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Differentiated instruction is adapting and planning lessons so that students with all kinds of learning styles can be engaged and understand the material.

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Differentiated Instruction is important to the Early Childhood classroom. Teachers who promote differentiated instruction in their classroom produce students who are more interested and engaged in the classwork.

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Making Decisions

Which students miss out most? It is the student in the middle who doesn't cause problems, who obeys, conforms, and never demands attention. We rarely give her the time of day in our race to take care of the extremes.

I had one of those students in my classroom. He was in my intermediate Spanish class and always sat in the middle. He never said a lot, and he did his work quietly. He wasn't the best in the classroom, and he wasn't the worst. I remember that he did struggle with rolling his rs. One day, he didn't come to class, and we got word that he had committed suicide. Not that I could have done anything to prevent this, but you always have the nagging doubt that perhaps you could have made a difference. In that moment, I vowed to never assume the quiet ones were OK.

Yet even with that, we are pressured to give the students with more needs more attention than those students who have less needs. The largest conflict about differentiated instruction boils up inside of us when we try to assign a grade to that differentiated instruction.

How can we justifiably give the students the same grade when the quality, quantity, or content of the performance is different? I have yet to read a truly compelling argument to answer that question. Most people mumble something about grades being a relative measure of student performance and designed for communication of progress only.

So, this is my attempt to make sense of this dilemma and perhaps calm a few nervous hearts in the process. In my prior post, I discussed the idea of intrinsic differentiation and the role of active learning and active teaching. Now, I want to discuss designed differentiation a bit.

Meeting Students Where They Are

Designed differentiation is the deliberate act of modifying instruction or an assignment in order to customize the effect to match the particular developmental level and skills of a student or group of students. The ideal is to provide equivalent learning activities that cater to the students' strengths but bring all of the students to the same learning objective. On one end of the spectrum is the one-size-fits-all learning activity, while on the other end is the completely individualized learning plan for each student. Although I believe it is time for the latter, realism demands that teachers deal with something that hovers around the middle of the continuum.

The best teachers throughout time have always found ways to reach individual students. Teachers today are no different. We have all sorts of designed differentiation strategies that help teachers offer variety and choice to students of different skills and needs. We can

vary the length or quantity of the assignment.

extend or curtail the duration of the assignment.

change the language of the assignment.

scaffold the learning activity from hard to medium to easy.

compact the activity and teach only what they don't know.

give them learning activities that let them perform the same learning objective with multiple mediums like summarizing a story they have read through narrative, drama, song, poetry, art, or design.

Allow for Do-Overs

There is also a strong movement of simply allowing students to work at their own pace through computer-aided instruction, or SRA-type curriculum. There is one more type of designed differentiation method I believe is underutilized -- the rough draft.

When a student is given a learning assignment to turn in, is it really a learning assignment if they have only one chance at meeting the mastery-level standard? Clearly identified standards of performance are necessary to make this work, but when a student submits a substandard piece of work, rather than assign a grade immediately, we can provide personalized, individual feedback to that student, which includes providing suggestions for improvement and giving it back to the student for revision.

Is there a limit to the number of times this can be done to help a student overcome a particular learning obstacle? Some students might be able to do it right the first time, while others need several revisions. This strategy is the ultimate in designed differentiation.

Typically, we see this kind of opportunity only in English and social studies classes. Why not math and science? After all, if the student eventually gets the concept, isn't that what counts? The thing I like about this approach is that no student is left out -- not even the quiet, no-problem kids.

What are your successes with designed differentiation? What are your challenges? Please share your thoughts.

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Differentiated Instruction Allows Students to Succeed

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Which students miss out most? It is the student in the middle who doesn't cause problems, who obeys, conforms, and never demands attention. We rarely give her the time of day in our race to take care of the extremes. I had one of those students in my classroom.

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Some examples of differentiated instruction include having different level books for different level readers in your classroom and showing ideas through visual, auditory, and physical aspects.

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Make learning accessible to all! Keep your students engaged at all times! No child should be left out! All students can and should learn! We all have heard it and all have felt it- the need, the pull, and the drive to reach every child. In today's 21st- Century classroom the challenge to reach all learners is one that is ever-pressing on the back of every great educator's mind. How can I make sure all of my students are learning? How can I keep all learners engaged? How can anyone find the time to do so? The answers have come in the form of differentiated instruction (DI). For many, the thought of fully differentiating instruction to tailor the lessons to all learners may feel like quadrupling the time spent on lesson planning- time that simply does not exist for teachers in our schools. The following ten books are our top picks for the best book on differentiation. These books take the guess work out of how to implement effective DI in your classroom. The authors will engage with you and show you ways to assess your learners both formatively and summatively, create lesson plans using pre-made ready at your finger tips templates, and show you the value of pushing your students into a greater understanding of the learner they wish to be- perhaps the greatest tool an educator can have is a student who is thirsty for more knowledge. If you're ready to implement best-practice DI, are looking for a resource you can use again and again throughout your career as a teacher, don't hesitate to pick up a copy of one of these books!

6.) Making Differentiation a Habit: How to Ensure Success in Academically Diverse Classrooms

After Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom comes this Diane Heacox great resource Making Differentiation a Habit . Heacox has organized a fantastic resource that will easily sit along side your favorite teacher resources in your classroom. This bookshelf staple holds inside of it endless templates, charts, and more that are developed and sorted to make teaching utilizing DI more straightforward and obtainable. Not only does Heacox include an extra DVD of resources, Heacox walks you through various methodologies for using DI among a variety of learners while giving you tips on how to maintain a flexible approach in your planning and in your teaching. For a reliable, obtainable, and easy to implement guide to DI, this book is a must-have.

Average Review Score: 4.3

Number of Reviews: 21

10.) Differentiating Instruction With Menus: Math (Grades 3-5)

Our final pick is by no mean the end of the line for resources on differentiated instruction, but this is certainly a must-have for those who are looking for ways to engage their learners in mathematics. Laurie Westphal has created a fantastic collection of resources for a number of subject areas and grades using menus. Menus are economies of learning that include learner choice and preference. Menus are based in evidence and encourage learners to engage increasingly more critically with the subject material. In this edition Wesphal examines how to utilize menus to teach whole numbers and operations, fractions, probability and statistics, geometry, measurement, and problem solving. We recommend having the whole host of Westphal books on your shelf, but Differentiating
Instruction With Menus: Math Grades 3-5 is a great place to start.

Average Review Score: 4.1

Number of Reviews: 19

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The 10 Best Books On Differentiation in the Classroom

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Make learning accessible to all! Keep your students engaged at all times! No child should be left out! All students can and should learn! We all have heard it and all have felt it- the need, the pull, and the drive to reach every child.

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Assistive Technology refers to any tool that improves and supports children with disabilities.

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Assistive Technology is crucial to the Early Childhood classroom. Assistive Technology promotes inclusion in the classroom, which provides the opportunity to educate all students in the same classroom, despite the disability. With Assistive Technology, students with disabilities are taught the material in a way that they can better understand it.

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Effect of Assistive Technology in a Public School Setting | American Journal of Occupational Therapy

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Some examples of assistive technology include, hearing aids, which help students who are hard of hearing, hear better. Audio players and recorders, which can be used to help students better focus on listening to words while reading and timers, which greatly help students with disabilities.