Differentiated Instruction: The Differentiator’s Toolkit Denise L. Schulz University of North Carolina-Charlotte

Differentiating instruction means changing the pace, level, or kind of instruction you provide in response to individual learners’ needs, styles, or interests. From Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom by Diane Heacox, Ed.D.

Tiering Assignments Tiering is an instructional approach designed to have students of differing readiness levels work with essential knowledge, understanding and skill. Students work at levels of difficulty appropriately challenging for them.

How to Create a Tiered Assignment: Clearly establish what students should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of the assignment. Develop one activity or product assignment that is interesting and engaging for students, focuses on the learning goals, and requires students to work at a high level of thought. Think about the readiness levels of students in the class based on assessments and knowledge of students’ general skills. Develop enough versions of the original task to challenge the range of learners.

Think Dots A strategy used to review, demonstrate, and extend students’ thinking on a subject after they have worked to gain essential knowledge, understanding, and skill. They can be used to respond to learner readiness by developing tasks at varying levels of difficulty. They can require different modes of expression or encourage students to work alone or collaboratively with tasks.

How to Create Think Dots: Determine the key knowledge, understanding, or skill with which the Think Dots will be used. Review students’ readiness levels, interest, and learning profiles and assign students to groups based on needs and learning goals. Ensure that each task requires students to work with the unit’s essential knowledge, understanding, and skill.

Task Cards A collaborative instructional strategy developed to have students work together in heterogeneous groups on tasks that draw upon the skills of each student. It ensures that each student is indispensable to the work of the whole group.

Task Card Characteristics: Tasks are open-ended. Tasks are interesting to the students. Tasks can be accomplished in more than one way. Tasks are challenging. Tasks call upon a wide range of talents, interests, and intelligences used in a real world way. Reading and writing are integrated into the work. Tasks involve the use of real objects. The teacher moves among groups as they work.

Think-Tac-Toe An instructional strategy that gives students alternative ways of exploring and expressing key ideas and using key skills. This strategy allows for differentiation by readiness, interest, and learning profile.

Learning Contracts Learning contracts are a means of providing practice for learners based on their particular learning needs. Contracts can take many forms and can be used in a range of ways.

Learning Contracts Include: Clarification of learning goals for a unit or topic of study; Assessment of learner proficiency with those goals to determine learning needs; A “package” of tasks, activities, meeting times with the teacher, and other components likely to help the student continue to develop essential knowledge, understanding, and skill; Directions for how the student is expected to work during the contract time, a timeline for completing work, instruction on how to get work approved when it is finished and where to turn it in, and criteria for grading.

Choice Menu Menus are designed to give learners choices of tasks, while still ensuring that each learner focuses on knowledge, understanding, and skills designated as essential. Options can be differentiated in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile.

RAFT RAFT is an acronym for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. Students take on a particular role, develop a product for a specified audience in a particular format and on a topic that gets right at the heart of what matters most in a particular segment of study