5 Ways to Differentiate Instruction for All Learners

All students are unique with extraordinary abilities

Each child in a classroom is unique. Not just in physical appearance but they are intrinsically unique. They all like and dislike different music, books, ideas, etc. Some students are sensitive in their feelings while others might be thick-skinned. Not to mention each student has different subjects in school that they might excel in. Students also learn differently and what works great for some students may not work at all for others. It's important as educators that we are tuned into the instructional needs of our students and that we learn the importance of differentiation.

What is differentiated instruction? It basically means that instruction and activities are tailored to meet the instructional needs of each individual student. It sounds daunting when you first think about the term. How can one teacher differentiate for a classroom of 30 individual unique students? But, I can assure you that it's not as difficult as it may seem! I promise! I am going to give you 5 ways that you can easily differentiate instruction in your classroom, starting tomorrow!

https://pivot.umbc.edu/course-design/blooms-digital-taxonomy-verbs/

Differentiated Instruction Strategy #1: Tiered Assignments- Get to Know Bloom's Taxonomy

First of all, all students might be at a different level on the particular standard that you are teaching. For example, if you are teaching long division you might have some that already know the process and are past the remember and understand phase. They might be ready for application and solving real world problems with long division. There might be a few students in your class that are ready for evaluating and creating. It's important to know where each child falls on this chart when it comes to the standard.

How will you know where each child's ability is when it comes to the standard? The answer is fairly easy, pre-assessment. It doesn't have to be a huge test or quiz. It could be as easy as solving a few problems on whiteboards or completing a quick assignment on Google Classroom that is easy to grade. Each question should go from the remember phase up the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. That should give you a pretty good idea of where the students are.

Once you have an idea of where most of your student are, then you can come up with about 3 activities that go up the levels. For example, a remember and understand activity could be using the acronym DMSBR (divide, multiply, subtract, bring-down, repeat) to complete problems for accuracy. For those students who already have that mastered they can begin solving real world application word problems using long division. Some students might have that mastered already so you can move up the Bloom's triangle and have them evaluate two different problems and figure out which one is correct and why. They could also create new problems with an answer key for other students to solve. The ideas are endless.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/multiple-intelligences.html

Differentiated Instruction Strategy #2: Identify How Your Students Learn Best-Multiple Intelligences

Not all students learn by listening to the teacher give a lecture, although some do really well auditorily. Some students are most spatial or visual learners and they need to see a visual of what they are learning. Many students need to be moving their bodies to learn and others might need to speak out loud what they learned. It's incredibly important as a teacher to try and accommodate ALL of these learners into your lessons. It might seem challenging but you are probably already doing this for several learning styles.

There are many ways to incorporate different learning styles into one lesson and thankfully, with the incorporation of technology it has gotten much easier to do. I will stick with the example of teaching long division and give some ideas of how to teach this with many different multiple intelligences:

1. Auditory Learners- They will learn best by listening to the teacher explain the process of dividing and how to do it. This one is easy because as teachers, this is the first thing we do.

2. Visual/Spatial Learners- They will learn best by seeing the process visually. The teacher can do the problem on the board while explaining. Some other ideas are: find a YouTube video or create a poster or anchor chart to hang up.

3. Linguistic Learners- These students need the time to speak or write, in their own words, what they learned. It's important to stop several times during the lesson and let students summarize to each other what they have learned so far. You can use cooperative learning structures, such as Kagan, to do this in a more orderly fashion. It's also a good idea for students to take notes during the lesson. You can use graphic organizers, journals, interactive notebooks, or other notetaking strategies.

4. Bodily/Kinesthetic Learners- These learners need movement to understand what they are learning. Using hands-on materials during the lesson, such as bingo chips to help divide. You can also have them move around the room using gallery walks during the lesson.

Differentiated Instruction Strategy #3: Flexible Grouping

Flexible grouping is the process of putting students into groups based on their ability level or interests and allowing their groups to change based on mastery or change of interest. Each group would be taught the objective differently based on their level of need or their interests. You can do this several ways.

1. Ability Grouping- This is where you would need a pre-assessment to know where students are regarding the objective. Students that are just starting or not understanding the objective would go in a group, students that are starting to understand the objective would be in another group, and lastly, students that already have it mastered would be in another group. I don't like to use the terms Low, Medium, and High, but that is essentially what you are doing. These groups are flexible because once a student masters the concept they can move on to a different group.

2. Interest Grouping- These groups are made based on interests that they have. Basically, you will teach the objectives but using different interests. This is easy to do with novel studies. Students choose the books they want to read based on their interests and you teach the objectives by using those books. Interest grouping also works if students are working on group projects. For example, if they are doing a project on Civil War battles, they can choose groups based on what battle interests them the most.

Flexible groups are fairly easy to implement into the classroom and provide a wide range of benefits. First of all, students will be more engaged because they will be working with peers that are more at their ability level or share the same interests. Flexible grouping also allows teachers to target their instruction easier, providing remediation or enriching students learning. Another benefit is promoting equity by making sure all students have what they need according to their level. Flexible grouping is a great option for differentiating instruction.

Differentiated Instruction Strategy #4: Assessments

Using assessments is an easy strategy to differentiate instruction. I've already touched on the importance of pre-assessing, which can help you understand what level your students are on regarding that particular standard. Pre-assessments can be used to build tiered assignments for students and place students in ability groups. Formative assessments are important to give throughout instruction to monitor student progress and adjust instruction. Rubrics are a good way to differentiate and assess because they can be tailored to meet the needs of individual learners. Self-assessment is another way to differentiate because students can reflect on their learning individually and identify areas of strength and areas of growth. These are all really great ways to use assessments to differentiate instruction.

Differentiated Instruction Strategy #5: Reteach and Enrichment

The reteach and enrichment strategy can be used in one classroom or throughout the whole grade level team. There are two ways to implement this strategy.

1. Individual Classroom Approach To implement this strategy you must use formative assessments to gauge student's mastery on the standard. Students that have not mastered the standard, based on the formative assessment go to "reteach" while students that do master the standard go to "enrichment". Basically this means that you assign enrichment activities for students to complete while reteaching the students that need it. The enrichment activities should be projects for students to complete that utilize the standard that they just mastered.

2. Team Approach The idea is similar to the individual classroom approach. The difference is that the students switch classes based on if they are in reteach or enrichment. One teacher would be the reteach teacher while the others create enrichment projects. Choose a specific time each day and assign students which class they will be attending. Have reteach and enrich time each day for a week and then assess the reteach students again to see if they mastered the standard.

Differentiating Instruction is a strategy that all teachers should implement in their classrooms. By doing so, students will thrive in the classroom and be more engaged and excited because they won't be bored or anxious about the content being too difficult. They will be able to learn according to their abilities and also their interests. Differentiating instruction not only benefits the students but you as the teacher will reap the benefits as well, when you see your students rising to challenges and mastering content.