1. The Differentiated Classroom
A PowerPoint presentation based on ideas from
“The Differentiated Instruction Classroom” and “A Resource Guide for Differentiating Curriculum”
by Carol Ann Tomlinson

2. ELEMENTS OF DIFFERENTIATION
Principles that guide differentiated classrooms:
The teacher focuses on the essentials
The teacher attends to student differences
Assessment and instruction are inseparable
The teacher modifies content, process, and products
All students participate in respectful work
The students and teachers collaborate in learning
The teacher balances group and individual norms
The teacher and students work together flexibly

3. Assessment and Instruction
In a differentiated classroom, assessment is ongoing and diagnostic.
“Assessment is today’s means of understanding how to modify tomorrow’s instruction.”
small-group discussion
whole-group discussion
journal entries
portfolio entries
exit cards
skill inventories
pretests
homework assignments
student opinion
interest surveys

4. The Differentiated Classroom
The teacher modifies:
CONTENT
PROCESS
PRODUCTS
Teachers may adapt one or more of the curricular elements based on one or more of the students’ characteristics (readiness, interest, learning profile) at any point in a lesson or unit.

5. CONTENT IS DEFINED BY: National, state, and local standards
Local curriculum guides and textbooks
Teacher’s knowledge of both the subject and students

6. PROCESS
when students begin to make personal sense out of information, ideas, and skills they have accessed
Process is synonym to activities

7. PRODUCTS
A product is a means by which students demonstrate what they have come to know, understand, and be able to do, at the end of a unit or marking period.

8. Differentiating products
Tests are one form of products.
Tests should enable rather than impede students’ ability to show how much they learned.
“When the goal is to see what a student has learned, those adaptations are <fair> for students with learning difficulties just as using Braille is <fair> for students who cannot see.”
Carol A. Tomlinson

9. Strategies for differentiating products:
use tiered product assignments
provide bookmarked internet sites at different levels of complexity for research sources
use similar-readiness and mixed-readiness groups
develop rubrics or other benchmarks for success based on both grade-level expectations and individual student learning needs

10. “…remedial classes keep remedial learners remedial.”
TIERED ACTIVITIES
Teachers use tiered activities so all students focus on essential understandings of skills, but at different levels of complexity, abstractness, and open-endedness.

11. essential to building a framework of understanding
DEVELOPING A TIERED ACTIVITY
STEP 1
Select the activity organizer
concept
skill
generalization
essential to building a framework of understanding

12. STEP 2
Think about your students or use assessments.
Readiness range:
skills
reading
thinking
information
Interests
Learning profiles
Talents

13. STEP 3
Create an activity that is
interesting
high level
causes students to use key skills to understand a key idea

14. High skill or complexity Chart the complexity of the activity
STEP 4
High skill or complexity
Chart the complexity of the activity
Low skill or complexity

15. STEP 5
Clone the activity to ensure challenge and success for your students, assessing it in terms of:
Materials (basic to advanced)
Form of expression (from familiar to unfamiliar)
Experience (from personal experience to removed from personal experience)
The equalizer

16. STEP 6
Match a version of the activity to a student based on
student profile
task requirements

17. Differentiation
is about high-quality performance for all individuals and giving students the opportunity to develop their particular strengths.
Carol. A. Tomlinson