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How To Play YouTube Videos In Slow Motion - Tutorial by Agata Ferreira

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How To Play YouTube Videos In Slow Motion - Tutorial by Agata Ferreira

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How can you use slow-motion videos to provide differentiated instruction in an online learning environment?

During class, this tool of slowing the speed of the videos has been an excellent tool. For example, during the hybrid class last week, this video was the main source for the students of 3rd grade. The important aspect of the video was the explanation about the pulleys, but I found the speed of the presenter and the video to quick for the student's English level. Therefore, I had to lower the speed of the video to allow all the students to understand the concept

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‘Embracing Technology’ as a Tool for Differentiation by Agata Ferreira

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‘Embracing Technology’ as a Tool for Differentiation by Agata Ferreira

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Select at least two of the strategies proposed. State how you would adopt and or adapt them to procure differentiated assessment in an online learning environment.

1. Assessing  with technology, as a technology teacher, I like to use different tools and websites to assess my students differently.  One of the websites I use the most is scratch, this allows students to be creative at the same time as use the main blocks to create the video or game. I ask students to use at least a number of blocks seen during the class, and then they are free to use other blocks

2. Another assessing tool I used a lot was Flipgrid, there, students are able to create videos answering some prompts that I ask them on different types of videos, add filters, emojis and other cool things. Then I can give feedback as a video as well or as different types comments.

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What are ways technology can assist teachers apply differentiated instruction?
In Part One, Dr. Nancy Sulla, Anne Jenks, Ge-Anne Bolhuis, Sarah Shartzer, Daniel L. Schwartz, Jessia M. Tsang, and Kristen P. Blair shared their responses. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Nancy, Anne, and Ge-Anne on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here. By the way, you can also now listen to the show on Google Play and Stitcher, in addition to iTunes.

Today, Elizabeth Stringer Keefe, Becky Shiring, Katie Robinson, Dr. Sonny Magana and Dr. Monica Burns contribute their suggestions. I've also included a reader's comment.
Response From Elizabeth Stringer Keefe

