In an ideal world each student would have one teacher who assess the student’s strengths, weaknesses and knowledge base and tailors a curriculum and learning environment just for that student. But we live in the real world with classes of 20-35 students with a huge range of abilities and experiences. In one of my recent middle school science classes I had a reading range of 1st grade to high school level. I had students who already knew the state frameworks I was to teach and others who had met few of the previous years frameworks. I had students who came from safe loving homes and others who spent the school day wondering what DSS shelter or foster home they would go to that night. The reality of the public school teacher is that we teach a very diverse group of people. We must teach any and everyone who is placed in our classroom. This can be an overwhelming and seemingly impossible task.

To meet the needs of our students we need to provide differentiated instruction (DI). But we also need to attend meetings, write reports, call parents, help our students clean out their backpacks and navigate the social mine field that is growing up. When do we have time to assess our students, sort out their needs and differences and create an instructional plan to meet the needs of all our students? We know as teachers this is what we strive for but we also know as teachers that our “day” gets in the way. We need to remember that as tough as our task is we are not in this alone and with the advent of the world wide web we have a vast network of resources to help us. A quick search on the internet will lead to a vast array of lessons and activities. There are many online professional development opportunities and networks of teachers sharing ideas and supporting each other.

Technology can also provide us with a quick turn around time on both pre and post assessments. In this day of “data driven” instruction we need to know what our students know and we need to know it now. This helps us focus our time on the essentials and provides us with a chance to provide additional learning opportunities for those in need. This helps us focus our differentiated instruction. The more we know about our students, the more lesson and activity options we have at our finger tips, the better our instruction will be.

I seem to be wandering. I could go on rambling – but I think I need to take a break, regroup and think. Below are some resources on differentiated instruction, I will continue with this topic soon.

Some resources:

Differentiated Instruction: Effective Classroom Practices Report, provides a good introduction to DI. http://www.cast.org/publications/ncac/ncac_diffinstruc.html

Flemington-Raritan Regional Schools in NJ provides a hotlist page regarding DI. http://www.frsd.k12.nj.us/rfmslibrary/di/differentiated_instruction.htm

ASCD-Association for Supervision and Curriculum – has a variety of information on DI. http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/index.jsp