Differentiation

=**Differentiation** =

Differentiation is arguably the most effective way to meet the needs of gifted students in the regular classroom. Even in schools where identified students are pulled out into specialised gifted programs they will still spend the majority of their time in a regular classrooms, so it is important that this time be productive and interesting for them too. Furthermore differentiation has the ability to benefit all students not just those at either end of the ability spectrum

Differentiation is essentially teaching at a variety of levels and in a variety of ways to have every student in the class working within their own Zone of Proximal Development. The first step in designing a differentiated curriculum must be to ascertain the current level of ability of every student,so that students can be flexibly grouped, differentiation is __not__ individualisation.

Differentiation can also be achieved by grouping according to interest rather than ability such differentiation can improve the motivation and engagement of learning’s in both the short and long term. It is recommended in many cases to let students choose their own course of action in a differentiated unit allowing the student to experience self determination.

The Tomlinson model (2001) of differentiation can occur via **content**, **process**, or **product**:

 * Content of curriculum comprises the ideas, the concepts and what information is presented to students. It can be altered completely or made more complex or just organised differently.


 * The process is the way in which the content is presented to students, i.e. what learning activities take place and what questions are asked. The process can be differentiated by altering the ‘level of thinking’ according to Bloom‛s taxonomy changing the pace or changing the approach


 * The Product is what the students produce (not to be confused with a summary of content). It should involve the high-level reasoning skills from Bloom’s tanonomy of analysing, evaluating and creating. The product of different students will always been different but that in of itself is not differentiating. To differentiate the product students need to be challenged to come up with multiple and creative solutions according to different requirements. Real world problems or real audiences are useful

Important Principles of a Differentiated Classroom
For clarity a differentiated classroom should:
 * **Be proactive rather than reactive** - planned in advance, rather than reacting to students for whom the lesson is not working on the spot.
 * **Use grouping effectively** - small groups of three of four students working together on similar material, and being taught as a group has been shown to be more effective than no grouping.
 * **Vary materials and resources** - more able students may need more comprehensive and difficult texts than weaker students.
 * **Use variable pacing** - allow students to work at their own pace. Usually this means gifted students will move through material more quickly than others.
 * **Be student-centred** - there should be ongoing formative assessment and a focus on students sense-making. Students should have a choice in the level of material they engage with.