Differentiating for all LEarners: Ideas for TWIN-CS Members

How do we best provide differentiated instruction to our students? Veteran teacher Larry Ferlazzo explains that for some educators differentiated instruction may be seen as “having to create a different lesson for every student in the room, and long nights of planning and grading,” but in his video for EdWeek, “Differentiating Instruction: It’s Not as Hard as You Think,” he dispels those very fears by offering practical solutions for the classroom.

Mr. Ferlazzo explains that differentiating instruction is “a way of thinking, not a preplanned list of strategies.”  Often this instruction requires educators to make decisions in the moment “based on this mindset” of thinking about differentiated instruction.

Differentiating instruction recognizes that “all of our students bring different gifts and challenges.” t is our duty as educators “to recognize those differences and use our professional judgement to flexibly respond to them in our teaching.”

Using a concept from Carol Tomlinson, an American educator and author of The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, Mr. Ferlazzo explains that he differentiates his instruction in three areas: content, process, and product. In the video, he describes how he uses these guidelines in his classroom in practical and noticeably productive ways.

This video is part of a developing multi-video series by Mr. Ferlazzo and fellow teacher Katie Hull-Sypnieski.

Please watch this 5 minute video and share how you differentiate instruction in your classroom!

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

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TWIN-CS

TWIN-CS advances the Catholic tradition of academic excellence by empowering Catholic schools to systematically transform from a monolingual to multilingual educational model in the service of vibrant culturally diverse populations.

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