Elizabeth Stringer Keefe (@ProfKeefe) is a teacher educator at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University, where she serves as faculty coordinator of Graduate Studies in Autism and regularly teaches about technology for curriculum and communication. Her research focuses on the preparation of special education teachers and teacher education policy. She is co-author of Remixing the Curriculum: The Teacher's Guide to Assistive and Digital Technology, published by Rowman & Littlefield:
Show me a place more complex than the K-12 classroom: a microcosm of our society, comprised of communities of racially, ethnically, culturally, linguistically and economically diverse students who bring their own unique approaches to learning in the door with them--a fact no one knows better than teachers themselves! Teachers have the great responsibility of developing and managing a rich and fluid academic environment to support the needs of this vast array of learners --and need instructional methods as diverse as the students themselves. One answer to this is for teachers to employ technology to expand curricular scope. Consider the myth of the "average" or "traditional" student--an assumption based on the idea that most students learn the same way--that for years has driven instructional methods and groupings--sometimes for efficiency's sake alone. But instead of a singular learner prototype, isn't it more likely that individual learners shift according to the learning demand, resulting in a mix of learning needs and interests within one individual students? Technology can provide the means for teachers to create accessible, diverse curriculum that appeals to a wide array of students while also making it possible for teachers to maintain agency and autonomy over instruction. Sounds great, but how do teachers differentiate instruction with technology amidst the demands of curriculum, assessment, and accountability? A perfect starting point is to layer technology as a complement to traditional approaches. Layering allows teaching to continue to use their preferred instructional methods, but also provides opportunity for additional learning venues that support content goals. Even teachers who declare themselves "technophobes" can benefit from the use of technology in the classroom with simple online tools. For example, traditionally, teachers gauge conceptual understanding by ask-aloud questions designed to initiate discussion, but could spark fuller participation by adding a technology layer like a classroom polling system (sometimes called personal response systems). One example is Poll Everywhere, a free, online polling tool that allows teachers to create interactive questions for students with a variety of ways to respond (text, pictures, etc). This kind of tech layer is a game-changer for students who don't feel comfortable speaking up in class or need a bit more time to process auditory information, but is engaging and appealing for all students. Teachers can also create ways for students to ask instead of answer the questions by layering with technology like Padlet, a technology that allows students to post questions to an online bulletin board. Questions can be posted (either anonymously or publicly!) instead of asked aloud, and the teacher can review with the class to enhance all students' learning. Want to help students access content using tech layers? Teachers can meet common core standards for English Language Arts by adding a layer of Online Magnetic Poetry, which has a variety of uses but can help students' vocabulary, identify inferences, and "write" without writing. Layer traditional text by using digital reading technologies, which includes both e-books and audio books, and immediately make print more accessible and engaging for all learners. Build math conceptual knowledge about fractions with online Legos and develop programming and coding skills (and reasoning, problem solving, and design!) using Scratch (or ScratchJr for students younger than 7). The possibilities are endless--and these technology layers enhance, rather than encroach, upon teachers' time-honored methods. Embracing technology and making it an asset to instruction helps everyone, especially the teacher, by proactively making content accessible and flexible. When instructional materials are versatile, designed with a community of learners in mind, all students can benefit -- regardless of individual learning needs and interests. Response From Becky Shiring
Differentiating in Mixed Ability Classrooms: Making Content Accessible To ALL Learners Finding lesson content that is accessible and comprehensible to all learners within a mixed ability classroom can be challenging. I have always favored using authentic content with students such as news articles, videos and podcasts when I can. But sometimes this content isn't immediately accessible to students out of the box. When we differentiate content, we run the risk of oversimplifying learning tasks for students facing more challenges. But in actuality, many of these students have the ability to complete rigorous tasks, they're just missing the language component. Technology can help play a role in offering these students support so they have the same opportunities as their classmates to complete tasks that promote higher-order thinking and deeper learning. Here are three ways technology helps make content accessible to all learners in a classroom: Personalize Video: Vary Levels of Language Complexity: Adjust Audio Speed: Response From Katie Robinson
Listening for information can be very challenging for some students. If you listen to podcasts, many apps or audio players have the option to speed up or slow down the audio. Simply letting students listen to something at a slower pace can be tremendously beneficial. If you're watching a YouTube video, try pasting the video URL into Differentiate to Empower Ownership in Learning I would venture to guess that differentiated instruction is a goal of every educator in today's classroom. Understanding that our students come to us with a myriad of needs and abilities, teachers strive to create a learning environment that meets all those at one time. At times this can seem like a daunting or even impossible task. Fortunately technology provides educators opportunities to differentiate in new and exciting ways. One of my go-to methods is differentiating the ways in which students demonstrate their learning. How many times have we sat in front of a stack of essays, posters, or even Power Point presentations and wondered if we were going to be grading approximately the same thing on repeat? Differentiating the products we ask our students to create for us alleviates this pitfall and provides students the opportunity to demonstrate their learning while tapping into unique skills and passions. Because the wealth of online creation tools available to students continues to grow this strategy is even more accessible. For example, try taking that essay assignment and allow students to create a video using We Video or Powtoon, a podcast they can post to the classroom blog, or even program in Scratch. Create a tic-tac-toe menu of options that allow students to choose their own path in demonstrating their learning while also showcasing their creativity in answering an essential question or addressing understanding of a unit of study. Keep a classroom list of online technology tools that the students are familiar with or want to learn more about and ask for their input when designing projects and assessments. What tool would work best to demonstrate this type of learning? How can we mash online tools together to achieve our goals? If given the choice, how would you demonstrate to me you mastered this content or skill? These simple questions involve students in the planning stages and provide them with authentic ownership over their learning as well as differentiated products and learning paths. It is important to scaffold these opportunities for your classroom and students. Moving from a few choices, to a larger menu (tic-tac-toe), to complete input and freedom is an effective way to guide students in making effective and successful choices and differentiating their learning. Response From Dr. Sonny Magana
YouTubeSlow Strategies for Differentiating Assessment When considering how to use use technology to differentiate instruction, let's not forget the other side of the instructional coin: assessment. While it's important for teachers to apply digital tools to help students effectively interact with new content knowledge, it's equally important for students to use technology to represent their growth regarding content knowledge. When used well, technology tools can offer multiple pathways for differentiating how students individually express their knowledge gains. One of the most impactful ways to use digital tools in schools is by giving students multiple opportunities to represent their knowledge growth over time. We refer to this strategy as student-generated assessment because the locus of control for the assessment process rests with individual students (Magana & Marzano, 2014). Student-generated assessments originate from a student's own unique set of cognitive constructs and prior knowledge. When students are given the opportunities to generate multiple ways of representing their knowledge, they begin to take ownership for the process of representing what they know and are able to do, and how they think about their learning (Magana, 2017). Student-generated assessments may also offer a more reliable means for students to authentically express their learning. Talking about their knowledge gains allows students to engage in a kind of reflection-in-action as they express the thinking journeys that underpin their particular knowledge representations "in the moment." Students also tend to make more complex decisions about the phrasing they choose as they develop elaborations and analogies, and provide evidence that supports their learning claims. This rich assessment information allows teachers to more accurately determine the quality and the correctness of students' thinking processes. This is a far more informative, and therefore valuable, way of assessing authentic student knowledge gain (Magana & Marzano, 2015). One can readily see why this highly personalized form of assessment can be so powerful. One can also see why this process is so rarely used; it takes so much more time than administering and grading teacher-generated assessments. Enhancing student generated assessments with technology provides learners with unlimited options for representing, capturing, and archiving what they know (declarative knowledge), what they can do (procedural knowledge), and perhaps more importantly, to make their thinking explicit (Magana, 2017)Consider having students use free digital tools such as Audacity to record an oral representation of what they know, what they are able to do, and how they think about their learning. You can also have students use multimedia tools such as VoiceThread to record a layer of narration over a PowerPoint presentation, word-processing document, or image files. Students can also use a variety of screencast tools such as Screencastify, Camtasia, or Screencast-O-Matic to record annotations and narration on any file that appears on their computer screen. There are no limits to how students might creatively use these tools to represent their learning. Students can use these digital tools, along with many others, to capture, archive, and share knowledge artifacts with their teachers and classmates. Differentiating assessment through student-generated assessment practices is reflective of the T2: Transformational Technology use state of the T3 Framework for Innovation in Education (Magana, 2017). The next time you think about differentiating instruction with technology, stop and think about how you might differentiate assessment strategies with technology. You may be surprised by the amount of effort students invest, and the quality of thought they represent digitally. References Magana, S. (2017). Disruptive classroom technologies: A framework for innovation in education (pp. i). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Magana, S. & Marzano, R. J. (2014). Enhancing the Art and Science of Teaching with Technology. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree. Magana, S., & Marzano, R. J. (2015). Leveraging technology, increasing performance. In J. Bellanca (Ed.), Connecting the dots: Teacher effectiveness and deeper professional learning (pp. 181-202). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree. Response From Dr. Monica Burns
. The multimedia artifacts created by learners are in fact digital thought products that can be digitally archived and accessed by teachers, and potentially other students. These may include, but are not limited to: sound files, images, videos, the spoken word, oral narrations embedded in text, music, poetry, song lyrics, or any digital file that includes, rather than excludes, a rich variety of multi-media. Imagine you are walking around the room as your students are exploring a new math topic. You swipe your finger across the screen and each student now sees a picture of a coordinate plane on their device. They've been busy working in partners to plot points on a shared page but now their screen gives them a space to label the X- and Y-axis and plot points on their virtual coordinate plane. As soon as they press "Send" they dive back into their partner work and you instantly receive 30 images of each student's coordinate plane. With technology tools we can use formative assessment data to differentiate instruction. As you quickly skim through the images students submitted you'll soon see which students in your class are having trouble figuring out how to label and plot points on a grid. You now have information that can help you make a decision about differentiated instruction. When used effectively technology can do more than gather data, but also help differentiate instruction. If you notice a student is struggling with a new concept, has a misconception or quickly demonstrates mastery, technology tools can support, clarify, or extend a learning objective. As an intervention after this example lesson, you might (1) share a how-to video hosted on YouTube that reviews the concept, (2) provide students with an opportunity to explore an interactive number line. Educators can use technology to differentiate instruction with tools like Nearpod (to embed questions), Khan Academy (to review a concept or extend a lesson) or Math Learning Center apps (for hands-on practice), just to name a few! I call the use of technology for formative assessment #FormativeTech. In a classroom where differentiated instruction takes place, technology tools can help educators identify student needs and access materials to support or extend this lesson. Responses From Readers The most common form of student-generated assessments are conversations between students and teachers in which students verbally express their understanding of newly acquired content knowledge to their teachers. Rather than simply choosing one right answer out of a predetermined series of choices, students engage in more rigorous thinking strategies as they craft, share, and defend deeply personal and informative narratives regarding their learning. and then click the settings wheel to choose your desired speed. This also works well for students who want to move at a faster pace by speeding audio up a notch. There are a variety of sites such as or Just a reminder--you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And, if you missed any of the highlights from the first six years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. They don't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. Look for the next "question-of-the-week" in a few days. Smithsonian Tween Tribune that offer news articles at different Lexile levels. This way students can all read the same article, just at an appropriate level of complexity. Included in these sites are comprehension checks and the ability to capture data. "Video Clipper" tools like or allow students to access video at their own pace. Teachers can insert audio, questions and helper text. Students are able to re-watch segments of a video and turn on subtitles. These programs also collect rich data like the number of video views and question responses to help teachers monitor progress.
Katie Robinson is the Technology Integration Specialist and Exploratory Design 7 teacher at Episcopal Collegiate School in Little Rock, AR. She believes that we need to inspire our students to be life long learners and risk takers:

