The students in our classrooms come to us with varying degrees of learning readiness, personal interests, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, teachers must contend with the challenges of managing their time, resources, and attention to help each student maximize his or her learning. Differentiated instruction is one strategy teachers can adopt in support of that goal. According to Carol Ann Tomlinson, "teachers in differentiated classrooms accept and act on the premise that they must be ready to engage students in instruction through different approaches to learning, by appealing to a range of interests, and by using varied rates of instruction along with varied degrees of complexity and differing support systems" (p. 3). Click here for an infographic: Differentiation is vs. Differentiation Is Not.
One approach teachers might consider to facilitate differentiated instruction is to leverage Google Classroom to support individual students' needs. When you post Announcements or Assignments to your Classroom Stream, you can designate whether all students or individual students are the recipients of your posts. Whether it's reaching students who miss class, remediating those that need more time to master, or enriching those who are ready, Google Classroom is a great vehicle for delivering digital content, fostering collaboration and communication, and extending learning opportunities beyond the classroom walls. Check out this brief video for a demonstration of how to differentiate your instruction via Google Classroom.
References
all learners, 2nd ed. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GVRL&sw=w&u=ocmboces_ascd&v=2.1&it=aboutBook&id=GALE|9781416603924
