Strategies

Approaches to differentiating instruction

Differentiated instruction is teaching that is responsive - responsive by teaching according to what we know about our students through our interactions, their backgrounds, and student learning profiles, which indicate readiness, learning preferences or modalities, and individual interests. Teachers draw upon a repertoire of methods and strategies to provide instruction directed at specific student needs.

Addressing student readiness

Students come into classrooms as distinct individuals with different experiences and background knowledge. Teachers need to know what students know and don't know in relation to the content before beginning a lesson. Teachers use multiple measures to assess each student's readiness level for a particular concept or skill. One way that teachers differentiate for readiness is by providing tiered activities. "Tiered assignments focus on the same essential skills and understandings for all students - but at different levels of complexity, abstractness, and open-endedness" (LOTECED, 2002).

Attending to learning modalities

When implementing differentiated instruction, knowing your students and their needs involves knowing how they learn best. In The Issues: Learning Modalities, Patricia Hutinger reminds us that, "just as a single shoe size doesn't fit everyone, neither does a single learning environment ensure learning for all." Learning modalities can be thought of as the basic modalities to process information to memory: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. The term is also used in conjunction with the idea of multiple intelligences: linguistic/language, logical/mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist. By considering an individual's strongest learning modalities, you provide support in accessing content and sharing learning. One approach to addressing individual learning modalities is to provide content in a number of forms for students to process the information, for example, in addition to print materials, using nonlinguistic forms, such as concrete models and graphic organizers.

Engaging student interests

In order for students to learn, understand, and apply the content and skills taught in the content areas, they must be actively engaged, motivated, and personally invested.  Students are motivated when lessons and instruction include a supportive learning environment and students are the center of teaching and learning.

Educators can motivate students through these nine elements (Muir, 2006):

• Creating and maintaining positive relationships and school climate
• Giving students clear, constructive feedback and helping students succeed
• Offering students hands-on, active work
• Ensuring variety and attention to learning styles
• Tying learning to interests
• Giving students voice and choice
• Avoiding bribery rewards
• Making connections and stimulating higher order thinking
• Putting learning into context and making real world connections

Educators can engage and support students for continual growth by providing challenging, quality curriculum, offering all students the opportunity to explore skills and understanding at appropriate degrees of difficulty, and presenting all students with tasks that are equally interesting, important, and motivating.

Resources

Critical Issue: Using Technology to Enhance Engaged Learning for At-Risk Students
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/atrisk/at400.htm (outside link)
This issue from North Central Regional Educational Laboratory provides an overview (supported by research) emphasizing how schools can take advantage of applying new technologies to engage at-risk students.

Motivating Underachievers - Reaching All Students
http://mcmel-resources.wikispaces.com/Overview+of+Motivating+Underachievers (outside link)
Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning (McMEL) offers resources from workshops on motivating underachieving students and all students.

ThinkQuest Library - The Learning Curve: Learning Modalities
http://library.thinkquest.org/C005704/content_hwl_learningmodalities.php3 (outside link)
ThinkQuest offers a user-friendly orientation to the way individuals learn.

References

Hutinger, P. The issues: Learning modalities. PBS Teacher Source. Retrieved March 2, 2007 from http://www.pbs.org/teachersource.

Languages Other Than English Center for Educator Development (LOTECED). (2002, April). Differentiated instruction in the foreign language classroom: Meeting the diverse needs of all learners. Communique Issue, 6. Retrieved March 16, 2007 from http://www.sedl.org/loteced/communique/n06.html (outside link) .

Muir, M. (2006). Motivating underachieving students: Instruction in support of success with every child. Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning. Retrieved March 12, 2007 from http://mcmel-resources.wikispaces.com/Overview+of+Motivating+Underachievers (outside link) .

Winebrenner, S. (2003). Teaching gifted kids in the regular classroom: Strategies and techniques every teacher can use to meet the academic needs of the gifted and talented. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing, Inc.