1Differentiated Instruction

The Big Picture

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

Reading this chapter you should be able to:■ define differentiated instruction.■ explain the seven goals of the differentiated classroom.■ describe how differentiated instruction can help in the inclusive classroom.

Tracey’s StoryI was in my second year of teaching when a more experienced teacher down thehall told me that my new student Tracey would never learn to read. Although shewas in fourth grade when she entered my resource room for students with learningdisabilities, she was reading at pre-primer level, which is below kindergarten. Inspite of her problems with reading, Tracey bubbled with intelligence and creativity.I felt that she was certainly capable of reading and began to focus on the challengeof how to teach her. I tried everything that my undergraduate degree had taughtme. I used traditional basal readers, leveled texts, and whole language, but theseapproaches did not meet her needs. I found myself wondering what the key to un-lock reading would be for Tracey.

One day I heard Tracey and another student singing a lovely song as theystrolled into my room. I asked about the song and was surprised to hear thatTracey had made it up and taught it to her friend. Could this be the interest I couldtap into to help Tracey learn to read? I downloaded the lyrics to Tracey’s favoritesongs. While the rest of the class worked in small groups or at learning centers,Tracey and I spent time daily breaking down the lyrics phonetically and comparingthem to words and sentences in books.

With time and practice, I weaned Tracey off of the lyrics, and using her newsight words, she began to read independently. By the time she went to middleschool, she was reading at the same age level as her peers and no longer needed

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an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for this skill. In high school, she called me on thephone and explained that she was at the top of her class.

Tracey encouraged me to believe that all students can learn if teachers canfind ways to reach them. Your students’ interests, abilities, and learning profilesshould be looked at as strengths to be utilized in the classroom setting. This bookwill help you determine how to differentiate to meet the needs of all your studentsin your language arts and reading classrooms.

THE GOALS OF A DIFFERENTIATED CLASSROOM

It is important to determine what you want to achieve by differentiating instruc-tion in your classroom. Heacox (2002) established seven goals for the differenti-ated classroom:

1. To develop challenging and engaging tasks for each learner.2. To develop instructional activities based on essential topics and concepts,

significant processes and skills, and multiple ways to display learning.3. To provide flexible approaches to content instruction, and products.4. To respond to students’ readiness, instructional needs, interests, and learn-

ing preferences.5. To provide opportunities for students to work in varied instructional formats.6. To meet curriculum standards and requirements for each learner.7. To establish learner-responsive, teacher-facilitated classrooms. (p. 1)

SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS IN GENERAL EDUCATION

According to the U.S. Department of Education (2001), approximately 96% ofteachers have students in their classroom who have been identified as having alearning disability. On average, classrooms have three to four students withIndividualized Education Plans (IEPs), which are documents that explain thestudent’s special need and the accommodations that must be made in the class-room setting. Differentiated instruction provides teachers with strategies to meetthe needs of the array of student levels in their classes.

Standards and Diverse Needs

We all need to meet the state, national, and at times international standards forthe students in our class. For instance, the National Council for Teachers ofEnglish (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA) created a set oftwelve main standards set forth in Figure 1-1.

When I first began teaching special needs students, I thought that meeting thestandards would be a struggle or even impossible because I couldn’t see how someof my lower functioning students could meet such high goals. However, I foundthat by modifying the way that you instruct, you can teach the same standards andstill reach a wide range of student needs in your classes (Tomlinson, 2000).

As an example, let’s look at a standard from the state of Pennsylvania thatstates, “Use media for learning purposes.” This matches with the NCTE and IRAstandard, “Students use a variety of technological and information resources(e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize

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READING AND LANGUAGE ARTS STANDARDS

1. Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build anunderstanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the UnitedStates and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needsand demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment.Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporaryworks.

2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres tobuild an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical,aesthetic) of human experience.

3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate,and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactionswith other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of othertexts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textualfeatures (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context,graphics).

4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g.,conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety ofaudiences and for different purposes.

5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use differentwriting process elements appropriately to communicate with differentaudiences for a variety of purposes.

6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts.

7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas andquestions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesizedata from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts,people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose andaudience.

8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g.,libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesizeinformation and to create and communicate knowledge.

9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use,patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, andsocial roles.

10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language todevelop competency in the English language arts and to develop understandingof content across the curriculum.

11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and criticalmembers of a variety of literacy communities.

12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their ownpurposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange ofinformation).

FIGURE 1-1 Standards from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and theInternational Reading Association (IRA). Source: Reprinted with permission from the NationalCouncil of Teachers of English. (1996). Standards for the English Language Arts. Retrieved onAugust 11, 2008 from http://www.ncte.org/about/over/standards/110846.ht

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information and to create and communicate knowledge.” As you can see, the firststep is to become familiar with the standards for your state and the comparable national standard. Then look at the individual needs and abilities of the student. Ifyou were teaching this standard to a student who had a visual disability, you mayhave to display the computer’s text in larger font on the screen or utilize read-aloudsoftware. In the case of a student who is completely blind, the information could be printed in Braille so they could synthesize the text and meet the standard.