Dr. Sonny Magana is an award-winning educational futurist, best-selling author, and pioneering educational technology researcher. Sonny is a highly sought-after leadership consultant, speaker, and instructional coach with more than thirty years' experience helping educational systems around the world realize the power of transcendent learning. The author of numerous research studies and articles, Sonny's newest book, Disruptive Classroom Technologies: A Framework for Innovation in Education, was recently published through Corwin Press:

Dr. Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, EdTech & Curriculum Consultant, international speaker, and Founder of ClassTechTips.com. Her new book #FormativeTech: Meaningful, Sustainable, and Scalable Formative Assessment with Technology is now available from Amazon and Corwin Press:

Use a simple Google Doc to provide links with scaffolding for research projects.

-- Joy Bennett (@SpiritOfJoy19) June 20, 2018

Thanks to Elizabeth, Becky, Katie, Sonny and Monica, and to readers, for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Anyone whose question is selected for this weekly column can choose one free book from a number of education publishers.

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Response: 'Embracing Technology' as a Tool for Differentiation (Opinion)

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The new question-of-the-week is: What are ways technology can assist teachers apply differentiated instruction? In Part One, Dr. Nancy Sulla, Anne Jenks, Ge-Anne Bolhuis, Sarah Shartzer, Daniel L. Schwartz, Jessia M. Tsang, and Kristen P. Blair shared their responses. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Nancy, Anne, and Ge-Anne on my BAM!

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Five Tips for Getting Started With Differentiation in a Secondary Classroom - Jhonatan Betancourt

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Five Tips for Getting Started With Differentiation in a Secondary Classroom - Jhonatan Betancourt

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May some of the tips suggested work for your teaching context. Why? Why not?

