Differentiated instruction (DI) has been growing in popularity in schools across the country. According to the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning, “Differentiated instruction involves teaching in a way that meets the different needs and interests of students using varied course content, activities, and assessments.” By teaching differently to different students, these teachers are looking to meet the diverse needs and capitalize off of the unique opportunities that individual students bring to the classroom. This view is a marked change from historical teaching methods, which have delivered a more one-size-fits-all approach in most classes.  

 

What was the catalyst of the DI movement? EducationWeek provides a great example with, “How can a teacher keep a reading class of 25 on the same page when four students have dyslexia, three students are learning English as a second language, two others read three grade levels ahead, and the rest have widely disparate interests and degrees of enthusiasm about reading?” As we get better at identifying the individual needs of each student, their challenges, and the strengths they bring to the classroom, it’s important that we also adapt our teaching methods to meet those needs.  

 

Preparing to implement differentiated instruction 

 

According to the School of Education at American University, teachers implementing DI can consider these types of characteristics of their students: 

 

  • Readiness to learn 
  • How they learn 
  • Prior knowledge 
  • Languages they speak 
  • Personal interests 

 

When working to implement DI in the classroom, teachers can design their lessons to tap into the variety of interests, readiness levels, learning styles, and personal experiences that students have. By activating students’ prior knowledge and experience, they can make what students learn in their classroom more personally relevant to them and appeal to students’ own curiosity about the world around them. When empowered by instructional methods that meet their individual needs, these students are challenged at appropriate levels and comfortable in asking questions and sharing their ideas with the class. The quality of authentic learning that occurs in this type of environment is high, as is student engagement. And as student engagement levels rise, classroom disruptions go down.  

 

Personalized learning to support student achievement 

 

One way to implement DI in the classroom is by engaging students in creating their own personal learning goals. By giving students agency over their own learning journey, we can identify ways to make lessons more relevant to their strengths and interests. In that way, a differentiated classroom is student-led and student-centered. Instead of teachers defining what it means to be a good student in their class, these learners are defining for themselves what it means to set and reach their individual educational goals. They are taking an active part in the lesson design, taking ownership over their own success, and maximizing their learning environment to build knowledge that is important and accessible to them.  

 

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs and located at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, here are a few examples of how to implement DI: 

 

  • Use different types of instructional approaches 
  • Personalize tasks to meet the needs of the students 
  • Implement ongoing, summative assessment to measure student progress  
  • Give students different opportunities to demonstrate their learning  
  • Connect lessons directly to students’ knowledge and understanding, experiences, and interests 
  • Change the instructional environment to provide flexible grouping opportunities 

 

“Differentiation is important in the elementary years because students’ early experiences have a profound impact on their views of school, their understanding of the learning process, and their views of themselves as learners,” (Cox, Education Digest, 2008). At the earliest opportunity in a child’s education, DI provides the opportunity for students to build their own definition of themself as a learner. By giving students an opportunity to engage in self-discovery, we can spark their desire to become life-long learners. If instead we fit children into ill-fitting boxes early on, we could be stymieing their love of learning for life.  

 

When students and teachers become partners in the classroom, collaborating with one another to set and achieve learning objectives, and working together to discover the best methods to reach them, authentic learning is taking place. In these classrooms, students feel heard, they feel respected, and they feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, and thinking creatively. As teachers, we become diagnosticians, identifying the best methods and prescribing the best instructional opportunities for our students to exceed. Differentiation suggests that all learners can be challenged and meet their learning goals. Believing that this is true for all students is key to implementing DI.