Differentiated Instruction

1. DifferentiatedInstruction Stacey R. Smith and Desireé M. Williams Martin Luther KingJr High School Dekalb County School System Kennesaw State University EDL 6710 Instructional Leadership – Su 2007 Mr. Dan Terry June 28, 2007

2. NCLB Mandate Quality Assurance: Georgia Standards for School Performance: Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment, Planning and Organization, and Leadership SACS Standards: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 HSTW: All 10 Key Practices Describe how instructional personnel make appropriate use of differentiation using the following criteria: A.     Process: All teachers will establish his/her classroom to work toward promoting essential skills and understandings by utilizing different content, processes and products in meeting our student achievement goals. Our teachers are required to engage in proactive, positive planning for differentiation by understanding the curriculum, knowing their students, conducting appropriate pre-assessments, identifying the students with special needs and determining what portion of instruction actually requires differentiation, how lessons will be taught and what formative and summative assessments will be used to determine student learning and achievement. B.     Product: Through in-service workshops, staff development and teacher training classes the key elements of differentiated instruction or practices can be explored and taught effectively. Emphasis will be placed on looking at students as individuals and to allow them to show performance. C.     Performance: Differentiated instruction will be aligned with GHSGT, EOCT, and HSTW Best Practices. Some of these Best Practices will entail: utilizing various forms of assessment (pre and post testing) to assist instructional planning and teaching strategies that will challenge and address all students and all needs. D.      Learning Environment: The differentiated learning environment at Martin Luther King, Jr. High School ensures that student performance will be based on evidence of learning measured with differentiated components that include teaching content, learning activities and performance projects. Multiple avenues for learning will be provided for our educational goals to maximize learning from its current level for every student

3. Objectives • Explain what differentiation is. • Explain why it is important to differentiate. • Identify what can be differentiated. • Describe/demonstrate how differentiation can occur.

4. What exactly is Differentiated Instruction?

5. Essential Questions • What is differentiation? • Why, what, and how do I differentiate?

6. Essential Question # 1 What is differentiation?

7. Differentiation can be defined as: a way of teaching in which teachers proactively modify curriculum, teaching methods, resources, learning activities, and student products to address the needs of individual students and/or small groups of students to maximize the learning opportunity for each student in the classroom. ~ Facilitators Guide. At Work in the Differentiated Classroom, 103, 113. GaDOE

8. Differentiation adapts what we teach, how we teach to the ways students learn, and how students show what they have learned based on the readiness levels, interests, and preferred learning modes of students. ~ Facilitators Guide. At Work in the Differentiated Classroom, 103, 113. GaDOE

9. In a nut shell… Differentiation is classroom practice that realizes that kids differ, and the most effective teachers do whatever it takes to reach every type of learner. ~ Facilitators Guide. At Work in the Differentiated Classroom, 103, 113. GaDOE

10. Researcher Theodore Sizer says: “ …while it may be inconvenient that students differ, it is an irrefutable fact of life in the classroom.” Source of slide: Cornelius Watts, LF, GaDOE

11. Essential Question #2 Why, what, and how do I differentiate?

12. WHY Do We Differentiate? + provide access to learning + promote motivation to learn + measure efficiency of learning --Tomlinson, The Differentiated Classroom GaDOE

13. Access to Learning Students cannot learn that which is inaccessible because they don’t understand. --Tomlinson, The Differentiated Classroom GaDOE

14. Pre-Assessment Why? • To determine: • what students know about a topic before it is taught • skill level of students before instruction begins • To make instructional decisions • To help the teacher plan for • flexible grouping patterns based on which students are ready for different levels of instruction

15. Pre-Assessment Strategies

16. Motivation to Learn • Students cannot learn when they are unmotivated by things far too difficult or things far too easy. • Students learn more enthusiastically when they are motivated by those things that connect to their interests. --Tomlinson, The Differentiated Classroom GaDOE

17. Efficiency of Learning • Students learn more efficiently when they have a suitable background of experience. • Students learn more efficiently when they can acquire information and express understanding through a preferred mode. --Tomlinson, The Differentiated Classroom GaDOE

18. WHAT Do We Differentiate? • Content • Processes • Product • Learning Environment Adapted from GaDOE

19. Content Content consists of ideas, concepts, descriptive information and facts, rules, and principles that the student needs to learn. Content can be differentiated through depth, complexity, novelty, and acceleration. Content includes the means by which students have access to information. Materials can vary according to reading level or by employing text materials on tape. Product Products are the culminating projects and performances that result from instruction. They ask the student to rehearse, apply, or extend what s/he has learned in a unit. A product or performance provides the vehicle that allows students to consolidate learning and communicate ideas. Process Process is the presentation of content, including the learning activities for students, the questions that are asked, as well as the teaching methods and thinking skills that teachers and students employ to relate, acquire, and assess understanding of content. DIFFERENTIATION Learning Environment The learning environment is the way the classroom looks and/or feels, including the types of interaction that occur, the roles and relationships between and among teachers and students, the expectations for growth and success, and the sense of mutual respect, fairness, and safety present in the classroom.

20. HOW Do We Differentiate? We determine how to differentiate by assessing thereadiness, the interests, and the learning profiles of particular students or groups of students Adapted from GaDOE

21. How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich • Divide into four groups • Your task is to devise a lesson plan on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the following type of learner • Group 1– visual learners • Group 2 – auditory learners • Group 3 – kinesthetic learners • Group 4 – whole group learners • You have 5-7 minutes, then each group will present their lesson

22. Essential strategies of how to differentiate • Begin with a good, solid curriculum • Assign tasks that are respectful of all learners • When in doubt, teach up • Use flexible grouping • Continuous assessment • Grade for growth --Tomlinson & Eidson, Differentiation in Practice, Grades 5-9, 13-15 GADOE

23. Tiered LessonsA tiered lesson is a differentiation strategy that addresses a particular standard, key concept, and generalization, but allows several pathways for students to arrive at an understanding of these components based on their interests, readiness, or learning profiles. • “Ensure that students with different learning needs work with the • same essential ideas and use the same key skills.” • Are written at different levels of complexity, abstractness, and open-endedness • Provides routes of access at varying degrees of difficulty • Maximizes the likelihood that • each student comes away with pivotal skills and understandings and • each student is appropriately challenged Tomlinson, C. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

24. ScaffoldingScaffolding is an instructional technique whereby the teacher models the desired learning strategy or task, then gradually shifts responsibility to the students. • Providing temporary cognitive support to help students who are struggling with a concept or skill until they become more proficient in understanding a concept or skill on their own Tomlinson, C. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

25. Multiple Intelligences & Independent Study Tic-Tac-Toe • Gives students choices (choose 3 across, down, or vertically). • Gives the teacher some control of the activities that students choose (be sure that any set of choices will include a variety of types of activities –all addressing the standards). • Students can be allowed to select the activities and record which ones they are doing. • Students can keep a log of their progress on the activities.

26. Tic Tac Toe

27. What Does Differentiated Instruction Look Like? GaDOE

28. Instructional Categories that Affect Student Achievement

29. Differentiation Differentiation curriculum moves teachers away from the “one size fits all” curriculum that really fits no one.” It encourages students to become more responsible for their own learning and to recognize and use their own strengths, thereby helping them become lifelong autonomous learners. Coil,Carolyn. (2004) Standards-Based Activities and Assessments or the Differentiated Classroom. Pieces of Learning.

30. Acknowledgement: Denise Huddlestun, Metro RESA Denise.huddlestun@mresa.org (The sources of many of the slides are the GaDOE training powerpoint presentations on Differentiation.)