In today's classrooms of 25 or more students from diverse backgrounds, teachers strive to quickly become differentiation experts as well as subject area instructional experts. While doing so, they have to keep up with the building schedule, curriculum pace, and the overall best interests of the students they serve. Despite our best efforts, we have all experienced that one student who sits through class, day after day, not receiving the best we have to offer because we are overwhelmed or aren't even sure how to help. We know differentiating instruction and learning (Tomlinson, 1999) will help us reach each of our students, but knowing where to start can be overwhelming. To avoid differentiating on the fly, or spending hours scripting lessons to anticipate any possible student needs, make one simple change to your lesson planning: focus differentiation on three areas of weakness for two target students. Here's how to get started:
- Create your normal lesson plan for the day (you may even begin with a basic Common Core-aligned textbook lesson).
- Choose two students on whom to focus your differentiated instruction or lesson (who isn't benefiting from instruction in your class?).
- Use student files, assessment results, student work, support-staff knowledge, and any other data you have on hand to pinpoint three areas of weakness for each of the two students. (You may want to build on this list later, but begin with a short list of three weak areas.)
- Bender and Crane (2011) recommend using this newly researched data to scaffold and diversify your instruction to support these two students. Change may come in the form of additional supportive background knowledge you expose by questioning the class orally, resource charts for students to use, manipulatives at each table to provide concrete experiences, parallel tasks that explore the same concept but at different levels of complexity (Small, M., 2009, p. 10), or any supports that address the specific needs of your two focus students.
- After the lesson is over, reflect on the three or four additions you made to the original lesson plan. Did these supports help the two focus students? Did other students benefit from the differentiated instruction or learning you added to the lesson? What should you use again or try next time? Keep your reflection notes with the lesson plan so that you can build on those for next time.
If you can do this once a week, you will eventually create an evolving, differentiated approach to your current instructional practice. Every year, you will add to your repertoire of instructional modifications, and you will see more of your students being included in the awesome learning environment you have created in your classroom.