or segment of study, but continuously assess student readiness and interest, providing support when students need additional instruction and guidance, and extending student exploration when indications are that a student or group of students is ready to move ahead.

Learners advanced in a subject often benefit from tasks that involve more abstract materials, representations, or applications than less advanced peers.

Simple to Complex

Learners advance in a subject often benefit from more complex resources, research, issues, problems, skills or goals that less advance peers.

Basic to Transformational

Learners advanced in a subject often benefit from tasks that require greater transformation or from manipulation of information, ideas, materials, or applications than less advanced peers.

Fewer facets to multi-facets

Learners advanced in a subject often benefit from tasks that have more facets or parts in their directions, connections within or across subjects, or planning and execution than less advanced parts.

Smaller leaps to greater leaps

Learners advanced in a subject often benefit from tasks that require greater mental leaps in insight, application, or transfer than less advanced peers.

More structured to more open

Learners advanced in a subject often benefit from tasks that are more open in regard to solutions, decisions, and approaches than less advanced peers.

Less independence to greater independence

Learners advanced in a subject often benefit from greater independence in planning, designing, and self-monitoring than less advanced peers.

Quicker to slower

Learners advanced in a subject will sometimes benefit from rapid movement through prescribed materials and tasks. At other times, they may require a greater amount of time with a given study than less advanced peers so that they may explore the topic in greater depth and/or breadth.