DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION:
OVERVIEW
DIFFERENTIATING CONTENT, PROCESS AND PRODUCT Back

Strategies for Differentiating Content

  • Concept-Based Teaching
  • Curriculum Compacting
  • Learning Contracts
  • Minilessons
  • Using Varied Text and Resource Materials
  • Varied Support Systems
    • Audio/Visual Recorders
    • Note-taking Organizers
    • Highlighted Print Materials
    • Digest of Key Ideas
    • Peer and Adult Mentors

Strategies That Support Differentiated Processing

  • Complex Instruction
  • Concept Attainment
  • Cubing
  • Independent Study
  • Interactive Journals
  • Interest Groups
  • Multiple Intelligences
  • Varied Graphic Organizers

Differentiating Products for Struggling Learners

  • Integrate skills and goals from IEPs
  • Allow students to express themselves in ways other than written language
  • Give assignments in smaller increments
  • Record directions on tape
  • Help students prepare timelines for product work
    Offer miniworkshops on particular product skills (note-taking, conducting interviews, drawing conclusions, editing)
  • Help students find appropriate resources
  • Provide templates or organizers for each step of the research process
  • Review the big picture of the product
  • Show students models of effective products from past years
  • Provide resources in ELL students' primary language

Differentiating Product Assignments for Advanced Learners

  • Have students study key issues across time periods, disciplines or cultures
  • Provide advanced-level resources
  • Encourage students to use primary sources and original documents
  • Allow students to work on long-term, ongoing assignments when they compact out of class work
  • Allow students work with professional mentors

Product Possibilities

Be a mentor
Build a planetarium
Choreograph dances
Collect and analyze samples
Compile a booklet or brochure
Compile a newspaper
Compile and annotate a set of Internet resources
Conduct a debate
Conduct a series of interviews
Conduct a training session
Create a public service announcement
Create a series of illustrations
Create a series of wall hangings
Create a subject dictionary
Create authentic recipes
Design a game
Design a new product
Design a simulation
Design a structure
Design a web page
Design and conduct an experiment
Design and create needlework
 Design and make costumes
Design and teach a class
Design or create musical instruments
Design political cartoons
Develop a collection
Develop a museum exhibit
Develop a solution to a community problem
Develop an advertising campaign
Develop an exhibit
Develop and use a questionnaire
Develop tools
Do a demonstration
Do a puppet show
Draw a set of blueprints
Formulate and defend a theory
Generate and circulate a petition
Generate charts or diagrams to explain ideas
Go on an archaeological dig
Hold a press conference
Interpret through multimedia
Lead a symposium
 Make a plan
Make a video documentary
Make an etching or a wood cut
Make and carry out a plan
Make learning centers
Plan a journey or an odyssey
Present a mine
Present a mock trial
Present a news report
Present a photo-essay
Present a radio program
Present an interior monologue
Submit writings to a journal, magazine or newspaper
Write a biography
Write a book
Write a musical
Write a new law and plan for its passage
Write a series of letters
Write a series of songs
Write letters to the editor
Write or produce a play
Write poems