Differentiating Instruction

Teachers

Differentiating Instruction

SLI stresses the critical importance of effectively differentiated instruction in mixed ability classrooms. Based on the Tomlinson model, Differentiating Instruction has three key goals:

Focusing instruction on essential knowledge, understandings and skills so that all students grapple with powerful learning.
Ensuring that students begin learning where they are and continually escalate to increasingly more complex levels of insight and application.
To provide students with learning experiences that: focus on their own interests, readiness levels, and learning profiles and help them to appreciate and work collegially with students whose learning needs differ from their own.

Workshop 1 introduces participants to Differentiating Instruction through research, explanation, and video clips demonstrating the "What" and "How" of Differentiating Instruction. As a task, teachers are asked to develop an assignment for their students that has two, three, or four tiers based on different readiness levels. They then give this tiered assignment to their students and bring examples to the next workshop.

Workshop 2 begins with the examination of student work from the tiered assignment designed in the previous workshop. In addition to exploring how this assignment worked in the classrooms, a number of additional strategies are then introduced and modeled for the participants. Although reading instruction is the framework for all of these strategies, examples are given for applying them across the curriculum. Participants design a lesson using one of the strategies to implement with their students prior to the next session.

In Workshop 3, teachers use a protocol to examine student work resulting from strategies included in the previous workshop. Participants are also introduced to new Differentiated Instruction and classroom management strategies, which are both discussed and modeled.