A differentiated classroom is a classroom where a teacher responds to each learner's needs through varied tasks, grouping, and on-going assessment and adjustment. A differentiated classroom is one that recognizes that a "one-size-fits-all" delivery system-one where everyone learns the same thing at the same pace-cannot and will not meet everyone's needs.

Key principles of a differentiated classroom:

• The teacher is clear about what matters in subject matter.
• The teacher understands, appreciates, and builds upon student differences.
• The teacher believes that assessment and instruction are inseparable.
• The teacher adjusts content, process, and product in response to student readiness, interests, and learning profile.
• The teacher ensures that all students participate in respectful work.
• The teacher uses varied rates of instruction.
• The teacher creates an environment where a student competes against himself rather than others.
• A teacher provides specific ways for each student to learn as deeply and quickly as possible.

Teachers can create differentiated activities by modifying:

Content: what students are to learn and the materials or mechanisms through which this is accomplished. Example: Ms. Howe varies the words to be alphabetized in a second grade classroom. Each student is given an alphabetizing board and key tags with various words on them. Some students' key tags contain words such as "car" and "cap," that are a considerable challenge; for other students, words like "choose" and "chose" or "library" and "librarian" are more appropriate.

Process: what key skills students use to make sense out of essential ideas and information. Example: Mr. Keen helps his students review and refine their multiplication skills. Some students work in pairs testing each other with flash cards, other students practice independently on a guided computer program, and a few students work one-on-one with Mr. Keen.

Products: what vehicles students use to demonstrate and extend what they know. Example: In a 7th grade unit on the Middle Ages, Ms. Boutchard focuses students to learn about medieval cathedrals by creating a variety of products such as cathedral stories where the cathedral is the central figure in the story, a model showing the key features of a cathedral, or a book describing the symbols in a cathedral and their meanings to the people who built and worshipped in them.

Learning environment: what classroom conditions that set the tone and expectations of learning. In a third/fourth grade split classroom Mr. Hooper differentiates in his classroom by providing an interest center in the classroom to encourage students to enrich and expand their understanding of topics related to their formal study. The interest center presents a variety of tasks and changes every so often. For instance, during one unit on dinosaurs, the interest center instructs students to: draw a comparison picture of how iguanas are like dinosaurs, read about Chinese dragons and other mythological creatures, or make a dinosaur skeleton from clay.

Suggestions for getting started:

• Examine your philosophy about individual needs.

  It is important for a teacher to think about how you teach and how kids learn. Some questions to ask yourself may be:

  • Which makes better sense, that the teacher does most of the work in the classroom, or that students are the primary workers and thinkers? Why?
  • Should students always need the same book, math problem, or art lesson? Or are they likely to show up at different points of readiness for these activities? Why?
  • Do learners care if they have choices about what and how to learn? Do they care a lot or a little? Why?
  • Is learning richer and more permanent when it's rote or meaning based? Why?

   

• Start small.

  Teachers, like students, are ready for differing degrees of challenge.

• Set reasonable goals.

  Teachers, like students, grow best when they are moderately challenged. Pick one or two of the following ideas to start differentiation as goals for the year.

  • Take notes on your students each day about what works and what doesn't work for each.
  • Assess students before you teach a skill or topic. Study the results and implications.
  • Look at all the work that students do as indicators of student need, not marks in a grade book.
  • Try creating one differentiated lesson per unit.
  • Differentiate one product per semester.
  • Find multiple resources for a couple of key parts of your curriculum.
  • Establish class criteria for products.
  • Give students more choices about how to do work, how to express learning, or which homework assignments to do.
  • Develop an use a two-day learning contract the first marking period, a four-day learning contract the second marking period, and a week-long learning contract the third marking period.

Ideas for this page are from Carol Ann Tomlinson's book The Differentiated Classroom published in 1999 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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