If your district is like mine, your classes are heterogeneously grouped. The general education teacher is expect to differentiate to make the core instruction accessible to the entire class and achieve 80% proficiency on district tests. Additionally, you must provide intensive lessons which are modified or accommodated to match students IEP requirements or supplemental lesson plans which are accelerated for gifted talented students requirements. Intensive and supplement differentiations really need to remain isolated to students with special educational programs like IEPs or ADPs otherwise you are not really differentiating for them specifically according to the experts. Now getting back to the majority of your students who are labeled core. The core population presents with a range of abilities and aptitudes so this is where differentiation is most useful. But how is a general education teacher suppose to do this with 25+ students in a classroom, with little to no assistance from resource teachers, and limited classroom instruction time? Through trial and error, student feedback and a great deal of research, I think I've found an answer to that question. If you interested in learning more about these methods I've provided details and examples you can use for immediate implementation in your classroom.

These strategies work best in a 1:1 classroom environment, however if you do not have this environment in your classroom I can provide some additional strategies on using this system with a different method. When planning a differentiated/individualize lesson, I typically begin with the end in mind. So I look specifically at my curriculum standards and select one or two of them that I will build my lessons around. Often it is easier to plan out a one or two week unit of study than an individual lesson saving you from planning every single day for the next class. This frees my time on a daily basis considerably and allows me to be available to guide student learning during our classroom instruction. So when I plan a unit of study I build into my lesson small group conferencing, peer collaboration, direct instruction, laboratory investigation, independent study and practice, and one-on-one coaching. By delineating my time specifically I find I am effective at meeting my students personal instructional needs right in the moment. Before I write too much more about the planning, let me show you an example of one of my unit plans.

The implementation of the notebook divider during my classes last year revolutionized my progress monitoring. I use to keep a record on each of my 100+ students formative assessments. This was time consuming and did not provide me with the information in the moment. Now when a student reports to small group instruction, we can conference on their progress and monitor areas for misconception or inaccuracies. If an individual student needs remediation, it is easy enough to pull up their specific scores in quizizz, google form, pretest, discovery education assignment, edpuzzle or read their "I can statement" entry and conference on the best methods and designs to scaffold their learning. If a student is "knocking this out of the park," we can easily skip ahead to the extension activities provided at the end of the playlist to facilitate their personalized learning.

In the section of the playlist you'll see how I am able to hold small group while maintaining a thoughtful and purposeful set of activities for the remainder of the class. Students are interacting with the prescribed material, collaborating and sharing ideas, and possible performing experiments while I am working with small group instruction. This may seem ambitious and possibly a chaotic classroom environment, but it isn't! There are a few secrets to my success. One is teach procedure. During the first weeks of school I guide students through the playlist process. This takes time, but the long term profits make this a solid investment. Secondly, I have a high expectation level for student conduct and empathy for reluctant and struggling learners. For reluctant or struggling learners, I typically postpone small group until I spend a few minutes getting them started and then check in with them through the remainder of class in between small groups. Finally, students like this style of learning. They are happy and contently working on purposefully designed curriculum. They know through their learning goals "what" they should be learning. Playlist activities are "chunked" between their learning goals, to deliver the answers and then if they have need for clarification we can easily monitor that in our small group setting. In a word, it is the independent and self mastery that "hooks" them. In other words, they KNOW what they are suppose to learn and then as they work the activities they learn through self discovery. High achievers sometimes balk at being in a state of ambiguity during this self discovery process, but once they move past this learning curve struggle, they develop grit. This is an important soft skill that many students lack and is essential for persistence in a life long learning.

At this point in the playlist, the students have worked through their first self-paced learning goal. With exposure to whole class instruction, small group, peer collaboration and purposefully aligned activities they should have achieved mastery of this specific learning goal. During our small group work, I can easy add additional small group round for remediation or extension with an activity choice listed in the playlist if needed. To further their repeated exposure, build confidence and "gamify" their learning we play quizizz without the timer and record our percent accuracy. This also has the added benefit of offering me time during class instruction to meet with any students that need remediation on their learning goal. Once a learning goal mastery is achieved, we begin our next goal on the playlist typically with a new "whole class instruction." Pace is set by the student, but monitored by me using their notebook divider.

This section of the playlist offers the extension choices and a project or creative assessment, in this case a persuasive writing piece, as a summative assessment. Once students have completed their playlist, I also give a formative grade in the grade book based on their learning throughout the unit of study. In many cases, this will be follow up with a traditional comprehensive exam covering all the topics in this unit of study with a study guide as a helping tool.

I sincerely hope that these ideas help you in your journey to differentiate, individualize and personalize learning for your students. I have begun to add some "playlists" to my teachers pay teachers store, if you'd like to sample one for you own. Another way to obtain a sample is to subscribe to my blog and I will email you a copy for free!