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Differentiation can only work for Homogenous Settings 

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Differentiation can only work for Homogenous Settings 

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The biggest reason differentiation doesn't work, and never will, is the way students are deployed in most of our nation's classrooms. Toss together several students who struggle to learn, along with a smattering of gifted kids, while adding a few English-language learners and a bunch of academically average students and expect a single teacher to differentiate for each of them. That is a recipe for academic disaster if ever I saw one. Such an admixture of students with varying abilities in one classroom causes even the most experienced and conscientious teachers to flinch, as they know the task of reaching each child is an impossible one.

It seems to me that the only educators who assert that differentiation is doable are those who have never tried to implement it themselves: university professors, curriculum coordinators, and school principals. It's the in-the-trenches educators who know the stark reality: Differentiation is a cheap way out for school districts to pay lip service to those who demand that each child be educated to his or her fullest potential.

The sad truth is this: By having dismantled many of the provisions we used to offer to kids on the edges of learning (classes for gifted kids, classes for kids who struggle to learn, and classes for those whose behaviors are disruptive to the learning process of others), we have sacrificed the learning of virtually every student. In the same Fordham Institute report cited earlier, 71 percent of teachers reported that they would like to see our nation rely more heavily on homogeneous grouping of advanced students, while a resounding 77 percent of teachers said that, when advanced students are paired with lower-achieving students for group assignments, it's the smart kids who do the bulk of the work.

James R. Delisle (2015)

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/01/07/differentiation-doesnt-work.html

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At its most basic level, differentiation consists of the efforts of teachers to respond to variance among learners in the classroom. Whenever a teacher reaches out to an individual or small group to vary his or her teaching in order to create the best learning experience possible, that teacher is differentiating instruction.

Teachers can differentiate at least four classroom elements based on student readiness, interest, or learning profile:

Content – what the student needs to learn or how the student will get access to the information;

Process – activities in which the student engages in order to make sense of or master the content;

Products – culminating projects that ask the student to rehearse, apply, and extend what he or she has learned in a unit; and

Learning environment – the way the classroom works and feels.

Carol Ann Tomlinson (2000)
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-differentiated-instruction

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What a classroom looks like to a student with a learning disablilty

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What a classroom looks like to a student with a learning disablilty

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Currently, many general education classrooms make little adaptation to the individual characteristics of students with learning disabilities. It seems that adding adaptations as "one more thing you have to do," is largely unworkable. Some broader change or restructuring of how classrooms operate seems called for. But, remolding classrooms is not simple, involving something like a "cultural shift." Formidable, though not impossible, this is rather like rearranging the living room with an invisible elephant in the middle-the more you "see" where it is, the less it tramples your efforts.

Kate Garnett (2010)

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-are-classrooms-students-learning-disabilities

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Tomlinson -Differentiation

The Cafe Book

Reading with Meaning

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Close your eyes. Picture yourself in a traditional elementary school classroom. What does it look like? What do you hear? What are the teachers and students doing? Students would be sitting in their desks, set up in rows with the teacher in front of the class presenting a lesson. The students ideally would be sitting quietly, listening as the teacher concludes her lesson followed by the students working independently to complete identical worksheet after worksheet. This cookie-cutter approach to education worked for those students who fall into the middle of the Bell curve. However, what about those who fall at either end of the curve? Did this approach to education meet all of their social and academic needs? NO

Maryland Spicer and Shelby Looney (n.d)

http://literacyinstructions.wikispaces.com/Utilizing+Differentiation+in+Writers+Workshop

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Not to teach to the middle, to teach to all students

not to create completely different lessons but adapt each lesson

Differentiation is more than just the lesson, it also can be the assessments,

materials, process, and activities.

differentiation is modified instruction that helps students with diverse academic needs and learning styles master the same challenging academic content. -— The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement
Updated on Apr 30, 2014

Very important!

Helps all students learn

Many different methods , grouping allows for multiple styles of learning to be done.

No one has the same abilities or learns the same way, grouping allows for a students best area to shine through

All students have the right to demonstrate growth

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it is impractical to try to individualize every lesson for every child, research has shown that teaching to the middle is ineffective. It ignores the needs of advanced students, often leaving them unchallenged and bored, while it intimidates and confuses lower functioning learners. Best practice suggests an alternative: differentiated instruction.

The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement
Updated on Apr 30, 2014

http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Teacher_s_Guide/?page=3

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Differentiation by groups makes it a  21st century collaborative environment

while allowing time to meet students on an individual basis. -Andrew Miller 2012

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-strategies-pbl-andrew-miller

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No two students enter a classroom with identical abilities, experiences, and needs. Learning style, language proficiency, background knowledge, readiness to learn, and other factors can vary widely within a single class group. -Jennipher Willoughby

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/subject/di_meeting.phtml

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The Workshop Model: Assessment Strategies that work

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The Workshop Model: Assessment Strategies that work

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An abundance of formal and informal

assessments each day. You can decide which

activities to count as an assessment for certain students.

Benefits different learning styles by having a variety of assessments. Also workshop gives each student time to practice skills before being assessed. Rather than just teaching and handing out a worksheet, they are able to practice using a variety of different methods. -Angela Bunel (2009)

http://blogs.scholastic.com/3_5/2009/03/the-workshop-model-assessment-strategies-that-work.html

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Limiting teacher lecture and allowing for student discourse, student practice,

and student led learning is imperative.

Lawson (2012)

http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/10/the-mathematical-workshop-model-how-data-differentiation-and-classroom-management-combine-in-an-elementary-classroom/

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Whether learners are struggling, gifted, or in between, they all deserve a year’s worth of growth. When they get two-thirds of each class period to work, the minutes of practice time add up. When there is intentional planning with student work minutes in mind, combined with a teacher by their side conferring and giving targeted feedback, students can’t help but expand their knowledge and increase their skills. This means they can tackle any kind of text with confidence and have the wherewithal to know what they need to do to construct meaning. If we do our jobs well, by listening to teach instead of talking to teach, students should be just as exhausted as teachers at the end of the day—and just as brilliant. - Chris Tovani (2011)

http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/minimize-lecture-workshop-model.shtml

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When differentiating your classroom, don’t leave out the gifted students.  Be cautious that you are assigning open-ended rich inquiry activities instead of more work or always using peer-tutoring and mentoring relationships.  Differentiating should allow ALL students to be enriched.  Differentiating is NOT adjusting the workload assigned based on ability levels or grading differently based on perceptions of students’ capabilities.

http://www.nctm.org/resources/content.aspx?id=22624

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http://www.nctm.org/resources/content.aspx?id=22624

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http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/subject/dimath.phtml

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http://www.learning.ox.ac.uk/support/teaching/resources/group/

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Workshop method of teaching more beneficial then other methods