Differentiated instruction

To begin with, I will stick a picture that shows why should we differentiate the instruction as teachers, depending on the students:

Nowadays, classrooms are becoming more diverse and we cannot avoid this fact, we can't expect the students to learn the same contents since they have different backgrounds, abilities, experiences and interests.

According to all that we have been talking in class, differentiated instruction is the way of teaching which tries to cater for all the different students, with their different backgrounds, ways of learning, interests and knowledge.

 

As Carol Anne Tomlinson mentions, there are three ways to deal with students' differences: ignoring them, separating kids or, the less common way, keeping all kids together but attending their different needs, interests or ways of learning. The first two options have no good results because a big quantity of students are not attended when they are considered "different". The last option is the one with good results for all the students of a class because it implies the same possibilities of learning for all of them.

So, as future teachers, what do we need to do to be effective with differentiation?

Tomlinson says that, first of all, the teacher has to connect with all the students, to talk to them in order to be conscious of their needs. Then, it is very important to create a community sense between the students, every one has its differences but all of them work together in the same direction. Finally, the third point is about the quality of the contents selected by the teacher. Teachers need to design catchy activities to reach every student but selecting important information to be taught.

In addition, teachers have to bear in mind that the principles of a differentiated instruction are:

- Creating respectful tasks, every student needs to work equally, with important tasks depending on their needs.
- Flexible grouping, thins means that students won't be divided arbitrarily. Groups will change constantly and students will be mixed with same interest peers and mixed interest peers; similar or varied readiness students.
- Teaching up, which is starting with what we consider to be high-end curriculum and expectations.

I have found a good graphic which explains very clear the different instruction characteristics:

To sum up, as future teachers we have to take in account the fact that as the world is changing, our students are becoming more and more diverse. Because of that, we have to design strategies to reach all the students, we can call it differentiation or whatever, but we have to cater for all the differences in the classroom.