Differentiation+Strategies

In my final year of teacher training a lot of my Professional Development focused on differentiation in the classroom.

The most important part of differentiation is KNOWING YOUR STUDENTS. Only then can you effectively differentiate based on their needs. There are many surveys you can have students fill out at the beginning of the year to help you determine their interests and learning styles. A deeper knowledge of your students simply comes from working with them and observing them work in your classroom.



The following is a list and description of strategies I have found useful:

-By Ability -By Readiness -By Interest -By Learning Style || Centres are a fantastic way to differentiate in a classroom. As a teacher you can decide how they are divided up. When I do centres I try and and create groups in one way (either by choice for interest or by pre-determined ability) and have the centres focus on another way like by learning style. ||
 * Strategy || Description ||
 * **3-2-1** || Have students write three things they know, two things they want to know, and one big question they have on different post-it notes. They group the notes on big chart paper. Could extend by having a discussion. Good for pre-unit information or as a summary activity. ||
 * **Centres**:
 * **10-2** || This one is useful when there needs to be direct instruction. If you give a ten minute lecturette to students, give them two minutes to reflect, either to a question or just to summarize their thoughts by sketching something. ||
 * **Post-it Learning** || Have students respond to a question or write notes on a post-it and then post them as a class on a piece of chart paper. I have done this with notes from movies, having them write 'something I learned today' or writing a question that they have. ||
 * **Think-Pair-Share** || To ensure that active listening is occurring have students respond to a question by giving them a moment to think, having them find a partner and share their response. When students are in table groups I often then have them share their response as a table and come up with a 'table' response which is then shared with the class. ||
 * **Paper Learning** || I have used this as a summative assessment. I gave the students a single piece of paper and a pencil and gave them 40 minutes to show me what they learned in the unit in any way their liked. I told them that the next day they would be explaining what they produced to me in a mini-conference. The students could draw, write, do point form notes, or make a mind map to show what they learned. EVERY student was successful in this assessment and I gained a very deep understanding about the method each student preferred to show their work. ||
 * **Jigsaw** || Jigsaws function much like centres. However, students only complete one task and then report back to a group consisting of one member from each of the original tasks. In this sense they are an expert. They then report on their expertise to the rest of their jigsawed group. An example of this in my classroom was during a rocks and minerals unit. Five groups of students broke off into expert groups to learn about a specific mineral. Each student had guided questions on a worksheet. In the jigsawed group everyone got to learn about four minerals they didn't know about and present on the mineral they were an expert about. All students had to take notes on their classmates information. At the end of the lesson each student had all the information they needed on each of the five minerals we focused on. ||
 * **Thumb Check** || At the end of a class problem or lesson have students show thumbs up if they understood the material or it was easy, thumbs down if they are confused or found it difficult or thumb in the middle if they were somewhere in the middle. This is a great way for formative assessment of a lesson. ||
 * **Tiered Activities** || Tiering activities means creating different levels of an activity for students depending on ability. An example would be a math perimeter lesson where one group has a worksheet with pre-drawn shapes that they need to measure, the second group could be given four shape names and have to find objects of those shapes within the classroom to measure, the third group could have the same list (or a harder one) as the second group but also have to list other defining characteristics of the shapes. ||
 * **Role Audience Format Type** || This is a great differentiation tool to use for writing activities. For one objective allow students to have a choice in the role which they write from, who they write to, the format they use and the type of product they produce. For instance, if the objective was to write a persuasive argument on dogs are better than cats, one student may choose to write a letter to the local animal shelter from the role of an adult with the argument that they should only rescue dogs while another student may write an essay as a student to a teacher on the same topic. As a teacher you can allow students to choose from one or all of the parts of the RAFT assignment. ||
 * **Questioning** || Questioning is a part of daily life for a teacher. It can easily be used as a tool for differentiation by asking students questions that challenge them at their level. Word choice is essential for being effective in this. As the questions increase have them go from simple retrieval to application to re-phrasing or synthesizing.

Open ended questions allow for more entry points!


 * Words of Low Level (knowledge based) = Input**
 * Recall, Define, Recognize, Name, List, Label, Count


 * Words for Medium Level (comprehension, analysis or synthesis) = Process**
 * Interpret, Translate, Rephrase, Support, Estimate
 * Compare, Contrast, Criticize, Organize, Summarize
 * Propose, Simplify, Develop, Combine, Reconstruct


 * Words for High Level (application, evaluation) = Output**
 * Apply, Hypothesize, Construct, Demonstrate
 * Judge, Assess, Evaluate, Argue ||
 * **Can-do/ Must- do** || This strategy could be used during centres or during any other activity that allows for choice. With each decision have a checklist of things students MUST do or CAN choose to do. Try to only have one or two things they must do and let them choose the rest! It allows for total ownership because they feel like they are in control of how they are learning. ||
 * **Think Dots** || Student roll a die and each number corresponds with a different task. They can choose to do all activities or some. (might include a 'pass' roll where they can choose to not do an activity) ||
 * **Cubing** || Have students create a cube with different options of tasks. Examples can be found here. ||

Dare to Differentiate: This is a great wikispace with a more in-depth description of differentiation as well as many great templates and resources! Differentiation with Technology: A chart with possible activities based on multiple intelligences. Everything DI: Many great resources and explanations about differentiation.
 * Additional Websites: **