An Introduction to Differentiation
Campbell Ridge Elementary School is tucked away in Alexandria, a town in Northern Kentucky's Campbell County that sits “where the city meets the country,” as the city motto suggests. Mornings in Alexandria may start with Miss Shirley’s Caterpillar Doughnuts and end with a golf game at A.J. Jolly Park followed by a barbecue picnic from the Four Mile Pig.
Campbell Ridge teachers Laura Brooks and Lauren Waters may have some of Miss Shirley’s biggest customers sitting in their 4th grade classroom. And like the caterpillar carefully iced onto the doughnuts they love so much, there are different stages to their growth and development, and each student will transform in his/her own time. Because students come to the classroom in different places with different needs, Ms. Brooks and Ms. Waters are among many Northern Kentucky teachers who plan their lessons through the lens of differentiation.
Background
Differentiation is the process of teachers learning students’ individual strengths and needs and adapting instruction and activities to match them. Teachers have been engaging in differentiation in one form or another since the 1600s when one room schoolhouses covered the educational landscape with teachers responsible for educating students at all grade and ability levels. Our system eventually evolved to schools divided by grade levels, under the thought that students around the same age would learn the same things at the same pace, and that much of that would build upon itself. By 1912, achievement tests exposed that the differences in students were much greater than anticipated (Washburne, 1953, pp. 139-141). There were some early minds who sought to individualize instruction and texts, but the 1975 passing of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) reaffirmed supporters of the concept, as all students were ensured equal access to public education. Many teachers began to use these differentiation strategies to meet the needs of each student. Another possible push toward this concept could be the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2000 and Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. This legislation encouraged schools to reflect on populations of students who were not achieving at high levels (Weselby, 2021).
Differentiation is most often conducted in four categories:
Content
Process
Product
Environment
This video from Education Week gives us some simple examples of these concepts.
Differentiation - while on the surface sounds like a good idea - is not highly touted by all. In fact, Mike Schmoker, author of the popular book Focus, often asserts that differentiation is not effective or has no research base. And he is right when differentiation is just the code name for making challenging learning activities and goals easier for students with no path, plan nor resolve to engage in learning activities that get students to mastery of the standard at the rigor the grade level demands. That, my friends, is just a case of low expectations. Differentiation is made of sterner stuff.
Kentucky’s Department of Education has recognized the practice as “a key component of improving instruction in response to the needs of all learners, thus addressing achievement gaps for targeted populations of students,” and has identified it as an essential piece of Tier 1 instruction in their Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (KyMTSS) model.
What it Looks Like in Schools: One Example
There are so many different ways to differentiate. Ms. Brooks and Ms. Waters have established a co-teaching model utilizing formative assessment where both teachers plan and implement the lesson, including designing support ahead of time to meet any specific needs of their students. Together, they bring the energy to a 5-30 minute mini lesson through direct instruction. In the lesson I observed, they modeled with the class two different ways to approach a division word problem, and they let the students choose which one worked best for them. After that, students complete a quick performance of understanding task (POU) and are discreetly divided into 2-4 groups, depending on needs and misconceptions. They group students with the same misconception together and address that misconception. Sometimes, there is a group to support students in a process while another group is working on clearing up small errors. Another group may be a student-driven, independent group. The teachers will either parallel or station teach,
depending on the number of groups. The instructional groups are fluid; students can move in if they start to struggle with the deepening difficulty of the task or can move to another group if they are ready to be more independent. At the end of the lesson, there is always an assessment for the whole group that helps the teachers design instruction for the next day based on where each child is with the skill.
The POU serves as their formative assessment, and it is a big piece of the differentiation for this teacher team. They do not give all students in the class the same POU. They develop the POUs by focusing on what they know their students CAN DO. This ensures that each student is able to complete a task in class that day. When the student is able to complete the task independently, he/she moves on to a more rigorous task with support from the teacher. Then, when he/she can complete that task independently, the student moves on to the next POU. These tasks are scaffolded all the way up to and beyond the rigor of the grade level standard. This way, the instruction is designed to meet each child where he/she is in the learning and provide learning experiences all the way through the grade-level standard.
Getting Started
The important part of differentiation is that teaching techniques and adjustments to the lessons or assessments are specific to the needs of each individual child in the classroom. However, the goal is always that the student masters the grade level standard, and the instruction, questions and activities to get them there should always be included in the plan. Sometimes forgotten are our students who can demonstrate mastery of this standard before we have even taught the first lesson. The goal with each lesson is that every student is given the opportunity to be challenged and to succeed.
You don’t have to be an expert at differentiation to improve your practice and your students’ experience - just pick a few things you can do that feel right and get started. Whether it’s trying your hand at designing a high ceiling, multiple access point learning opportunity, implementing a new strategy for English language learners, trying out some choice boards, or something else, it is our team’s goal that this month’s focus of teachNKY connects you with other educators, ideas and practices that will allow you to try something new that will improve student outcomes and elevate your classroom culture.
Until next time…keep growing the Bluegrass.
References
Differentiation. (2021) Kentucky Department of Education.
Ferlazzo, L. & Hull- Sypnieski, K. (2018). Differentiated instruction: it’s not as hard as you think. Education Week.
Sparks, S. (2015). Differentiated instruction:a primer. Education Week.
Washburne, C. (1953). Adjusting the program to the child. ASCD.
Weselby, C. (2021). What is differentiated instruction? Resilient Educator.
