Differentiation /
What is Curriculum Differentiation?
“In differentiated instruction, classroom teachers make vigorous attempts to meet students where they are in the learning process and move them along as quickly and as far as possible in the context of a mixed-ability classroom. It promotes high-level and powerful curriculum for all students, but varies the level of teacher support, task complexity, pacing, and avenues to learning based on student readiness, interest, and learning profile.
Differentiation seems a common-sense approach to addressing the needs of a wide variety of learners, promoting equity and excellence, and focusing on best practice instruction in mixed ability classrooms.
Differentiated instruction is not a strategy. It is a total way of thinking about learners, teaching, and learning.”
(Carol Ann Tomlinson, The Education Digest, Jan 2000)
What is Differentiated Instruction?
Differentiation of Instruction is a teacher’s response to learner’s needs guided by general principles of differentiation (respectful tasks, on-going assessment, and adjustment and flexible grouping) where teachers can differentiate content, process and product according to readiness, interest and learning profile. (Carol Ann Tomlinson, 1997)
  • Content - What the student should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of a lesson or unit
  • Process - Activities in which the student engages in order to make sense of or to master the content
  • Product - The vehicle through which a student shows, applies, or extends what he or she has come to understand and can do as a result of a lesson or a unit
Differentiation Strategies
The success of each (differentiation strategy) depends on the needs of the students, the teaching style and skill of the instructor, and the objectives of the educators making instructional decisions in response to state and district learning standards.
The strategies of differentiation are interdependent. Specifically, differentiation is not viable without flexible groups. Flexible groups based on readiness are impossible without assessment. Compacting and tiering instruction cannot succeed without assessment and flexible grouping. Open-ended tasks flow into research....
(Bertie Kingore, Differentiation: Simplified, Realistic, and Effective, 2004)
Strategies are listed in alphabetical order.
  • Curriculum Compacting - A process of compressing the required curriculum into a shorter time period so students who master the basic content faster than others can use the time to do alternative activities. When paired with pre-assessment, it allows the teacher to find out what students already know and not re-teach it to them; find out what students don’t know, and make sure they learn it; and to use the time that is saved for interesting, creative, and challenging activities.
  • Flexible Grouping - Teachers initiate short-term grouping and regrouping of students in response to instructional objectives, demands of the task, and student’s needs: a fluid composition of groups characterized by continual regrouping of students according to skill, readiness, acceleration, cooperative task, interest, learning style, and socialization.
  • Learning Centers or Stations - A physical area of the classroom where students work with an organized set of content-related activities and materials that focus on important learning goals, encourages high-level thinking, and accents content, product, and process skills.
  • Learning Centers (Student Developed) - Through students’ working in learning centers, experience is gained in the process and products of centers, allowing for the creation of student-developed centers that change as different students create additional products and for peer participation in student’s learning.
  • Open-Ended Tasks - Flexible learning activities determined by the teacher signaling that there is more than one way to approach the task and that more than one correct response is possible, encouraging responses with multiple correct ideas at different levels of complexity and understanding.
  • Pre-assessment - Guides teachers’ preparation of student-appropriate instruction, responds t the pace and level of students, and accommodates students’ learning profiles; enables teachers to make informed decisions about students’ learning which in turn enable students to continue learning.
  • Product Options - Products demonstrate and extend student learning as a result of content and process; learning tasks need to encourage variety in the types of products assigned.
  • Research and Independent Study - Develops from students’ interests and responds to the unanswered questions typical of highly- able learners; requires personal interpretations and responses rather than reporting information already in print; is student-interest based, is student-directed, has student-controlled parameters, has investigations of real problems, and is dependent upon skills.
  • Students as Producers - Students become investigators with a producers (teacher determines content area, concepts and skills; student determines format of response; evidence of understanding is beyond factual knowledge) rather than consumers (using up the tasks that teachers prepare; teacher sets all parameters) attitude.
  • Students’ Self-Assessment - Students are partners in assessment, routinely analyzing their achievements and works-in-progress; students monitor their changes as learners and set goals for continued achievements; Rubrics are effective self-assessment tools.
  • Thinking and Inquiry - Teachers use questioning techniques to structure and focus students’ high-level thinking; teachers guide students into reasoning and problem solving as they explore multiple contents.
  • Tiered Instruction - Provides teachers with a means of assigning different tasks within the same lesson or unit (content is the same but the process and/or the products vary according to level of skill attained); tasks will vary according to readiness, interest, and learning profile.