Events

Services
January 6, 2016 • 5 min

Four WaysLog In Teachers

Subscribe Can Differentiate
in the Classroom
Jeff Bradbury

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES
The other day I looked at my calendar and was shocked to see that the word
January was clearly written on the top of it. January? How could this be? Where
has the time gone? What have I done with first half of the school year? It seems
as if it were only yesterday that we were going over rules and regulations and
learning each other’s names.

But, oddly enough, it is January, and a lot has happened since those early days of
the school year. Needless to say, much has changed since day one. Your lesson
plans have changed. Your instructional methods have changed. Your presence in
your classroom has changed. All these changes have come about because of one
simple reason: you and your students are no longer strangers.

As students grow up and rules are loosened, it is also necessary to take a look at
the instruction your students are receiving from you. How are you asking them
to complete their work? What types of activities are they engaging in on a daily
basis? Group work? Individual writing assignments? Are you giving your
students the type of lessons that you would want to sit through if you were in
their shoes?

The ability to enter a classroom and in one lesson provide a holistic class a
variety of teaching methods is the basis of differentiated instruction. To learn
more about differentiated instruction, I sat down with author, blogger,
podcaster, and puppeteer Sam Patterson. I asked him one simple question: in
what ways can we differentiate our classroom instruction? Here are four pieces of
advice he gave me.

Give Students Choice

“Find ways to have students choose ways to show you that they understand.”

The other day, I was working with a teacher who had a stack of multiple choice
tests in her hand. She told me that she would be spending the weekend grading
each of them by hand because the process was very tedious and she didn’t have
time during the work day to finish this task. This started a conversation about
other ways to assess learning in her classroom. We talked about creating
projects, student-made videos, and even various drawings or diagrams to show
off the fact that students were learning in her class.

Sometimes, the best way to differentiate is to actually allow students to dive into
their own individual learning styles. For many subject areas, this is easy and
practically done for you. In music class, for example, students differentiate
based on their own learning styles automatically. They choose an instrument
that generally fits their body type and personality. Then, during rehearsals, the
music presents a series of challenges that can only be properly navigated as a
group when individual students implement various learning techniques.

Instead of always giving a multiple choice test, what if you asked your students
to make a video, create an e-publication, or even stand in front of the class and,
as Patterson suggests, do an interpretive dance. By allowing students to come up
with and explain their answers based on their strengths, you will have a better
chance of having more productive students.

Collect Student Data

“When we are differentiating instruction in our classrooms, we are adjusting our

lessons to meet our students’ needs. How do we know if we are meeting our students’
needs . . . by collecting data.”
Whether you are a teacher with the same 30 students all day, every day or you
have 130 students throughout the week for 45 minutes at a time, it is imperative
that you take time out of your day to collect some simple pieces of data about
your students to help you plan your lessons. There are several great apps to help
you do this. My favorites are Evernote, Google Keep, and OneNote. If you have
solid data about how your students are learning in your classroom, you can then
begin to adjust your instruction based on how they learn, rather than how you
would like to teach.

Step Outside of the Curricular Box

“You may have to author some of your own support pieces and supply different
interactive activities than the publisher provided. While publishers want to create
something that serves as many students as possible, they have never met the
students in your classroom.”

Many teachers these days come out of college and are handed a prepackaged
curriculum that is bought from a publisher. They have all of their lesson plans
created for them, and all of the handouts are either online or ready to be printed.
You would think teaching should always be this easy. However, to truly provide
students with a proper learning environment, master teachers take the time to
assess the given content and go a step farther to create materials that not only fit
the lesson sequence but also keep students’ learning styles in mind. These types
of materials can be in the form of podcasts, e-books, infographics, and even
puppet shows.

Use a Flipped Classroom Model

“When we ask students to share what they know, one of the ways we can have them
do that is to create their own podcasts. Students can create podcasts to demonstrate
their understanding of a subject to share with a teacher or their fellow students, and
teachers can create support materials as in a flipped class format or podcast format
to allow students to engage with those instructional challenges at their own pace.”

More and more these days, teachers are turning to premade video and audio
content to supplement their learning environment. To create a podcast, all you
really need is your cell phone and a free app such as Voice Recorder. My favorite
audio recording app, though, is Evernote because it has a very simple interface
and syncs up to the cloud so you can quickly have a file on your desktop to edit or
post online for your students to consume. For more information on creating
your own audio and video content, check out the resources on Educational
Podcasting Today.

What advice would you have for teachers who are looking to creatively
differentiate their classroom instruction?

Jeff Bradbury is an ASCD Emerging Leader.

Learn More
ASCD is dedicated to professional growth and well-being.
Let's put your vision into action.

Discover our Professional Learning Services

®
ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning,
teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe,
engaged, supported, and challenged.

About ASCD
Who we are
Career opportunities
Government relations
News & Media
Contact

Get Involved

Membership
Affiliates
Emerging Leaders
Communities
Write for ASCD

Partner with Us

Advertisers
Distributors
Event Sponsors
 Exhibitors
More opportunities

Sign up for our newsletter

Questions?

Check out our FAQ

Privacy Policy Terms of Use Governance

© 2022 ASCD. All Rights Reserved.