By looking at ways that you can make modifications in your instruction inthe inclusive setting, you can teach and hopefully reach all the students. After all,if your student hasn’t been reached and didn’t learn the material, did you really“teach” the student?

Concerns of Future Teachers Regarding Inclusion

You know that you will most likely have students with exceptionalities in yourclassroom. It is natural to share the concerns of the students who wrote the fol-lowing statements before they took a course in special needs:

• “I agree with inclusion but I also realize that it is a challenge to adapt theclassroom to a person’s special needs. Teachers have so many responsibili-ties already, and having a special needs student will be another huge one. I just hope that I can attend to a student’s needs in the best way possible, sothat they can succeed like any other student in the classroom.”

• “My biggest concern is my own patience. I had the dream of teaching thebest and brightest students (not to sound stuck-up/selfish). I’m afraid thatI won’t have the patience to teach slower children, although I have nothingagainst children with special needs.”

• “I am concerned about the other students in the class. They may not knowhow to react, or they could be distracted. I also hope that I am well pre-pared to handle difficult situations.”

• “As a teacher I hope that I make sure all the children have complete under-standing and compassion for one another. I hope I am able to allow them tosee past each other’s differences. I know that this is going to be a challengeat times. I just hope I have what it takes.”

• “My main concern would have to involve adaptations and modifications. I am worried that I do not possess the knowledge to adapt my lesson plansand planned activities for all students. I want to incorporate every studentand utilize each to his or her individual ability; at this point in my school-ing I am not equipped to do that.” (Hipsky, 2007, p. 11–12).

If you share any of these concerns, you are certainly not alone. Manyresearchers have noted that pre-service educators have concerns regarding meet-ing the needs of all students in inclusive environments (Ivey & Reinke, 2002).

In fact, many teachers who are currently in the field express similarresponses regarding inclusion. They are concerned about their ability to simulta-neously meet the needs of both the typical children and those labeled as havingdisabilities in their general education classrooms. Standardized testing alsocauses worries because some teachers feel that there is a lack of effective andavailable resources for support. Also, there is pressure to meet academic perform-ance standards. The concerns are real and solutions need to be found in order toreach all students. Luckily, differentiated instruction can be the key to success formany teachers to help students with exceptionalities.

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WHAT IS DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION?

You must remember that every student who walks into your classroom will havea story. They all have individual ways of viewing the world, ways that they pre-fer to learn information, different home lives, and unique skill sets. Teachers whodifferentiate instruction look at each student from the following viewpoints:their learning profiles, interests, and needs.

Think about some possible future students. Bill is a gifted seventh grade stu-dent who comes from an upper middle class family that takes him to museumsand cultural events on the weekends. Maria is young lady who loves horses and,although she wants to participate in class, she doesn’t volunteer during class dis-cussions due to a speech impediment. Your second grader, Terence, is beingraised by his grandmother in a rundown urban apartment and he learns bestwhen he can talk through his ideas instead of writing them down. Regardless ofthe grade you teach, you will have a classroom of students with a variety of waysof learning. The more you know about your students, the better prepared you willbe to help them use their strengths and to be able to adapt to meet their needs.

Content, Process, and Product

Teachers who differentiate their own instruction adapt the way that they teach inthree main areas:

• Content: What will be taught• Process: How it will be taught• Product: The assessment of the content (often through culminating projects)

Although many teachers think of assessment as the final step in theprocess, assessing the student’s learning profile, interests, and needs is also animportant first step. Once you understand more about your students, you canmake smart decisions about how you will teach.

Teachers need to figure out what content knowledge should be taught ineach lesson. When it comes to content, this is often dictated by state and nationalstandards and the school’s curricula. A content objective in a Language Arts les-son in an elementary school classroom could be: “The students will be able towrite a sentence that has a verb, a noun, and an adjective.”

Process determines how the student will learn the content. Some studentsprefer whole group instruction, whereas others need a small group type of instruc-tion. Other students want the opportunity to guide their own learning. When Itaught the previously mentioned objective on sentences, I would set up a learningstation with colorful baskets labeled “verb,” “noun,” and “adjective.” In each bas-ket, there were multiple slips of paper with examples written on them. The studentsphysically manipulated the word slips and used them as a base for their sentences.They enjoyed this hands-on way of piecing together sentences. I combined thistechnique with an assortment of other approaches including small group work,word collages, learning games, word flashcards, providing examples, and playingMadLibs word games as they filled in the blanks to create silly stories.

