The Differentiated Classroomtitle

Chapter 1:

What Is a Differentiated Classroom?

...teachers must be ready to engage students in instruction

through different learning modalities, by appealing

to differing interests, and by using varied rates of

instruction along with varied degrees of complexity

Portraits from Schools

Several examples are given from different schools

to illustrate how DI can look...

Mrs. Santos gives several choices for a major science project:

• work alone or with peers to investigate and address a problem
• work in a mentorship role with a person or group in the community using science to address a local problem
• study scientists past and present who have positively influenced the practice of science in an area they have studied
• write a science fiction story based on the science they have studied with the goal of submitting the story to the school's literary arts anthology
• use classroom cameras to create a narrated photo essay that would help a younger student understand how some facet of the science they have studied works in the world
• propose another option to the teacher and work with her to shape a project that demonstrates understanding and skill in science

DI classrooms feel right to students who learn in different

ways and at different rates and who bring to school different

talents and interests.

Chapter 2:

Elements of Differentiation

Teacher Focuses on the Essentials

• ...teacher carefully fashions instruction around the essential concepts, principles, and skills of each subject

Teacher Attends to Student Differences

• ...teacher is well aware that human beings share the same basic needs for nourishment, shelter, safety belonging, achievement, contribution, and fulfillment

Assessment and Instruction Are Inseparable

• ...assessment is ongoing and diagnostic. Its goal is to provide teachers day-to-day data on students' readiness for particular ideas and skills, their interests, and their learning profiles.

Teacher Modifies Content, Process, and Products

• Content-what you want students to learn
• Process-activities designed to ensure that students use key skills to make sense of essential ideas
• Products-vehicles through which students demonstrate and extend what they have learned

All Students Participate in Respectful Work

• respect the readiness level of each student
• expect all students to grow, and support their continual growth
• offer all students the opportunity to explore essential understandings and skills at degrees of difficulty that escalate consistently as they develop their understanding and skill
• offer all students tasks that look-equally interesting, equally important and equally engaging

The Teacher and Students Collaborate in Learning

• Students can provide diagnostic information, develop classroom rules, participate in the governing process grounded in those rules, and learn to use time as a valuble resource

The Teacher Balances Group and Individual Norms

For example, when a learner struggles...

• one goal is to accelerate the student's skills and understanding as rapidly as possible for that learner, still ensuring genuine understanding and meaningful application of skills
• the second is to ensure that the student and parents are aware of the learner's individual goals and growth and the students's relative standing in the class

The Teacher and Students Work Together Flexibly

• they use materials flexibly and employ flexible pacing
• sometimes work together and other times in small groups
• sometimes everyone finishes together and at times some students take more time

Chapter 3:

Rethinking How We Do School--and for Whom

Chapter 4:

Learning Environments That Support

Differentiated Instrution

...student tasks should focus on essential understandings and skills. The tasks should be presented in varying ways so that each student has to stretch beyond his or her comfort zone.

Chapter 5:

Good Instruction as a Basis for Differentiated Teaching

• Engagement is the magnet that attracts learners' meandering attention and holds it so that enduring learning can occur.
• Understanding means the learner has "wrapped around" an important idea, has incorporated it accurately into his or her inventor of how things work

• facts-discrete bits of information
• concepts-categories of things with common elements that help us organize, retain, and use information
• principles-rules that govern concepts
• attitudes-degrees of commitment to ideas and spheres of learning
• skills-the capacity to put to work the understandings we have gained

Standards are a vehicle to ensure that students learn more coherently more deeply, more broadly, and more durably

Key Elements of Curriculum

• Content
• Process
• Product

Chapter 6:

Teachers at Work Building

Differentiated Classrooms

Figure 6.1

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.
• Assessment and instruction are inseparable.
• The teacher adjusts content, process, and product in response to student readiness, interests, and learning profile.
• All students participate in respectuful work.
• Students and teachers are collaborators in learning.
• Goals of a differentiated classroom are maximum growth and individual success.
• Flexibility is the hallmark of a differentiated classroom.

Chapter 7:

Instructional Strategies

That Support Differentiation

Stations-allow different students to work with different tasks. Thy invite flexible grouping because not all students need to go to all stations all the time.

Agendas-a personalized list of tasks that a particular student must complete in a specified time

Complex Instruction-the goal is to establish equity of learning opportunity for all students in the context of intellectually challenging materials and through the use of small instructional groups.

Orbital studies-they revolve around some facet of the curriculum. Students select their own topics for orbitals, and they work with guidance and coaching from the teacher to develop more expertise both on the topic and on the process of becoming an independent investigator

Chapter 8:

More Instructioanl Strategies

to Support Differentiation

Centers

• Learning center-a classroom area that contains a collection of activities or materials designed to teach, reinforce, or extend a particular skill or concept
• Interest center-designed to motivate students' exploration of topics in which they have a particular interest

Entry Points

• Narrational
• Logical-Quantitative
• Foundational
• Aesthetic
• Experiential

Tiered Activities-ensure that students with differeent learning needs work with the same essential ideas and use the same key skills

Learning Contracts-a negotiated agreement between teacher and student that gives students some freedom in acquiring skills and understandings that a teacher deems important at a given time

Other Strategies:

• Compacting
• Problem Based Learning
• Group Investigation
• Independent Study
• Choice Boards
• 4MAT
• Portfolios

Chapter 9:

How Do Teachers Make It All Work

Ways to Get Started

• Examine Your Philosophy About Individual Needs
• Start Small
• Grow Slowly-but Grow
• Envision How an Activity Will Look
• Step Back and Reflect

Chapter 10:

When Educational Leaders Seek

Differentiated Classrooms

As An Instructional Leader:

• Examine Your Beliefs and Goals
• Establish and Share a Vision
• Avoid Overload
• Prepare for the Long Haul
• Start Smart
• Model the Process of Diferentiation
• Examine Policies and Procedures
• Plan Staff Development for the Complexity of Change
• Provide Ongoing Assistance
• Apply Pressure and Offer Support
• Link Differentiation to Professional Responsibility

the Differentiated Classroom

Some Practical Considerations

• Give Thoughtful Directions
• Establish Routines for Getting Help
• Stay Aware, Stay Organized
• Establish Start-Up and Wrap-Up Procedures
• Teach Students to Work for Quality

Responding to the Needs of All Learners

by Carol Ann Tomlinson

Creating a Healthy Classroom Environment

• Teacher Appreciates Each Child as an Individual
• Teacher Remembers to Teach Whole Children
• Teacher Continues to Develop Expertise
• Teacher Links Students and Ideas
• Teacher Strives for Joyful Learning
• Teacher Offers High Expectations and Lots of Ladders
• Teacher Helps Students Make Their Own Sense of Ideas
• Teacher Shares the Teaching with Students
• Teacher Clearly Strives for Student Independence
• Teacher Uses Positive Energy and Humor
• "Discipline" Is More Covert than Overt

• Intelligence Is Variable
• The Brain Hungers for Meaning
• Humans Learn Best with Moderate Challenge
• The Variety of Students we Teach has Increased
• Finding the balance in the Struggle for Equity and Excellence