September 2000 | Volume 58 | Number 1

How to Differentiate Instruction

Standardized Instruction—Effects May Vary

Marge Scherer

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Reconcilable Differences? Standards-Based Teaching and Differentiation

Carol Ann Tomlinson

Are standards-based instruction and differentiated learning incompatible concepts? Many educators, pressured to help their students succeed on high-stake standards and tests, wonder how to address the individual needs of students while preparing them for a standardized curriculum. But, the authors argue, it can—and must—be done. First, educators need to understand how their standards-based curriculum influences the general quality of teaching and learning. Once we ensure that standards-based practices are aligned with positive teaching practices, we can begin to differentiate the curriculum for a variety of diverse learners. With examples of how standards-based curriculum can succeed and fail in real classrooms, the authors emphasize that we must never forsake such positive teaching practices as differentiated learning for inadequately developed standards.

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On the Road to Differentiated Practice

Kim L. Pettig

To say that there is a single, perfect example of differentiated instruction is a contradiction in terms. Differentiated instruction has as many faces as it has practitioners and as many outcomes as there are learners. It is not a trendy quick fix, a new set of blackline masters, or a ready-to-go kit. Instead, many educators learn to practice differentiated instruction through trial and error. Rather than reinventing the differentiated instruction wheel, one district offers advice on the basis of five years experience. They advise educators to work with a buddy, align their curriculum objectives, preassess student knowledge and skills, plan flexible grouping, shift responsibility for learning from the teacher to the students, and provide student choice. The author offers suggestions to elementary and middle and high school teachers of where to start differentiating the curriculum.

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Baby Steps: A Beginner's Guide

Kari Sue Wehrmann

The journey to differentiated instruction starts with small steps. A middle school language arts teacher outlines how she incorporated differentiation into her classroom. She describes three ways to differentiate curriculum, through content, process, and product. She shares four basic tips for approaching differentiating instruction, which she gleaned from research: start small; don't add activities, make them different; offer differentiated activities to all students, not just those labeled gifted and talented; and connect learning to students' interests. She then describes how she progressively increased differentiated instruction activities to her class.

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Differentiating Cooperative Learning

Nancy Schniedewind and Ellen Davidson

When teachers implement cooperative learning thoughtfully and differentiate tasks within it, they can personalize student learning and help students collaborate while challenging each individual. Cooperative learning also encourages students to appreciate their peers' diverse competencies and experiences. Classroom examples illustrate how to differentiate tasks for complexity and quantity within a heterogeneous cooperative group; use high-achieving students' work; employ cooperative groups to enhance individualized work; plan peer tutoring that challenges tutors and tutees; add options for enrichment within cooperative learning; design cooperative activities for multiple intelligences; vary criteria for success; and value cognitive, social, and emotional learning. Teachers who work with heterogeneous cooperative learning groups develop skills along with their students by experimenting, observing, listening carefully to both the academic learning and emotional responses of all the students, and staying focused on personalized learning within a cooperative framework.

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Portraits in Emotional Awareness

Claudia Marshall Shelton

Jerry always fidgets; Jill never stops talking to her friends; John stares into space. Such student behavior is common in classrooms, but how do we encourage these students to become active learners? A three-step process, based on the Human Dynamics model, has students self-assess their learning dynamics, collaborate with their teacher to identify their emotional competencies, and complete a contract to strengthen classroom learning performance. When students become aware of their emotional competencies, they better understand and improve their natural learning dynamics in the classroom.

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Reworking the Workshop for Math and Science

Daniel Heuser

The writing workshop has become a popular way to help students learn the craft of writing by actively engaging in the writing process. In a similar way, math and science workshops also create environments in which students ask questions, discover answers, and work at their own pace and according to their developmental levels. The math and science workshop comes in two varieties: teacher-directed and student-directed. Both types have a mini-lesson, in which students wrestle with a specific question or topic; an activity period, in which students work collaboratively and alone to explore the question; and reflection, a time to share and think about their experiences. Do the workshops improve student achievement? Studies show that young learners outperformed their nonworkshop counterparts. Teachers who want to move away from one-size-fits-all math and science instruction can use the workshop to help students of all developmental stages succeed.

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The Art of the Reading Workshop

Wendy Towle

Even the most experienced teachers can struggle to meet all students' reading needs. A principal and former 5th grade teacher describes the Reading Workshop she developed and refined over five years to meet the individual reading abilities and needs of her students. The Reading Workshop, which other teachers can adapt for their students, consists of five components: teacher sharing time, focus lessons, state-of-the-class conference, self-selected reading and responding time, and student sharing time. The author describes and provides classroom examples of these components. She also offers advice for assessment, such as keeping anecdotal records of a student's progress and helping students develop records of their own achievements.

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Redesigning Reading Instruction

Gay Ivey

Children differ as readers. This is not new information, and neither is the idea of differentiating reading instruction. In fact, teachers should provide differentiated instruction in today's diverse classrooms. However, educators may be differentiating reading instruction in ways that harm students, especially those students who are struggling to read. Research tells us that children need opportunities to read and to read books that interest them. Instead of requiring reading programs, schools need to allow teachers—who know their students' needs and interests–to decide what books the students will read; to make uninterrupted reading time part of the curriculum in all subjects; and to participate in professional development that helps them become reflective practitioners who can conduct self-initiated research in their own classrooms.

