home

**DIFFERENTIATING the CURRICULUM **

//how students demonstrate what they have learned// (product).
Tomlinson & Allan (2000)

As teachers of heterogenous classrooms the key to a differentiated classroom is that all students are regularly offered choices and students are matched with tasks compatible with their individual learner profiles. Our cirriculum should be differentiated by: 1. Content: Multiple options for taking in information 2. Process: Multiple options for making sense of the big ideas 3. Product: Multiple options for expressing what they know

What is differentiated instruction? media type="youtube" key="5JyY9yIJe14" height="279" width="448" align="right" A differentiated classroom offers a variety of learning options designed to tap into different readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles. In a differentiated class, the teacher uses (1) a variety of ways for students to explore curriculum content, (2) a variety of sense-making activities or processes through which students can come to understand and "own" information and ideas, and (3) a variety of options through which students can demonstrate or exhibit what they have learned.

A class is not differentiated when assignments are the same for all learners and the adjustments consist of varying the level of difficulty of questions for certain students, grading some students harder than others, or letting students who finish early play games for enrichment. It is not appropriate to have more advanced learners do extra math problems, extra book reports, or after completing their "regular" work be given extension assignments. Asking students to do more of what they already know is hollow. Asking them to do "the regular work, plus" inevitably seems punitive to them (Tomlinson, 1995a).