(light music)
- [Larry] I'm Larry Ferlazzo.
Differentiating instruction.
To some educators it conjures visions
of having to create a different lesson
for every student in the room
and long nights of planning and grading.
That insanity is not what
differentiation is all about.
Differentiating instruction
is really a way of thinking,
not a preplanned list of strategies.
Oftentimes, it is making decisions
in the moment based on this mindset.
It's recognizing that, to
paraphrase Rick Wormeli,
fair doesn't always mean
treating everyone equally.
It's recognizing that all
of our students bring
different gifts and challenges
and that as educators we need
to recognize those differences
and use our professional judgment
to flexibly respond to
them in our teaching.
Carol Tomlinson talks about the ability
to differentiate in three areas,
content, process and product.
For content, student choice is one way
we might differentiate,
like allowing students to choose
their research topics or essay prompts.
As teachers, we need to
keep our eyes on the prize.
In other words, we have
to keep asking ourselves
what are the main learning objectives?
One day, my students were
writing an argument essay
about what would be
the worse natural disaster to experience.
John's head was down on the desk.
He was not doing anything.
I knew that he was interested in football,
so I told him that he could write an essay
on why his favorite team was the best.
He would still have to make an argument,
just about football instead
of hurricanes or earthquakes.
His eyes lit up.
He got to work and wrote
what his mother later told me
was the first essay he had
ever written in school.
He had followed all the guidelines
of a good argument essay.
The prize in this case was learning
to write an argument essay,
not learning to write
about natural disasters.
To differentiate by process,
teachers can change up
how they group students.
Sometimes a mixed ability
group might work best,
while sometimes it might be appropriate
to have same ability groups.
We might have an English
proficient buddy work
with an English language
learner to help them out.
During independent reading time
in my early morning
class several years ago,
one student tended to fall asleep.
I told him that if he wanted,
he could go to the back
and sit on a desk and read.
Soon, several others joined him.
A few days later I saw
another student dozing off.
Before I could say anything,
one of his classmates whispered to him,
just go sit on a desk.
Again, it's a matter of
keep our eyes on the prize.
What are the learning objectives?
And what are the best roads
to get there for different students?
Teachers can also differentiate
by the type of product students create.
The major demonstration of
learning doesn't always have
to be an essay or a multiple choice test.
One year, I had a student
who liked to doodle
when other students or I were talking.
I told her it was okay as
long as she was doodling
about the information we were discussing.
She built on those doodles
to create a final project
that brilliantly and visually represented
all the key points we had covered.
When I give tests, I often gives students
an extra blank page where
they can write anything else
they remember about the topic being tested
that they think is important.
I often find the quality of thinking
and writing better there
than in response to my test questions.
None of the differentiating
strategies I've mentioned
have created any extra work for me.
They did require that I had
relationships with my students
to know their strengths,
challenges and interests.
And I needed to demonstrate
flexibility in my thinking.
Making these strategies
successful also required building
a strong class culture so
that some of the students
were being treated differently
and they understood why
and they understood that
that was the only way to be truly fair.
The ideas mentioned here are
just a drop in the bucket.
There are a zillion other ways
we can support our students'
gifts and challenges,
we just need to keep
our minds and ears open.
(upbeat music)