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Transition Plans for Students with Disabilities

Mary Beth Doyle

Making the transition from grade to grade can be difficult for all students, but students with disabilities often have unique needs that require extra attention. Interactive transition plans help teachers and students make the transition more smoothly and easily. Students work with their sending team, which includes teachers, friends, and family, to create a document that explores that question, Who am I? The plan can be a notebook, a CD-ROM, or in another format and communicates relevant information about the student's learning styles, routines, and characteristics. In the spring prior to the academic year, the receiving teacher and the student meet and share the transition plan, get to know and become comfortable with each other, and ask questions. This time together helps build a relationship and makes a potentially threatening situation—a transition into a new classroom—trouble-free.

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We Teach All

Suzy Ruder

Including special-needs students in general-education classrooms can be challenging for teachers, administrators, and students—but one high school discovered that it is well worth the effort. An inclusion facilitator tells her story of how she helped a school make the transition to include special-needs students. Each student had the help of a team—the general-education teacher, educational services support staff, and herself—to help him or her handle the curriculum and adjust to high school. From engaging in literature discussions to working in science labs, special-needs students are able to collaborate with their peers in meaningful ways.

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Gifted Students Need an Education, Too

Susan Winebrenner

Why do gifted students need differentiated learning? Susan Winebrenner argues that the gifted child is as far from the norm as a student who fails to achieve designated standards and that accepting gifted children's performance at regular competency levels is to deny their equal right to an appropriate education. The article describes the learning characteristics of gifted students, explains why educators are often reluctant to help gifted children, offers specific suggestions for how teachers can differentiate the prescribed curriculum, including compacting, and how administrators can facilitate differentiation for gifted students.

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Shifting into High Gear

Evelyn Schneider

Although educators expect versatility and some freedom of expression from their language arts students, schools offer similar curriculums that are taught using uniform instructional strategies. Teachers can differentiate language arts curriculums to meet the needs of gifted and special education students. One instructional technique is the Socratic seminar. Teachers can learn other differentiated instruction techniques by learning, applying, field testing, and reflecting on them in teacher workshop settings. The author provides many examples of different techniques.

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When Changes for the Gifted Spur Differentiation for All

Sandra W. Page

The author describes the efforts of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (North Carolina) to implement differentiation. Originally, the district chose differentiation to meet the needs of gifted and talented students, but discovered that all students could benefit from the approach. To start, the district offered summer workshops to 40 teachers to prepare lessons and ideas and to work on implementation with the coordinator of gifted programs. The district next hired middle school teachers to pilot a program of collaborating and writing differentiated lessons and units. After some differentiated instructional practices were implemented, the district surveyed teachers and students about how well they thought differentiated instruction was working. Differentiated instruction has become part of schools' and teachers' action plans in the district, and the district even differentiates professional development for teachers.

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How Reggio Emilia Encourages Inclusion

Rebecca K. Edmiaston and Linda May Fitzgerald

Providing successful inclusion in schools continues to challenge general and special educators. This article shares how one early childhood center addresses the challenge of full inclusion by adapting Reggio Emilia, an internationally recognized approach to early education, to its Prizing Our Natural Differences (POND) program. Children with disabilities ranging from mild to severe levels are fully included in classrooms with their age-appropriate peers. Four core components of the Reggio approach—encouraging collaborative relationships, constructing effective environments, developing project-based curriculums, and documenting learning in multiple ways—facilitate inclusion of all students in the learning process. The article provides illustrations of how these four components work in the classroom.

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Who Wants to Differentiate Instruction? We Did . . .

John A. Fahey

One school learned a valuable lesson about educational change when it attempted to change from a three-tired tracking system to differentiated instruction. After meeting and collaborating with parents and teachers, a principal developed a plan to detrack, which the board approved. At the heart of the new program were honors learning contracts. Students who wanted the extra challenge could do research projects on specific topics, give presentations to help their peers learn, or complete extended readings on a topic related to the course. Despite the positive reports from teachers about differentiated instruction, parental concerns lingered. Some parents thought that students were being punished by receiving extra work and that the teachers—not the students—should be solely responsible for teaching. At the end of the summer, the school returned to its three-tiered tracking system. But through the year of change, teachers, students, and parents grew and became more involved in the process of learning.

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The Red Shoe

Linda Webb

The author remembers her excitement about entering kindergarten. Her teacher listed all the activities, such as tying shoes and counting to 100, that the children should master. When the children demonstrated their ability to complete an activity, they received a star sticker next to their names on the chart. The author volunteered to tie her shoe in front of the class, but when she used her mouth, as well as her hands, to do it, the teacher yelled at her and called her a nasty girl. The author was confused, because her mother–who was born without hands–tied the girl's shoes that way. Now, as a teacher and administrator, the author has remembered this lesson and vowed to always try to ask children questions and not to take it for granted that she knows immediately how to respond to each situation. She suggests that sometimes rules need to be broken to meet the needs of individual students and their families.

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Survival Skills for the New Principal

Joanne Rooney

The first year on the job for new principals can be challenging. To succeed, new principals need to recognize that the ghosts of the past still rule the school; the school's culture is deeply embedded in practices and expectations of each staff member; all professional relationships change once a person becomes a principal; the principalship can be lonely; the principal rarely wins a popularity contest; and the paperwork is unending. With these points in mind, the author suggests some ways for new principals to avoid common pitfalls: respect the past; meet each teacher and department chair; locate the powerful people in the school and work with them; keep in touch with the central office; avoid voicing all opinions until personal credibility is established; pick your battles; take care of your personal needs; continue to learn through networking and attending conferences; and pick your battles. Despite the demands of the principalship and the challenges of the first year, an effective leader has the power to help teachers and students learn and grow.

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Books of the Century

Craig Kridel

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Preparing Teachers for Differentiated Instruction

John H. Holloway

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EL Extra

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Reviews

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ASCD in Action

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Web Wonders / Differentiation in the Classroom

Carolyn Pool

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