Differentiating Instruction: It’s Not as Hard as You Think

(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