If you differentiate the product that you assign, what you assess in the endmay look different for each student. Culminating projects are done at the end of achapter or unit to exhibit that the objectives have been learned. Look at Figure 1-2which gives many examples of different products that you could require todemonstrate understanding of most content.

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This type of list can be used as a menu for students to choose how theywant to show that they learned the information. By honoring who your studentsare and what they bring to the classroom in prior knowledge and personality,you can make the most of their learning.

WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE DIFFERENTIATE INSTRUCTION?

Even though times are changing, you still see the traditional classroom in mostschools. Open the door to one of these classes and you will see straight rows ofdesks, the teacher standing at the front of the room teaching to the whole classdirectly from the textbook, and a one-curriculum-for-all approach. In these set-tings most teachers simply try to “teach to the middle” and hope that this willmeet the needs of most of their students. These teachers don’t teach higher levels

FIGURE 1-2 Classroom Products to Demonstrate Understanding

DEMONSTRATE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE TOPIC BY CREATING A/AN...

AdvertisementBookletCartoonChartsDebateDemonstrationDiagramEssayExhibitExperimentGame BoardGraphIllustrationLearning CenterLesson PlanLetterMonologueMural with LabelsNewspaperOn-site Field StudyOral ReportPhoto EssayPlay or MusicalPoemPowerPointPublic Service AnnouncementPuppet ShowReportRole PlayingVideo PresentationWebsite

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What We Know What We Wantto Know

What We Learned

• Bats hang upsidedown at night.

• In movies bats turninto vampires.

• Bats are usually blackor brown and theyhave wings.

• In what ways are batslike humans?

• How do they help us?

• How long do they live?

• They are warm blooded mammals who can nurse theiryoung.

• One bat can catch 600 mosquitoes in one hour and that way we get fewer bugbites!

• Some live to be 20years old.

FIGURE 1-3 KWL Chart Example on Bats

or remediate. Instead, they teach to the most average student in the room. Thiscan cause the students either to struggle to keep up with the rest of the class or tobecome bored and not reach their full potential.

Regrettably, some teachers have not yet embraced the idea of trying to differentiate in order to meet the needs of all students in the classroom.Differentiating is not as easy as going into the class and reading a scripted lessonday after day from a textbook. Other times, the school administration encour-ages this traditional form of instruction because it is the way that they taughtwhen they had their own classrooms; often it can be traced back to how theywere taught when they were students.

Fortunately, some teachers in today’s classrooms do strive to differentiateinstruction to address each student’s interests, ability levels, and learning pro-files. These are passionate teachers who know appropriate strategies. They takethat next challenging step towards differentiating to reach all their students andinstruct in a way that respects each student’s strengths and needs in order to takefull advantage of the learning of all the students (Tomlinson & Eidson, 2003). Tomake this a reality for your classroom, you will need to vary your instructionalapproaches to meet the diverse needs of your students.

VISIT A DIFFERENTIATED CLASSROOM

Walk into Ms. Sciligano’s first-grade classroom and you will see a positive teachingand learning environment with multiple forms of differentiated instruction. Thetheme of the week is bats. She incorporates visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), andkinesthetic (hands-on) components into all of her units. Ms. Sciligano always as-sesses her students’ reading levels through techniques such as Running Records tosee how many words in a reading passage her students can successfully read.

This week begins with a classroom created KWL Chart as can be seen inFigure 1-3 to collect information on what the students know (K), want to learn (W),and, after the lesson, what they have learned (L) about bats.

Ms. Sciligano individualizes instruction according to interest and need. An auditory lesson about bats involves a discussion about the characteristics of bats

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• warm blooded mammals

• fur or hair

• baby bat is born alive

• nursed by their mothers

• they have arms, hands, and feet

BATS BIRDS• feathers not fur or hair

• hatched from eggs

• mothers bring food to baby birds and feed them from their own mouths

BOTH• have wings

• fly

FIGURE 1-4 Venn Diagram Chart on Bats/Birds

and birds. The class creates a Venn Diagram, which can be seen in Figure 1-4, to visually show the similarities and differences between bats and birds. The circular chart (two circles linked in the middle) compares and contrasts two nouns. Therealistic bat models and puppets benefit those students who need kinesthetic learning.

Ms. Sciligano engages her students in children’s literature through three mainmethods: picture walks, guided reading, and literature circles. By using these tech-niques she allows her students to interact with reading in multiple ways.

Big books offer an opportunity to meet the needs of each reader in Ms. Sciligano’s first-grade classroom as they sit wide-eyed upon a colorful rug.She does a picture walk to begin each book, flipping through the pages and dis-cussing the pictures of the bats and what the students think is happening on thepages. This assists each student in gaining information from illustrations to add totheir comprehension and enjoyment of the literature. After she does a picturewalk, she starts from the beginning of the book and reads the text to the students.