I consider pre-assess as a great strategy to work with my students. Pre-assessment helps us, as teachers, to identify students' abilities related to our learning goals. Pre-assessments can be efficient and robust as long as we design our classes, considering students' needs. Also, the most meaningful strategy I will use is to Tweak an existing task. I used to think of differentiation as the creation of a vast list of educational options. But the most efficient differentiation strategy is to "tweak" or adjust aspects of an assignment to create versions that students find more accessible, more advanced, or enjoyable.

Are there other ideas you can come up with?

I do need to start thinking from a differentiated perspective!

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Differentiation in middle and high school doesn't need to involve designing eight different assignments, orchestrating complex group work, or turning the physical space into a kindergarten room. At its core, differentiation simply moves all students toward and beyond common and important learning goals. Sometimes, students share a route toward those goals. Other times, ongoing assessment compels teachers to plan different routes that vary by readiness, interest, or learning preferences.

Teachers have many "entry points" to planning and implementing lessons and tasks that anticipate and respond to students' needs. Here are five:

Experiment with various groupings.

Differentiation refers to adjustments that teachers make in response to student performance-not the way students are grouped, per se. In a differentiated classroom, students work in a variety of configurations-from whole-group to individual to pairs to other small groups-for different reasons. Before giving students customized assignments that are aligned with the same goals, get them used to collaborating with others-even if it's only for a few minutes to discuss a question or two. Consider having not one seating chart, but rather various seating arrangements that differ by your purpose for the day (e.g., a small-group discussion seating chart, a Socratic seminar seating chart). Another quick strategy is to have students quickly line up according to a preference (say, how much they like hot dogs, with haters at one end and lovers at the other) or characteristic (birth month and day). Put students into groups of your desired size, or "fold" the line and group students from there. Various groupings, from more random to more purposeful, build classroom community and set the stage for targeted differentiation.

Tweak an existing task or question.

Many teachers are understandably wary of differentiation because they believe it involves creating a laundry list of options. In truth, some of the best (and most efficient) differentiation strategies simply "tweak" or adjust aspects of an assignment to create versions that certain students find more accessible, more advanced, or more interesting. This adjustment might involve varying the problem, challenge, or situation at the heart of the task; the product that students generate from the task; or the topic that students explore to make sense of a bigger concept.

Pre-assess.

Pre-assessment finds out "where" students' abilities lie relative to your goals for a unit before that unit begins. You aren't looking for ways to differentiate as much as you are gaining a general sense of how students approach the content. Pre-assessments can be efficient and powerful, as long as you design them to gauge conceptual understanding and not just facts and skills. A simple science example follows:

1. Imagine that you are designing an experiment to test [the effect of certain variables on plant growth]. Write a question that could guide your experiment.

2. Create a chart to show three variables that you could test, how you could test them, and why you would test them.

3. In this experiment you've designed, which variables are independent? Which variables are dependent? How do you know?

Such prompts can help the teacher spot significant misconceptions and skill gaps, as well as identify advanced thinking. The first few times you give a pre-assessment, focus less on discerning specific patterns among responses and more on how your findings might inform your general planning of all lessons in the unit.

Check if they're getting it

Like pre-assessment, this classroom-level formative assessment doesn't need to be complicated. Many teachers use exit slips to pose several questions at the end of a lesson to gauge individual student understanding. For example, after a lab, a science teacher might ask:

What was the independent variable in today's experiment? How do you know?

What was the dependent variable in today's experiment? How do you know?

What did you find out about the relationship between the independent and dependent variable?

Build on a familiar strategy.

Differentiation is not a set of strategies; rather, it provides a way to think about teaching and learning. This is good news, because secondary teachers can use many strategies-such as RAFT and Jigsaw-as vehicles for differentiation by keeping a few key principles in mind. No matter what, teachers should align all differentiated tasks with the same learning goals and with one another. If you feel like you need different rubrics or sets of criteria to evaluate each task, for example, there's a good chance that your lesson plan is simply different, but not differentiated. All tasks should be engaging, appealing, require high levels of thought, and equal in terms of workload and time for completion.

Because secondary teachers often teach 100+ students a day with multiple preps, you may want to focus initial differentiation efforts-including the entry points listed above-on one class period or course. As the process becomes more familiar,you can begin incorporating it into additional classes.

Ultimately, any middle or high school teacher should focus less on "doing differentiation" and more on building their skills in planning learning experiences-differentiated and otherwise-that help students meet or progress beyond goals and standards.

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Five Tips for Getting Started With Differentiation in a Secondary Classroom

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Differentiation in middle and high school doesn't need to involve designing eight different assignments, orchestrating complex group work, or turning the physical space into a kindergarten room. At its core, differentiation simply moves all students toward and beyond common and important learning goals. Sometimes, students share a route toward those goals.

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Faculty conversation: Carol Tomlinson on differentiation - Jhonatan Betancourt

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Faculty conversation: Carol Tomlinson on differentiation - Jhonatan Betancourt

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Empirical evidence for the effectiveness of differentiation

Tomlinson pointed out that teachers accept the responsibility of making sure that every kid learns as well as they possibly can when teachers take on the responsibility of teaching. Moreover, teachers face many challenges every day in their teaching practice, and it is not easy to work from a differentiated perspective. In my teaching experience, I just remembered a specific moment in which I was teaching how to read in Spanish to very young learners. More or less the 50 % of students were progressing with the methodology implemented, and I had to find other methods and strategies to work with the other percentage.

