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Differentiating Instruction: It鈥檚 Not as Hard as You Think - YouTube
Channel: Education Week
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(light music)
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- [Larry] I'm Larry Ferlazzo.
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Differentiating instruction.
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To some educators it conjures visions
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of having to create a different lesson
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for every student in the room
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and long nights of planning and grading.
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That insanity is not what
differentiation is all about.
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Differentiating instruction
is really a way of thinking,
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not a preplanned list of strategies.
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Oftentimes, it is making decisions
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in the moment based on this mindset.
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It's recognizing that, to
paraphrase Rick Wormeli,
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fair doesn't always mean
treating everyone equally.
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It's recognizing that all
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of our students bring
different gifts and challenges
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and that as educators we need
to recognize those differences
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and use our professional judgment
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to flexibly respond to
them in our teaching.
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Carol Tomlinson talks about the ability
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to differentiate in three areas,
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content, process and product.
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For content, student choice is one way
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we might differentiate,
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like allowing students to choose
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their research topics or essay prompts.
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As teachers, we need to
keep our eyes on the prize.
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In other words, we have
to keep asking ourselves
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what are the main learning objectives?
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One day, my students were
writing an argument essay
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about what would be
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the worse natural disaster to experience.
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John's head was down on the desk.
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He was not doing anything.
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I knew that he was interested in football,
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so I told him that he could write an essay
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on why his favorite team was the best.
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He would still have to make an argument,
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just about football instead
of hurricanes or earthquakes.
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His eyes lit up.
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He got to work and wrote
what his mother later told me
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was the first essay he had
ever written in school.
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He had followed all the guidelines
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of a good argument essay.
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The prize in this case was learning
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to write an argument essay,
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not learning to write
about natural disasters.
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To differentiate by process,
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teachers can change up
how they group students.
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Sometimes a mixed ability
group might work best,
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while sometimes it might be appropriate
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to have same ability groups.
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We might have an English
proficient buddy work
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with an English language
learner to help them out.
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During independent reading time
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in my early morning
class several years ago,
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one student tended to fall asleep.
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I told him that if he wanted,
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he could go to the back
and sit on a desk and read.
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Soon, several others joined him.
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A few days later I saw
another student dozing off.
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Before I could say anything,
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one of his classmates whispered to him,
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just go sit on a desk.
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Again, it's a matter of
keep our eyes on the prize.
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What are the learning objectives?
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And what are the best roads
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to get there for different students?
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Teachers can also differentiate
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by the type of product students create.
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The major demonstration of
learning doesn't always have
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to be an essay or a multiple choice test.
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One year, I had a student
who liked to doodle
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when other students or I were talking.
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I told her it was okay as
long as she was doodling
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about the information we were discussing.
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She built on those doodles
to create a final project
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that brilliantly and visually represented
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all the key points we had covered.
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When I give tests, I often gives students
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an extra blank page where
they can write anything else
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they remember about the topic being tested
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that they think is important.
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I often find the quality of thinking
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and writing better there
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than in response to my test questions.
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None of the differentiating
strategies I've mentioned
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have created any extra work for me.
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They did require that I had
relationships with my students
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to know their strengths,
challenges and interests.
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And I needed to demonstrate
flexibility in my thinking.
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Making these strategies
successful also required building
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a strong class culture so
that some of the students
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were being treated differently
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and they understood why
and they understood that
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that was the only way to be truly fair.
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The ideas mentioned here are
just a drop in the bucket.
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There are a zillion other ways
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we can support our students'
gifts and challenges,
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we just need to keep
our minds and ears open.
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