Ms. Sciligano reads aloud to her students the words from Janell Cannon’sbook Stellaluna, “In a warm and sultry forest far, far away, there once lived a motherfruit bat and her new baby.” Guided reading, first with the teacher’s voice only andthen with teacher and students together, encourages the development of literacyskills such as vocabulary development, sight word recognition, and comprehension.

Using the guided reading approach, the fluent readers in the class are able toread and use their proficient skills. The emergent readers get the opportunity topractice their developing skills. Her students who are not yet readers absorb thestory without risk. With guided reading, her students are free to approach readingwhen they are ready, without being forced to read aloud by themselves before theyare confident in doing so.

The third reading method encourages the students to choose books that are ofinterest to them. During literature circle time, groups of students sit in their little bluechairs discussing books that they have read about animals with wings. The studentshave the opportunity to pick the stories that they prefer from a selection of books andthen discuss them in small groups. Scotty needs some support, so the teacher joins hisgroup as a member of one of the circles. This way she can help guide the discussion.Students who are more independent interact on their own in the discussion groups.

The students in Ms. Sciligano’s class also use Learning Contracts, which are “menus” or lists of learning activities designed by the teacher based on each

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As you can see, differentiated instruction involves multiple strategies andapproaches to meet the needs of students in the classroom. This book will supplyyou with an assortment of ways to get to know what your students require inyour reading and language arts classroom and how to instruct them to meet theirneeds.

Questions for Reflection

1. Did a teacher ever make an exception for you in theclassroom? If so, what was it and why? If they didn’t,should they have and in what way?

2. How do Heacox’s seven goals for the differentiatedclassroom match with your own philosophy of teaching?

3. Explain how differentiated instruction can help in theinclusive classroom.

Active Engagement

Reread the “Visit a Differentiated Classroom” section.Explain how the teacher meets the NCTE and IRA stan-dards in her class. Also, describe how Ms. Sciligano’s

first-grade classroom meets Heacox’s goals for a differen-tiated classroom.

Conclusion

As a future teacher, you have much to look forward to inyour career. You will touch the lives of many students.Students vary in their interests, ability levels, and learningprofiles. Differentiated instruction meets the needs of thesestudents by modifying instruction in the areas of content

(what will be taught), process (how it will be taught), andproduct (the assessment of the content). This textbook willprovide practical strategies for differentiating instructionin your kindergarten to sixth grade language arts and read-ing classes.

student’s individual needs and interests. Students complete the activities in anyorder that they choose. John decided that he wanted to make up a song to explainwhat he had learned about bats. Megan painted a detailed picture to show the partsof the bat and presented it to the whole class when she was finished. Stephania,who is learning English as a second language, dictated a fictional story to theteacher’s aide, who then typed up the cute tale about a bat who desperately wantedto be a bird. After the students finished their products, the contracts were complet-ed and a new contract was written.

At the end of a unit such as this one on bats, Ms. Sciligano always assesseshow her students have grown in their reading and writing skills and what they stillneed to learn. A great deal of this information can be seen in the portfolio foldersthat she keeps for every student. These are collections of work that students com-plete that demonstrate their abilities. She also tucks into the portfolio a copy of anupdated Running Record for the student so that it can be compared to the last one.Throughout the year, not just at report card time, the child’s parent or guardian isinformed about the progress of their child.

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Website Resources

Association for Supervision and CurriculumDevelopment (ASCD)http://www.ascd.org/

Education Worldhttp://www.educationworld.com/

International Reading Associationhttp://www.reading.org/

National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE)http://www.ncte.org/

References

Cannon, J. (1993). Stellaluna. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc.Heacox, D. (2002). Differentiating instruction in the regular

classroom: How to reach and teach all learners grades3–12. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing.

Hipsky, S. (Winter/Spring, 2007). Aspiring elementaryteacher’s inclusion conclusion prior to coursework.Electronic Journal of Inclusive Education. Retrieved onAugust 2, 2007 from http://www.cehs.wright.edu/resources/publications/ejie/Winter_Spring_2007/HTML_Files/2HipskyInclusion.htm

Ivey, J. K., & Reinke, K. (May, 2002). Pre-service teachers’attitudes toward inclusion in a non-traditional classroom. Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education.Wright State University. Retrieved on September 3,2005 from http://www.ed.wright.edu/~prenick/julie_kathryn.htm

National Council of Teachers of English. (1996). Standardsfor the English Language Arts. Retrieved on August 11,2008 from http://www.ncte.org/standards

Tomlinson, C. A. (September, 2000). Reconcilable differ-ences? Standards-based teaching and differentiation.Educational Leadership, 58(l).

Tomlinson, C. A., & Eidson, C. C. (2003). Differentiation inpractice: A resource guide for differentiating curriculum.Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision andCurriculum Development.

U.S. Department of Education. (2001). Twenty-third annualreport to Congress on the implementation of the Individualswith Disabilities Education Act. Washington, DC: U.S.Government Printing Office.