At the Orchard School in Indianapolis, teachers are exploring new ways to meet the needs of their learners. I spent a day with the middle school teachers to explore ways to incorporate Differentiation into their practice. They are passionate about growth for their students, examining the whole child because they recognize that many factors influence the pathways for learners to find academic success.
Common Language
During our time together, we built on the theme of building common language for Intentional Differentiation through several structured dialogs and activities to unpack what does it mean and look like to be data-informed when planning lessons using differentiation. Anchored by six elements for Differentiation as established by notable professionals, Carol Ann Tomlinson and Susan Allan, Readiness, Interests, Learning Preferences, and Content, Process, Products, the teachers used the language to examine their lessons and the needs of their students.
Effective communication between peers and with administration for shared support begins with adopting a common definition for Differentiation. Lorna M. Earl, author of “Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximize Student Learning”, wrote:
“Differentiation is making sure that the right students get the right learning tasks at the right time. Once you have a sense of what each student holds as ‘given’ or ‘known’ and what he or she needs in order to learn, differentiation is no longer an option; it is an obvious response.”
This data-focused definition includes a sense of professional accountability. It reminds us educators that with knowledge about our learners’ needs, “it is an obvious response” for us to act on their behalf.
Differentiating with Intention
When preparing to differentiate with intention, there are at least three containers of information about students that help us during planning: Academics, Interests, and Lived Experiences.
Academics
For educators, we are most informed with this practice of collecting, evaluating, reflecting, and synthesizing achievement information. Tracking progress and gaps in learning is what we’re trained to look for. The processes and effectiveness of understanding and unpacking academic data is dependent on what further training and team structures are implemented in any given institution. At the end of the day, this data helps point to what learners may need to progress.
Interests
This category has lots of nuances for leveraging in lesson planning to support learners. The broad picture is for educators to learn about what students are “curious” about. Interests is not necessarily what they know about (think “lived experiences”). It’s about what topics they are interested in exploring to learn new ideas from the basics to the more complex. Someone who is interested in painting or basketball is more likely to be motivated to study concepts for math or literature if connections are made to their respective interests. Also, using interests to build understanding and skills for an academic topic is the next level.
Lived Experiences
I used to call this category, “Student Community.” Lived experiences exist within one’s neighborhood and home. It’s also represented in where else they go, meet, and explore inside and beyond their community. Similar to the Interest category, this data helps grow understanding and value of academic concepts and skills that are reflected in their lives.
Scaffolds and adaptations to activities in lessons that intentionally factor all three of these categories can lead to interesting learning experiences where students may find context to engage in dialog and reflection.
Exploring Paths
The Orchard School staff took these ideas to heart by evidence of their thoughtful work during the workshop to ask and explore questions about practice and to use independent work time to revise and hone lessons. They made adaptations to lesson step activities based on what they knew were going to be academic needs by students.
They used a provided planning guide and a collection of AI prompts intended to support Intentional Differentiation to aid their development work. The workshop is structured to be experiential where the teachers engage in differentiated activities, which they later unpack from an educator perspective.
By the end of the day, the teachers took with them a wide variety of resources and the lessons that they revised specific activities to have a greater impact. Later in the fall, I have the honor of following up with them to learn about the next steps on their journey with Intentional Differentiation, along with Myla Lee who works with a different group of teachers. I’m excited to learn about their experiences with learners and supporting them based on where they are at that moment. Differentiated Instruction is a journey that contains many destinations along the way depending on where focus is placed.
Some resources from the workshop are shared in the comment added below.
Resources
- Planning resources: https://openingpaths.org/resources/di/
- Collection of articles (several published at Edutopia): https://openingpaths.org/resources/di/
- A Practical Guide to Planning for Intentional Differentiation via Edutopia
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