In your view, may differentiated learning be effective in online learning environments? How? Why?

From my experience, working in virtual environments let us know many new perspectives in education. We find many teachers worldwide who work with students’ learning styles, and they assume that they have differentiated instruction. However, as Tomlinson mentioned, they have neglected readiness differentiation, interest differentiation, how culture influences us, how gender influences us, and how intelligence preferences influence us.

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School of Education and Human Development | University of Virginia

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In education circles, Carol Ann Tomlinson is known as the guru of differentiation. Her research-based work is in such high demand that she has made more than 700 presentations and keynote addresses to school districts and professional associations across the country and abroad since joining the Curry School in 1991. She has authored 17 books on the topics of differentiated instruction and curriculum, some of which have been translated into twelve languages. In this Curry conversation, Tomlinson offers her take on what makes differentiation so important for students.
What is the essence of differentiation?

Tomlinson: Differentiation is an instructional approach to help teachers teach with individuals as well as content in mind. Differentiation really means trying to make sure that teaching and learning work for the full range of students, which really should be our goal as teachers. We've often taught as though all the kids in the classroom are wired exactly alike to learn, as though they should come in programmed to learn on the teacher's schedule. Really, to me, differentiation is the common sense of saying, if we take on the responsibility of teaching, we accept the responsibility of making sure that every kid learns as well as he or she possibly can.

What empirical evidence exists for the effectiveness of differentiation?

Tomlinson: The model of differentiation that I've been working with is sort of a Robin Hood model - it steals from lots of discipline areas and tries to synthesize what we know from many specialties into one specialty. Some of what we talk about in differentiation really comes from the work of special education and has been there for a long time. Some of it comes from gifted education. Some of it comes from the field of reading and how you work with students in developing literacy when they don't master the skills right on schedule. There's work that comes from the emerging and new science of the brain. And things that people have done in multicultural education.

What we've tried to do with this model is to synthesize a lot of those things so that it fits together as a whole and so the teachers don't have to go to 14 places to find guidelines and strategies they need. The research that supports the principles and practices of differentiation comes from many specialties.

There is also newer research that suggests academic benefits to the model's key principles and practices. There's always the caveat that it's easy to say you use a model and much harder to maintain fidelity to that model. What we find, not surprisingly, is when somebody differentiates effectively, the gains are really strong. The trick is always to help people understand that you can't pick and choose pieces of a model, implement five percent of it and dismiss the other 95 percent.

What is the strongest argument for differentiation?

Tomlinson: The strongest argument for differentiation to me is looking at the kids sitting in the classroom. It's rare to go into a classroom where kids are all from the same language group, the same culture, the same socioeconomic status, the same background experience, the same wiring in terms of abilities, areas of weakness, that sort of thing. Realizing how seldom you go into a classroom and find virtually everyone fully engaged and participating in an optimistic way signals a need for instruction that addresses individual variance as well as common content requirements. We have way too many students who bring to school with them needs and differences that we just don't take into account in our thinking and planning. And we fail many learners when we do that.

What are some of the misconceptions educators hold about differentiation?

Tomlinson: The model of differentiation is very multifaceted, but it can be boiled down to three student needs which call for differentiating instruction: student readiness, student interest, and student learning profile. Learning profile refers to preferred modes of learning and has four facets-gender, culture, learning styles, and intelligence preferences.

We find a good number of classrooms where teachers do some work with students' learning styles, and they assume that they have therefore differentiated instruction. In essence, they have picked one fourth of one third of the information that we have about significant differences in learners for which they plan a response. In other words, they have neglected readiness differentiation, interest differentiation, how culture influences us, how gender influences us, and how intelligence preferences influence us and assume that if they've done something with learning styles they've done what needs to be done.

"Not to address readiness and to assume that a focus on learning styles is going to take care of everything, is generally way off base."

We have such a huge range of readiness in classes that not to address readiness and to assume that a focus on learning styles is going to take care of everything, is generally way off base. In terms of both needs of learners and in terms of what research tells us, readiness is where we need to begin and focus, and then we can open things up by looking at those other categories.

Another misconception is that our current massive emphasis on testing speaks to a need for standardization-everybody needs to pass the same test under the same circumstances on the same day, with the same parameters. I think that whatever your learning outcome needs to be, even if you think it needs to be highly standardized, students will still learn at different rates. They need to be taught in different ways, and they need different materials or approaches to learning. So as paradoxical as it may sound, the need for differentiation is even more critical if you're supposed to get everybody to the same point at exactly the same time-not less so. Differentiation doesn't suggest changing the outcome for students, but rather finding different avenues to success with those outcomes.

Why are some school leaders reluctant to integrate differentiation in the classroom?

