Gina Biancarosa and Catherine Snow , authors of Reading Next, point to a statistic that should cause all middle grade, middle school, and high school educators to rethink their instructional practices.
They note:. Whether they come from middle- and upper-class income levels, from low-income households, from families living in poverty, or from families who are English language learners, 70 percent of adolescent learners will benefit from differentiated instruction.
This is a powerful statistic that we teachers need to remember and act upon as we teach reading. Right now, too many middle schools place students in a curriculum in which everyone reads the same text and completes the same assignments. Unfortunately, this leaves too many students behind instead of moving them forward Tomlinson, You and I need to explore and try ways to teach our students at their instructional levels.
This is the heart of differentiation, and this is the primary reason I have written this book. They might even like school because they can be part of a discussion.
So what does differentiated reading instruction look like? I invite you to step inside my eighth-grade classroom at the beginning of my reading workshop. After a brief warm-up exercise, and a read aloud for enjoyment, I introduce an essential component of my approach to differentiated reading instruction — the teaching read aloud. In fact, the read aloud has become the common mentor or teaching text for my students, and a primary teaching tool.
These are the important strategies that all students — not just proficient readers — need. Not only will these important strategies help students do well on tests, but — even more gratifying — they will make reading joyful and exciting. My experiences with teaching students who are reading below grade level continue to show me that although these students may have difficulty reading, they are capable of inferring, drawing conclusions, and making connections to characters, events, people, and information.
My read aloud shows that struggling readers can think at high levels. When I provide them with books at their instructional levels, they also know that they can analyze and think while they read.
Stay longer in my classroom, and you would observe that writing has taken center stage. During my read aloud, conferences, and small-group meetings, students write to explore hunches, concepts, meaning, and connections.
This writing is critical in a differentiated reading classroom. You would also notice that I use multiple texts for my instructional reading lessons. Sometimes, I use a whole-class instructional approach, where each students is reading a different text while exploring an issue or practicing the application of a reading strategy that I have modeled in my read aloud. So what is the difference? The difference is in when and how changes are made to address the needs of students.
How does response to intervention RTI fit in with differentiated instruction? A multi-tiered method for delivering instruction to learners through increasingly intensive and individualized interventions. Both are instructional frameworks. Whereas the purpose of differentiated instruction is to address the needs of all students, the purpose of RTI is to identify and address the needs of struggling students. Though the two frameworks overlap—differentiated instruction is often provided in an RTI classroom—under RTI, students may receive more intensive levels of instruction than they would normally receive in a differentiated classroom.
How do adaptations i. Differentiated instruction might not be enough for some students to succeed. Those with disabilities might need additional supports—accommodations or modifications—to learn the concepts and skills being taught. Initial Thoughts. Wrap Up. What is differentiated instruction? Giving students choices about how they learn enables them to meet learning objectives in the best way for them.
In some classrooms, differentiation will be required for students with disabilities and for English language learners.
Differentiating instruction gives all students the opportunity to keep pace with learning objectives. Differentiated instruction motivates them to learn the material in a way conducive to their own interests and unique learning styles. They are energetic and outgoing. They are quiet and curious. They are confident and self-doubting. They are interested in a thousand things and deeply immersed in a particular topic.
Many of them speak a different language at home. They learn at different rates and in different ways. And they all come together in our academically diverse classrooms. Oftentimes, it is making decisions in the moment based on this mindset.
That is all differentiation is. We complicate differentiation by not allowing ourselves to be provisional with how we apply the foundational pieces of differentiated instruction. Instead, if we address these four questions in our instructional planning, differentiation will always be the result: What do my students need?
How do I know? What will I do to meet their needs? In a differentiated learning space, teachers and students learn together. Students focus on learning the course content, while teachers tailor their instructional strategies to student learning styles. To ensure that the same objectives are being pursued by all students though they each take their own path to get there , differentiated instruction must be standards-based.
First steps for teachers should include diagnostic testing and learning inventories. Your goal is to set baselines for individual students. Then you can identify tactics to help each student achieve the objectives and deliver custom-tailored content. For differentiated instruction to be successful, teachers must clearly explain the learning goals and the criteria for success.
All the students have the same learning goal. Instead of teaching the whole group in one way like a lecture , a teacher uses a bunch of different methods. This can include teaching students in small groups or in one-on-one sessions.
This approach works well with the response to intervention RTI process used in some schools. The goal of RTI is to address learning struggles early. Students get extra support before they fall behind their peers. Differentiated instruction can play out differently from one classroom to the next — and from one school to the next.
But there are a few key features:. Small work groups: The students in each group rotate in and out. This gives them a chance to participate in many different groups.
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