The Differentiated Classroom

In the United States until the 1940s, the teacher in a one-room schoolhouse faced the challenging task of teaching students of multiple grades and ability levels. Her role was to divide her attention and time among the students coming from a variety of backgrounds. Some students had never held a book in their hand and more advanced students had been reading for years. 

For today’s teachers, the challenge to reach all students still exists. Students at Darlington span the spectrum of learning readiness, personal interests, culturally shaped ways of seeing and speaking of the world and experiences. While today’s teachers generally are responsible for students nearly the same age, the need to reach students at all levels is still a reality. Teachers work daily to find ways to engage individual learners at varied points of readiness, interest and learning preference. Differentiation of instruction is the hallmark of great classrooms.

Until recently, the term “differentiation” was used very little in educational vernacular. However, now it seems to be a topic in many educational articles. Differentiation may be misconstrued by some as lowering the standards, but in fact it simply means teaching in a variety of ways.

Lower School teachers have utilized differentiation methods by incorporating Literacy or Learning Centers in their classroom instruction. In the differentiated classroom, the teacher begins where the students are and designs the instruction. They engage students in instruction using different learning modalities. Teachers provide specific ways for each learner to learn as deeply and quickly as possible, without assuming that one way will suffice. Students are held to high standards and work to assure that advanced as well as struggling students achieve more than they thought that they could. Many parents choose Darlington because of the academic rigors that we provide and because they want their child to be challenged to reach new levels of knowledge. Through the differentiated classroom, each student competes with him or herself to maximize learning. 

Differentiation requires teachers to recognize a student’s level of readiness, interest and learning style for a particular topic. For example, in studying acceleration, an eighth-grade student that has built Matchbox® car tracks might be at a greater level of readiness than a student that has no interest in racing cars. In contrast, a student that loves cooking might have a higher level of readiness for chemistry reactions and interactions than a student that has never experimented with cooking. 

Teachers utilize formative assessments to determine a student’s readiness for a topic and then individualize instruction to all students in order for them to gain knowledge from the lesson. In the case of a student that understands the concepts of force, mass and acceleration might be challenged to determine how burning rocket fuel changes the mass of a rocket and its impact on acceleration. The second student would be challenged to understand the relationship of force, mass and acceleration.

Differentiation is not adding more work; it is challenging each student based on their readiness.