Tomlinson: What I more commonly find is leaders who ask for or demand differentiation but don't know how to support it fully or wisely enough. They are typically people who believe they are doing the right thing, but function in counterproductive ways. I hear really often, "We're going to do differentiation in our school this year." Differentiation is one of those things that people who are experts in the field of change call second order change. First order change is the kind of thing most teachers can implement with modest effort. Differentiation requires second order change. It really requires many teachers to change their approach to teaching as a whole-how we think about students and their capabilities, how we use assessment, how curriculum is crafted, flexible instruction to ensure that students go where they need to go. Perhaps most challenging, it asks teachers to learn to handle a classroom where two or three or four things are sometimes happening at the same time.

Second order change is demanding. It's also much more promising.

People whom we find providing teachers with sustained and intelligent support understand that they are there for the long haul, that everyone needs to be immersed in the ideas, that they don't ever go away, that they're in the foreground all the time, that you can hear the drum beating constantly. I don't find a whole lot of leaders saying, "No I don't want to support this. This doesn't make any sense." What I find is people who support the transition to differentiation as though it were a first order change and don't understand the depth of leadership required to facilitate second order change.

This sounds really hard to do. How do you make it happen?

Tomlinson: It is hard to do. When you look at the literature on expertise, one of the differences between an expert and a novice is that experts see many different aspects of what's going on around them, they know what those elements mean, and they know how to respond to them in targeted ways. They know what to dismiss and what to act on. Differentiation asks for that expert level of discrimination when observing and responding to students in a learning context. So the question becomes, "How do we help teachers develop expertise?"

Where we see differentiation really thrive, we see principals who understand the power of knowing and responding to students and who are willing to lead consistently and persistently in order to help teachers do so.

In any school you'll find some teachers who realize that differentiation makes the classroom work much better for many more students. Those teachers will develop the skills of responsive or differentiated instruction on their own. To change a whole school takes a principal who has vision, understands where teachers are on a continuum toward achieving that vision, knows what to do to help or get help to support each teacher's growth, and in effect, differentiates for the faculty.

Where leadership for differentiation is effective, you have leaders say, "Sure, it's hard, but there's a way to get there and we'll work together to learn how to make all of our classrooms responsive to all of our students." The leaders literally help teachers enact change in their own classrooms. They bring teachers together in teams to share insight and to support one another. It's that sense of intelligent, persistent leadership that signals the difference between a school where a few teachers get better at attending to the learning needs of students and one where everyone is invested in that goal.

We see differentiation catching hold either in individuals or in little clusters of individuals where there is a really strong department chair or a really strong grade-level leader. When the school as a whole is focused on addressing the full range of learner needs, it's inevitably the principal's leadership that makes the difference.

What the secret to managing differentiation in the classroom

Tomlinson: One of the major obstacles for teachers in learning to differentiate instruction is figuring out how to handle a classroom where the teacher is not in front of the kinds all the time pulling the strings like a master puppeteer. We're used to frontal control in classrooms. The differentiation philosophy indicates that students become stronger learners when they can accept more responsibility for their own learning and when they become more proficient in understanding their goals, their status relative to those goals, and how to adjust their approach to learning in order to achieve the goals.

The case that we've tried to make in our new book [ Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom, co-authored with Marcia B. Imbeau] is that there are two elements that teachers need to think through: leading people and managing details. Leading people involves asking students to consider what it feels like when the classroom doesn't work for them or for their friends, to envision what a classroom would be like if it functioned in a way that helped each student grow as far and fast as possible-and to participate in developing that kind of classroom.

When you go into classrooms where teachers lead kids in that way, management is not the problem we tend to think it is, because kids feel empowered and interested and invigorated.

Still, however, there is the need to make sure the room doesn't get too noisy or that the materials aren't all over the place when students leave. There are plenty of details that need managing, but when teachers do that in the context of leading their students to help create a more effective place to learn, handling the details works much more smoothly and naturally.
by Lynn Bell This article appeared in the Spring 2011 edition of Curry magazine.

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Faculty Conversation: Carol Tomlinson on Differentiation

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In education circles, Carol Ann Tomlinson is known as the guru of differentiation. Her research-based work is in such high demand that she has made more than 700 presentations and keynote addresses to school districts and professional associations across the country and abroad since joining the Curry School in 1991.

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Differentiating Instruction: It’s Not as Hard as You Think by Agata Ferreira

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Differentiating Instruction: It’s Not as Hard as You Think by Agata Ferreira

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Which of the differentiated strategies mentioned in the video do you consider are transferable to online learning environments?

R: One of the differentiating strategy could be to allow students to choose a topic without leaving the objective aside. Also, collaboration and team effort can be transferable to online environments.

Provide at  three examples.

1. Students might choose a topic of which they have to create an infographic with some specific information given by the teacher
2. For different activities the groups may change for a high level of understanding, a group with low and high achievers can be created. For activities that are art focused, the leaders could be the artistic ones.
3. Have different types of readings or videos that will have the same purpose for the teacher

Dear Agata:
Thanks for the insightful comments you posted. I agree with you, collaboration is a essential pillar to a successful class as it allows the teacher and students to interact socially with each other to convey needs, praise and more importantly, to learn in collaboration with each other.
Jhonatan

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Differentiating Instruction: It’s Not as Hard as You Think

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Differentiated learning - Jhonatan Betancourt

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Differentiated learning - Jhonatan Betancourt

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The self-evaluation of instructional styles made me reflect upon how my principles sometimes differ from my actions. I try to do many activities with other purposes considering learning styles and giving students the opportunities to learn in different ways but, I usually assess all my students in the same way. So I plan and design having "differentiated learning" in my mind, but I do not apply the same principles in the assessment part. I firmly believe that teachers should plan their classes taking into account students' interests and needs. A great strategy to work on that is through pre-assessment adjusting goals for students. In that way, I have realized through this self-eval, I use a different method from what I used the first time, changing what did not work and making my teaching practice like a cyclic process in which the final state is the new initial starting over and over again with changes if any. At the end of this self-eval, I realized how I do not think in differentiated assessment for all my students; this is a weakness I have to work on that.

