1983; Bruner, 1961). Here, we state why addressing students’ interests can make for challenging, rewarding, and successful learning activities. We include suggestions for taking students’ interests into account when supporting an invitational learning environment and when planning curriculum, assessment, and management strategies.
• Chapter 7: Differentiating in Response to Student Learning Profile—Although teachers are aware that students learn in different ways, planning for these differences on a day-to-day basis may seem impractical. But that is not the case. In this chapter, we describe some components of learning profiles, variables that affect learning profiles, pitfalls of learning styles, and guidelines teachers can use to plan for differing student learning approaches.
• Chapter 8: Managing a Differentiated Classroom—Our suggestions in the preceding chapters may at first seem overwhelming, but with careful and thoughtful planning, teachers can implement them in productive ways. This chapter helps with that careful and thoughtful planning. It explores the differences between classroom leadership and classroom management and suggests how teachers can use their leadership skills to move students through challenging and exciting learning opportunities in a differentiated learning environment.
Other Helpful Tools
This book includes helpful tools such as vignettes, scenarios, and exercises that provide an opportunity for reflection and real-life application.
• A Case in Point and A Better Scenario: These vignettes appear in chapters 1 through 8. Positioned at the beginnings of these chapters, A Case in Point describes situations in a typical classroom. At the chapter conclusions, A Better Scenario describes how the classroom situations might improve if the teacher plans for the differentiation component discussed in that chapter. Our hope is these vignettes will demonstrate how using the suggested strategies could make for a positive and productive learning environment and success for students.
• In the Classroom: These scenarios are intended to help educators envision how various aspects of differentiation, including specific instructional strategies, might look in action in specific, brain-friendly classroom settings.
• Exercises: In nearly every chapter, we offer questions for reflection along with multiple suggestions about how to design and implement strategies associated with the topic discussed in that chapter. These questions and suggestions come not only from the psychological and neuroscientific research but also from research on the best educational practices associated with differentiation and brain-compatible instruction.
As we gain a greater understanding of how the human brain learns, we may discover ways to better meet the needs of our increasingly diverse student population. Sometimes, students are attempting to learn in environments designed to help but that instead inadvertently hinder their efforts. By looking for ways to differentiate instruction and change some of our assessment approaches, we may be able to help more students achieve their full potential. We understand the considerable imperfections in many teaching environments. We know teachers long for smaller class sizes, larger rooms, more materials, more time for planning, and more relevant professional support. We are keenly aware of—and saddened by—the unremitting pressure to raise test scores that persists in many schools. We are hopeful those realities won’t outlive us all. In the end, teachers enrich and enliven young lives when they say, “These are my students. This is the only time they will ever experience this grade or these subjects. I understand both the opportunity and the responsibility this presents to me. I will see these students as three-dimensional human beings. I will learn about them. I will continue to sharpen the art and science of my work so I can teach them the best possible content in the best possible ways. I will do whatever I can in this time and place to support the success of each student who comes to me.”
Our hope is that this book will encourage all school professionals to learn more about how the brain learns and about approaches to differentiation so we can work together for the benefit of all students. In other words, we hope this book will help teachers sharpen their knowledge of the science that illuminates the art of effective teaching and inspire them to use that knowledge to benefit the students they teach.
CHAPTER 1
The Nonnegotiables of Effective Differentiation
It seems awkward to even have to discuss the idea of differentiating curriculum and instruction to meet the needs of different kinds of learners, but the reality is that too many classrooms are still teaching with the focus of “one for all and all for one.”… Traditional school structures … make the idea of differentiating to maximize learning a mountain still to be climbed. But we must [climb it].
—H. Lynn Erickson
At an education conference focused on teaching and learning, a veteran teacher shared that she was teaching a multi-age class for the first time in her twenty-plus-year career as an educator.
“That must be quite an adjustment for you,” said the younger educator seated beside her. The more senior teacher reflected for just a moment and responded, “Actually, it really hasn’t been an adjustment for me. I’ve taught a multi-age classroom every year. But this is just the first time someone put the sign on my door.”
What we now call differentiated instruction is not new. It simply asks educators to recognize what teachers have known for centuries: students do not arrive at school as matched sets. Because the pace of brain development varies among children, it is likely that in any third-grade class, some students are reading much like first graders and others like sixth graders. A third grader who reads like a second grader may be ready to do fractions in mathematics well before most of her classmates. In other words, the fact that all students in a particular classroom share a similar birth date is no indication they all learn at the same rate, in the same way, and with the same support systems.
Few educators seriously debate whether a particular chronological age is a trustworthy predictor of a student’s academic accomplishments. Most of us who have taught have ample evidence that academic variance is a given among students of any grade level—preschool through graduate school. The fundamental question each teacher has to answer is whether to respond to those differences—and if so, in what way.
A great number of teachers plan and teach as though all the students in a given classroom are essentially alike. When it becomes evident that some students are confused, lost, or bored, some teachers quickly try to offer additional encouragement, support, or work as a means of addressing the mismatch between lesson and learner. Others simply follow their initial instructional plans. After all, they remark, there’s a lot of material to cover.
A Case in Point
It was just the first week of school, and already Mrs. Worrell felt tired. Her class enrollment was higher this year than last. The students in front of her came from several different language groups, from a broad spectrum of economic groups, and with a five-year span of achievement in reading and mathematics. Her job was to get all the students ready to pass the same test on the same day under the same conditions. She had nine months to do that. The year stretched ahead of her like a bad movie. She had too many students, virtually no planning time, no one to help in the classroom, a single textbook for each subject, too few supplies, too much content, and a mandate to make sure everyone would look competent on the test that loomed ahead of them all. She looked at the students as they left the room to get on the afternoon school buses. They looked as weary as she felt. She wondered if everyone in the building felt that way.
