Differentiation Meme

I was recently tagged by Angela Stevens (Musings from the Academy) to answer 10 questions about differentiation. Coincidentally, the day she tagged me I was in my Instructional Leadership Development class and we were discussing the issue of differentiation that very day. Spooky!

I am no longer in the classroom, so my answers are based primarily on my former experience in the classroom. My classroom experience included teaching all of the following subjects: basic design, beginning and intermediate drawing, graphic design, computer animation, digital illustration, digital photography, video technology and production, and 3D design & animation. Now, as an instructional leader I continue to build my knowledge of effective classroom practice across the various disciplines, and I continue to learn more about coaching teachers in these effective instructional methods in order to improve all student learning.

The following are my answers to the 10 questions about classroom differentiation.

1. Do you differentiate by content, instructional method, assignment or some other way?

I taught three levels of students so it varied by level. For beginning students I differentiated by product or subject matter. For intermediate and most advanced students I differentiated by project or media. For more advanced students I differentiated by structuring their learning as independent study.

2. For whose benefit do you differentiate?

For the benefit of the students – to meet their needs, to engage them through choice, and to accommodate their wide diversity of skills, interests, and talent.

3. To what percentage do you differentiate you assignments? 100%, 50%, 10%?

I think I would say that I differentiated about 90% of the time. The other 10% included learning basic skills – usually at the very beginning of the semester or at the beginning of a new large unit.

4. What are the immediate student benefits of differentiation?

Increased engagement and a feeling of ownership and personalization of the learning process

5. What are the long term benefits for teachers?

Same as above – which leads to fewer discipline problems and improved classroom management.

6. Were you taught about differentiation before or after you became a teacher?

After – through inservices at first and then later through my own research and study. Now – still learning about it… trying to learn more about application of it across disciplines and how to coach teachers on differentiation.

7. Does differentiation take more of your time to implement than other instructional approaches?

No. I have always taught from a project-based learning focus, so differentiation didn’t take any longer than my usual planning or implementation of instruction.

8. How do you keep from differentiating only to your own interests and styles?

This is more of a problem if you are only trying to differentiate by instructional method. If you are always incorporating a variety of instructional methods and you differentiate by product, then you can avoid this.

9. Is there such a thing as too much differentiation?

I really don’t think so. However, as I stated above about the percentage of use of differentiation in my own classroom, I think there are some topics that don’t require differentiation – but these are few and don’t (or shouldn’t) demand a great deal of time in the classroom.

10. Have you ever sat through a lecture on differentiation? Bonus: Did you find it ironic?

Yes – and it should not be a surprise that I don’t really remember the lecture. What I learned about differentiation came out of workshops or training sessions that were hands-on, engaging, and more differentiated.

Since Angela turned this into a meme, I will play along and tag the following 5 people:

Bud the Teacher
Vicki Davis
Dan Meyer
Doug Belshaw
Mrs. Durff

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