To apply differentiated learning, we as teachers need to provide our students diverse classroom opportunities showing different avenues for understanding that is to say all students can learn effectively, regardless of their ability.

Hello Jhonny, Thanks for your honest and useful reflection about your implementation of differentiated learning in your classroom setting. It is great that you have reached this level of awareness because both you and the students can benefit from the adjustments you make to the assessment and learning process. Here you can see some strategies that you may find useful for your context.

Hello Jhonatan,
As I read your reflection I immediately thought how often we cannot meet our teaching expectations in the classroom. I am not sure what specifically it is but teachers always have a hard time fulfilling their teaching goals. When I read about teaching strategies, learn something new or talk to people about the ideas I have for my classroom, everything sounds great and I feel like an amazing teacher. However, at the time of actually developing those ideas I find it difficult to match the schools', parents', other teachers' and students' expectations to my own. Do you have any suggestion to successfully incorporate differentiation in the classroom?

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I have found this topic interesting and relevant considering the fast pace of society and how individuality is promoted.

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Differentiated instruction by Sandra Sanchez

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Differentiated instruction by Sandra Sanchez

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Concept of differentiation

Viewing the classroom as a space where individuals particular needs can be met through careful planning instead of one-fits-all instruction. This planning should respond to learners' abilities, readiness, interests and learning profile.

What does the presenter mean by responsive classes rather than one size fits all?

Start looking at learners as individuals and not as a group. Try to understand learners identity: their learning profile, interests, abilities and readiness to learn. Design lessons to teach better and guide learners to accomplish their particular learning objectives not just to cover content. This process entails foreseeing blockages for learning and shaping careful and flexible planning.

What are the non-negotiable elements of differentiation?

They are respectful tasks, quality curriculums, flexible grouping, continual assessment and building community.

Your own concept of differentiated learning

Current students bring learning needs to the classroom: these could be in terms of age, ethnicity, culture, social status, background, gender among others. Differentiated instruction is a teaching strategy that facilitates the process of meeting learners' particular needs in the classroom and transform them in successful learners who achieve their particular goals.

How your DL concept fits into your teaching context

As a new ESL student in high school, my students are immigrants from around the world that need to learn the language so they can succeed in other classes. These students range between 15 and 18 years old, their time in the US goes from 5 to 1 year and so is their English process. Differentiation in my current classes is not an additional instructional practice but a necessity. After only 5 days of class with these learners I am in the observation and diagnostic period, identifying their particular needs and thinking of strategies that would allow me to meet them. I see a long way ahead of me, but I am confident I will get to lead the group to accomplish individual goals.

Two ideas to differentiate by content  in the OLE you are currently crafting?

One of my classes is English intermediate, this class is supposed to be thought to ESL students as natives learn it. It means focusing on reading comprehension and writing focused on literary texts. In this class I have varied English levels (based on my perceptions) from -A1 to B1. So I have decided to use different content to teach the same subject to students with different needs. I am going to propose three different graphic stories, they are different in terms of length, lexical resources, and grammar. My intention is to propose somehow similar activities that students can do while still implying a bit of challenge ( not too much so they do not get easily frustrated). Another idea is to integrate technology in the class and pre-select some reading suggestions for learners, they can access the reading assignment they consider better suits their learner's profile; I would still need to design a strategy so students do not choose texts that are beneath their level just because they want the task to be easy.

Two ideas to differentiate by process in the OLE you are currently crafting.

For differentiating the process I will try to appeal to students skills; so I'm going to ask them to report their understanding of the story read through storyboards, graphic organizers, recordings or texts, anything that I can use to verify students have comprehended the gist of the story and are able to show critical thinking skills. Also, flexible grouping may give learners the opportunity to work together and share with other learners that read the same book and interpreted something similar or different to what they did; or to exchange stories, ideas and experiences with other learners who had a different reading assignment.

Two ideas to differentiate by product in the OLE you are currently crafting.

Considering that the process may be different the product can be the outcome of students' choices. They can have different products that display their understanding of the stories read along with some kind of analysis of how the story is reflected in real-life scenarios.

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Differentiating learning self-evaluation by Agata Ferreira

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Differentiating learning self-evaluation by Agata Ferreira

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While doing the reflection on the self-evaluation about instructional design, I have noticed that I have some questions on the lowest level (left level) of the differentiation level. Therefore, I detailed went to each one of the questions to see why I had those results.
Q1: All the students complete the same activities.
Q6: Learning goals are the same for all the students
Q10: I use the same assessment or project for all students

These answers were closer to the left side, but thinking in dept about them, they have somehow differentiation during the learning process within the school assessment policies. The performances level were created understanding that each student will reach a goal differently, there are some students that can reach the basic level of the objective, some will be able to go further and get high or even superior  level of understanding of the same goal. In that sense, the assessment and goals are the same for everyone.

