to create peak learning and align with the core tenets of differentiation—each student is worthy of dignity and respect and should have access to the best learning opportunities a school can offer.
1. An invitational learning environment: The learning environment in a differentiated classroom needs to invite all kinds of learners to invest their best efforts to learn fully and deeply. This sort of learning environment requires teachers who see each of their students optimistically, understanding that all learners can, with appropriate support, achieve much more than they believe they can; foster meaningful teacher-student relationships; and have a sense of community in which every member is valued and supported in contributing to the success of individuals and the group as a whole.
2. Quality curriculum: What students are asked to learn (the curriculum) is rooted in the critical ideas of a topic or discipline. The curriculum itself reflects the teacher’s belief that everyone in the class is capable. It is designed to support student understanding rather than only recall. Goals for each step of the teaching-learning process are absolutely clear to teachers and students alike. Teachers plan lessons with high relevance to students and for high student engagement.
3. Persistent formative assessment to inform teaching and learning: Teachers use ongoing assessment to inform their instruction. With clarity at each stage of the learning process about what students should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of that segment, teachers use preassessment to understand where students are relative to essential goals as a unit begins. This allows the teacher to match instruction to student needs from the outset, including attending to gaps in prerequisite knowledge. Throughout a unit of study, the teacher persistently uses formative assessment to understand and help students understand who is progressing as he or she should be, who is confused or falling behind, and who is ready to move beyond the fundamental expectations for achievement. Using this continual and unfolding sense of each student’s relationship to critical outcomes, the teacher modifies instructional plans to attend to students’ varied strengths and needs with the goal of helping each student grow academically as effectively and efficiently as possible. The teacher also involves students in understanding their formative assessment outcomes so they can plan their own successful next steps.
4. Responsive instruction: Teachers use preassessment and formative assessment results to finalize instructional plans for the days ahead. It becomes clearer which students may be ready to work with more complex tasks, and which may need scaffolding or clarification in some aspect of the content. This is also a time when teachers can plan to link content to students’ interests so learning is more engaging, and to provide varied approaches to learning so students find learning more accessible and efficient.
5. Leading students and managing flexible classroom routines: In a classroom where teachers intend to work with individuals and small groups as well as with the class as a whole, it’s necessary to work together with students to design and implement classroom routines that provide both predictability and flexibility. Central in this process is helping students develop an understanding of what it means to design and create a class to work for each student—in other words, an understanding of differentiation. From that point, the teacher, with his or her student partners, can develop and implement routines that enable students to work successfully individually, in a variety of groupings, and as part of the class as a whole. It’s useful to think about the process of guiding a student-focused classroom in two parts: (1) leading students to understand the purpose and nature of differentiation, and (2) managing classroom routines.
The model of differentiation highlights four classroom elements teachers can modify in response to three categories of student need. Teachers can modify (1) content (what students will learn or how they will gain access to what they must learn), (2) process (activities students use to make sense of or come to own essential content), (3) product (how students demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do after extended periods of learning), and (4) affect (attention to students’ feelings and emotional needs) and learning environment (including both physical and affective contexts). Modifying these four elements makes room for student variance in the three areas of need: (1) readiness (proximity to learning goals), (2) interest (proclivities for particular ideas, topics, or skills), and (3) learning profile (preferences for approaches to or modes of learning). As teachers become more competent and confident in adapting content, process, product, and affect in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile, the likelihood of academic success and maximum student achievement grows exponentially (Tomlinson, 2017).
Finally, the model presents a variety of instructional strategies for teachers to address student variance. These approaches extend the capacity of the teacher to reach out to students differently when warranted, yet still keep virtually all learners focused on essential outcomes. Such strategies include small-group instruction, varying materials, learning contracts, tiers, expert groups, jigsaws, RAFTs, and many, many other methods. When teachers are comfortable with a wide range of instructional strategies, addressing students’ varied readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles is easier—just as building a house or a piece of furniture is easier with the right tools at hand.
Brain Research and Differentiation
We note earlier that some discoveries regarding how the brain learns substantially support the components of differentiation. Although we will discuss these discoveries more thoroughly in the ensuing chapters, here is a brief introduction to some basic principles about how we learn. Each of these principles is evident in the model of differentiation we use in this book—and in classrooms whose teachers are attuned and responsive to the inevitable diversity among today’s students.
• Each brain is uniquely organized: Even identical twins raised in the same environment view their world differently from each other as a result of their unique experiences and interpretations of how their world works. Although there are basic similarities in how we all learn, there are also important differences. We have individual preferences for how we learn, such as whether we prefer to learn alone or in groups, or by listening, observing, or participating, just to mention a few. These preferences constitute what may be called our own learning profile. Thus, the pervasive notion that one curricular, instructional, and assessment program fits all is hardly brain compatible.
• The brain is a lean pattern-making machine: One of the jobs of the brain’s frontal lobe—located just behind the forehead—is to determine whether incoming information has meaning for the individual. The frontal lobe does this mainly by looking for patterns. The more information the learner can acquire, the more likely that meaningful patterns will soon evolve. The brain is more apt to retain in long-term memory information that has meaning.
• The brain’s frontal lobe is often referred to as the executive center because it directs much of the brain’s activity: Its responsibilities include processing higher-order thinking and solving problems. The process of convergent thinking brings together information to solve a problem that generally has a single correct solution—like, for instance, most tasks in school and answers on tests. Few patterns result from this process because it often involves just rote memory. Divergent thinking, on the other hand, is a thought process that generates creative ideas by exploring different ways of solving problems. This process often leads to new ideas and concepts, producing novel patterns and expanding existing cognitive networks. Through differentiation, teachers can explore ways to help students become successful divergent thinkers.
• Emotions are processed in the brain’s limbic system and play an important role in pattern making: When information and patterns produce an emotional aha, chemicals are released that stimulate the brain’s reward system and keep us motivated to continue learning. However, racing through an overpacked curriculum in a classroom devoid of positive emotions to take a high-stakes test raises anxiety and releases chemicals that shut down the brain’s higher-order
