Succeeding with Differentiation

Facilitator: Diana Benner (@diben)

Short Link: http://ly.tcea.org/diff

Session Description

Differentiation is essential to make sure all learners get the most out of the classroom experience. Learn ways you can use technology to help differentiate lessons to better meet your students’ needs.

differentiation

Differentiation means tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction. Check out this infographic of what differentiation is and is not.

Content

Design activities based on what the students know or don't know

Process

Deliver information to students based on their learning style

Product

Allow students to demonstrate mastery of the content based on their learning style

Learning Environment

Have a flexible classroom layout that supports both individual and group work

ways to differentiate using technology

  1. Know the content and students.

As with all good teaching, knowing the students and curriculum is central to successful teaching. See what students are interested in and how they learn best. Also, conduct regular formative assessments.

2. Provide students with differentiated project options.

Giving students a choice with in their projects is a great way to differentiate the project. You can have students choose their topic or subtopic, or give them a choice for how the information is presented.

3. Turn students into teachers with presentation tools.

When working in leveled groups, allow higher-level students to use presentation websites to create projects or videos to “teach” the other students while you personally work with lower-level students.


4. Make lesson resources available for at your own pace learning.

Student-paced learning is the ultimate differentiation. Consider having videos and assignments available so that students can work at their own pace.


5. Encourage sharing of ideas.

When using collaborative learning groups like jigsaw or think-pair-share, allow students to share their thinking using a online tools or digital bulletin boards. This allows their ideas and resources to be reviewed and used by the class as a whole, while building a class document of learning that can be referred to during review or projects.

digital tools

Newsela is a great differentiation tool for reading. As a teacher, you can login and create classes, then start assigning articles to students. You can choose the same article, but choose the article length and lexile level to assign to each group or student.

Actively Learn lets users make any reading material "their" own by adding questions, annotation, and collaboration which helps educators differentiate their instruction. It is text and videos for ELA, Science, and Social Studies with scaffolds and higher-order questions.

Edcite offers assessments for differentiated instruction. You can create tests and quizzes with different types of questions. Questions can be answered by highlighting text, dragging and dropping text boxes, typing out equations, answering in multiple steps, checking boxes, and even labeling diagrams.

Edpuzzle is a popular site for flipping a classroom or lesson by adding questions to a video and then assessing student's answers to differentiate instruction.

Edji is a tool that lets students interact with online texts through highlighting, annotation, comments, and even emojis. The heat map lets educators gauge student understanding and differentiate instruction.

Tween Tribune allows you to get daily access to Associated Press news articles, many of which come with self-scoring quizzes. Lexile levels are K-12 appropriate. You can also find Spanish AP articles, lesson plans, and videos.

Google Forms

Student Surveys

Project Check-In

    • The responses on a check-in form make it easier to give student the feedback they need.

Reading Logs

Exit Ticket Example

Daily Activity Check In (with branching)

End of Class Reflection

Google Drawing

See templates of concept maps and Venn diagrams in this Google Drawing Templates Folder

  • Concept maps differentiate the process of learning by helping all students organize content in ways that work best for them as learners. Teachers can further differentiate by using concept maps before and during learning.

Quizster is a site/app for grading/assessing students work that is submitted to them via photos. Teachers can then annotate, comment, and grade in real-time helping them differentiate instruction.

Pear Deck is an educational tool that lets teachers create quizzes, slides, or presentations. Once the "decks" are created students can respond via their mobile devices. Teachers can the assess student understanding and differentiate instruction in real-time.

Deck.Toys is a classroom engagement platform that brings gamification to learning easily via interactive lessons. Create differentiated pathways that allow your students to go at their own pace. Read the blog at https://blog.tcea.org/deck-toys/.

Additional Resources

Get your own copy of "Differentiating with Google Tools" - Google Doc link

TCEA Blog

Additional Resources