On the other hand, there are questions in which the answer were neutral.
Q3, Q4 and Q5
These questions had similar answers because I either use one or the other strategy based on the grade of the students and the learning objectives that I have for them. For primary school, creating groups based on some abilities could help or not, depending on the closeness of each student.  Also, I take into consideration that some vocabulary I will work with grades such as 1st and 2nd, is new, so I eventually start the unit with the same strategies to engage them to the new words and the class itself.

Thanks a lot for your honest and useful reflection Agata. By the way, I am glad to hear form you. I was missing your contributions and active participation in the course. But I am glad to see you around.

I took the liberty to highlight a section of your very useful reflection (above) to comment on the importance of adapting learning objectives to the Ss' level. That is a very important move.
Please explore these examples  with some inspiring ideas to continue giving choice options to your students.

Patricia

Hi Agata, thank you for sharing your experiences. I can definitely relate to your reflection. However, if the goals are the same and some students get the basic level, medium or higher, for me, it still means that all students' abilities are "measured equally" and low-achievers will have a hard time as they will feel all they could get was the " basic level". As a teacher I do understand your point, because we to tend to see those results as something they got to do, specially after they have struggled for a while. However, it would be nice to see how each student has progressed and has raced against themselves, the way I see it is compare them from point A to point B and see how much they have advanced, despite the way the whole class has advanced. Do you think that is possible in your current teaching environment?

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Differentiation depends a lot on factors both from the outside and the inside of the classroom. It pretends to avoid that students feel alone trying to figure out what is going on in the lessons, quite opposite to this, it’s purpose is to guide students to attain their particular goals and see how they progress after that. Differentiated instruction does not imply that students are going to do more or they are going to do less than the rest of the group, but that whatever they do in the classroom is within their possibilities while being a bit pushed to advance. For me it has to do with Vigotsky’s Zone of proximal development and can be mediated by the teachers through carefully tailored teaching strategies. The way I see it it does not have to do with kids getting the same scores in proficiency tests, but leading them to scaffold their learning and gain the confidence they need to achieve higher goals each time.

Hello Sandra. Thanks for this reflection. Can you please address the questions provided in the Google doc where you signed up for two resources?
Cheers.

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Station Rotation: Differentiating Instruction to Reach All Students

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Differentiated learning by Sandra Sanchez

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Differentiated learning by Sandra Sanchez

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What I have noticed is that I have a keen eye for identifying my students’ needs and abilities, however I used to follow the school’s instruction verbatim. This meant there was little space for students to have access to different content, practice or product. Some practices from the self-assessment that were more common in my classes included giving learners the possibility to choose a topic of their interest and present information they found worth sharing. They could choose what sorts of visuals to use to explain their topics such as posters, graphic organizers, diagrams or slides. Students could choose their groups, however this usually represented a problem because they only chose their friends of people they got along with. Probably having a flexible grouping system would have promoted more interaction and would have allowed other needs to emerge. Something that is intrinsically part of Colombian education is the lack of differentiation in terms of goals, except for medically certified cognitive or physical differences. All students must attain the same learning goals and in many situations learning difficulties are dropped to parents.

As many other situations that take place in the classroom, stiff curriculums that incorporate lots of content, classroom management practices, lack of time and resources can negatively impact teachers spirits to do things better. When thinking of differentiated classrooms the fear of overwork pops out in teachers’ minds and usually motivation drops.

Q1 : I try to give students a chance to select from a choice of activities, as appropriate, in a unit. But this does not happen all the time.
Q2: I use mostly whole class instruction
Q3:  I usually allow student to choose their groups. I do not particularly pay attention to their interests or needs.
Q4: I try to incorporate different teaching strategies, but they mostly attain the groups' needs.
Q5: I do not apply a formal pre-assessment, but I try to be very observant of students' attitudes, skills and performance in class.
Q6: In reteaching, I use a different method from what I used the first time.
Q7: Enrichment work demands critical thinking and production of new ideas.
Q8: I use ongoing summative assessment to check learning.
Q9: I do my best to provide a variety of ways for students to demonstrate skills, I still need to work on this area.

Thanks Sandra for this useful reflection. As you mentioned, unfortunately stiff curricula are the characteristics of many school and other educational setting in the country which limit the educators action towards the creation of differentiated classrooms. What results did you obtain when you answered the questions in the instrument?

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1. Use this and any other post-its to share your findings on the exploration of  Basics of differentiated learning. You can share your answers to the questions there provided in note form,  screencasts or videos.

2. Don't forget to pay a visit to your classmates' products.

3. Ask them any questions (or comments)   using the space in this wall. Don't forget to reply to their questions.
(this activity is due Tuesday 31 of August, 8:00 AM)

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1. Please share in this space  the results of the self-evaluation instructional design form 🙀
(you can express your results in terms of how close your responses were to the right side of the scale)

2. What factors do you consider have an influence on your use of the teaching strategies presented in the instrument?
(this activity is due Tuesday 24 of August, 8:00 a.m.)