Dana Flowers had a problem. As a 3rd grade teacher struggling to "leave no child behind," she found that George was proving to be a formidable challenge. "He never volunteered for anything," she says. "His handwriting was awful, he had a crummy attitude, and he never showed any signs of wanting to participate. I was really worried about him."
Those behaviors changed when, after one particular unit, Flowers offered her students a choice. Instead of simply taking a test, the students could choose different ways of showing what they knew. To her surprise, George chose to do a musical routine. "Here he had hardly spoken a single word all year, and now he wanted to get up in front of the entire class and sing a song," she recalls. "But he did it. He sang an entire song about water, once for us and again for the music teacher. He covered every concept that we were looking for—evaporation, condensation, you name it—and just sang his little heart out. He really was ‘Joe Cool!’" Since then, Flowers says, George's hand is regularly in the air, and he has continued to blossom, sharing what he learns through further songs.
"Differentiated instruction really made a difference for George," Flowers adds. "I've found that if kids can show what they've learned in their own way and can express it in their own fashion, they can show what they know in a much deeper manner than if they simply take a pencil-and-paper test."
Flowers's experience with differentiation—teaching students based on their individual abilities and through various methods designed to fit their particular learning skills rather than through a one-size-fits-all model—demonstrates what many teachers have been successfully doing for some time now: applying the theory of differentiated instruction through strategies and practices that help students blossom.
Preassess for Success
Just as any traveler needs a map before starting on a journey, so teachers need to plan the process of differentiation carefully, according to experts.
"We go with Susan Winebrenner's ‘Most Difficult First’ strategy," says Kim Pettig, an instructional coordinator with the Allen Creek School in Pittsford, N.Y. "This is where we determine if students can demonstrate understanding or skills at the outset of a lesson. If so, then we try to challenge them with things that they don't already know. You then use that knowledge to guide your instruction." Pre-assessment, she says, can be done with paper and pencil for math and science, but it can be applied to subjects such as social studies as well. "When we did a unit on the westward movement of the 19th century, we asked the children to write letters as if they were moving to another part of the country," Pettig says. "If Mom and Dad were changing jobs, that meant changes in economic development were underway, and if more jobs were available elsewhere, what did that mean? That was the concept we wanted the kids to understand, and by using the children's letters, we were able to gauge our instruction based on how each child responded."
"School Smarts" vs. Academic Smarts
But determining students' abilities in advance is not always easy, educators say. To accurately tailor assignments and lessons, teachers must measure not only which students are "smart" but also which actually understand the concepts to be taught and which have simply learned to play the "school game."
"One of the things I learned very quickly when we started assessing students was that it's easy to make big assumptions of students' abilities," says Kari Sue Wehrman, an English teacher at Hopkins West Junior High School in Minnetonka, Minn. "In my class, I had an 8th grade girl who had wonderful ideas for study projects and who was very enthusiastic, but she didn't have the organizational skills to think assignments through very clearly."
When Wehrman proposed an independent study project, the student came up with a plan that would have required a semester's worth of work alone, leaving her little time for other courses. "I had to help her pare this down because she'd learned what I call the ‘school game,’ where she was used to focusing on the quantity of work to get good grades rather than on the quality of the work," Wehrman says. "That's an important lesson to keep in mind."
"Doing Differentiation"
Despite the widespread interest in differentiated instruction, the approach has not been without its detractors and challenges, according to educators.
"Differentiated instruction definitely requires more time and planning," says John Artis, assistant superintendent for Upper Arlington Schools in Upper Arlington, Ohio. "But time is not the biggest challenge or obstacle. In our experience, the biggest challenge is overcoming the assumption by many teachers that they're already doing differentiated instruction."
Artis's view is echoed by teachers as well. "There is a tendency by some teachers who have been teaching a certain way for years to think, ‘We're already doing differentiation,’ but that's not always the case," says Flowers. Veteran teachers, she says, may be doing guided readings in their classrooms, but they may not be giving students the opportunity to show what they know through different projects or allowing them to study what interests them. That kind of variety, she and others contend, can make for a much more enriching curriculum if it is incorporated properly.
Uneven = Fair
Being able to incorporate differentiated instruction properly, however, requires teachers to communicate clearly with their students—and the students' parents—that students will be required to work at different times on different projects in order to fully develop as learners.
"I tell my students and their parents in the fall that my job is to take every student and stretch him or her to that next level," says Judy Miller, a 5th grade teacher at Windermere Elementary School in Upper Arlington, Ohio. "That means that there will be times when one student is reading two books and times when another has to read one book. Those two books might be easier for one while that one book is very challenging for another particular student—it's not about what's even, it's about being fair in order for everyone to excel." In Miller's own class, students sometimes read up to 22 different books at any given time, but each assignment is still designed to get that individual student to learn and improve to the best of her particular abilities and skills. "It takes a lot of effort," says Miller, "But when you can celebrate what you're doing, that makes a big difference."
Flowers shares Miller's enthusiasm. "The hardest thing for me is not overdoing my differentiated instruction," she says. "It takes a lot of time and planning, and it's hard not to want to do it in every aspect of your teaching, but when you're able to do it—and when you can see it working for a student—it's really amazing."
