TEACHING WITH A FOCUS ON LEARNERS One model of Differentiation: Sousa and Tomlinson (2011) Differentiation and The Brain. Purpose: Understanding Text Complexity Criteria – Reader and Task Assignment

DIFFERENTIATION IS …….. A teacher’s RESPONSE to learner needs guided by FIVE general principles: 1. Learning Tasks 2. Curriculum 3. Collaborative Work Groups 4. Ongoing Assessment 5. Positive Learning Environment

1. LEARNING TASKS: Designed for the learner(s) and consider what the learner brings to the learning task to move them toward more complex thinking and problem solving. 2. CURRICULUM: Designed to support learner’s understanding rather than recall. 3. COLLABORATIVE WORK GROUPS: Organized flexibly for a variety of purposes and with a range of sizes.

4.ONGOING ASSESSMENT: Used to monitor the learner’s progress for the purpose of adjusting instruction. 5.POSITIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: Supports the learner in taking risks with new learning and experiences.

TEACHERS CAN DIFFERENTIATE THROUGH:  CONTENT: What the learner will learn so they can apply their learning to another context.  PROCESS: Performance tasks through which the learner makes sense of essential concepts.

 PRODUCT: How the learner demonstrates what they know, understand, and can do after an extended period of learning.  AFFECT: Attention to the learner’s feelings and emotional needs.

TEACHERS CAN DIFFERENTIATE ACCORDING TO:  STUDENTS’ READINESS: a learner’s prior knowledge and skills – new learning has to be based on prior knowledge, experience and existing skills.  STUDENTS’ INTERESTS: the feeling that causes the learner to focus on or attend to something because it matters to her/him. Interests are pathways to motivation, relevance, and understanding.

EFFECTIVE DIFFERENTIATION  DOES NOT call on a teacher to be all things to every student at all times of the day.  RATHER, it calls on teachers to be consistently MINDFUL of THREE THINGS:

1. HOW content is structured for meaning and authenticity, 2. WHO their student are as INDIVIDUALS, 3. WHICH elements in their classrooms give them degrees of freedom in connecting CONTENT and LEARNERS.

FACTORS TO KNOW ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL READER (CCSS, APPENDIX A, 7, 9) 1.COGNITIVE ABILITIES: attention, memory, critical analytic ability, inferencing, visualization. 2.MOTIVATION: a purpose for reading, interest in content, self-efficacy as a reader.

FACTORS TO KNOW ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL READER (CCSS, APPENDIX A, 7, 9) 3.KNOWLEDGE: vocabulary and topic knowledge, linguistic and discourse knowledge, knowledge of comprehension strategies. 4. EXPERIENCES: Including language, culture, family, community and neighborhood life.