Getting Started on Differentiated Instructions

Carol Tomlinson talks in this video (and as I do in my introduction) about the importance of doing the first step while trying to work on differentiated instruction. She says that the important is not to start to perfection but just to start, because learning is a continuous process and with mistakes we learn how to improve and do better each and every day of our lives. With that being said, she considers that starting by analyzing your students, could be useful to start your differentiated instruction, taking weeks or lessons to analyze your students could be really useful at the beginning. You should try to identify which are their needs. If you don’t feel comfortable with this methodology, she offers the possibility of using a pre-assessment tool in which you must identify which are the concepts that students should know by now. So you can do this pre-assessment at the beginning of every unit and once you have done it several times you can see how you should start the next unit of the book or even you can ask yourself if you are going to use the book.

In this way she considers that little actions like taking your time with a group of students to see their level or just to re-teach something could be really useful for students. A useful thing to do with students could be to prepare different kinds of homework depending on the class level and while doing that paying attention to the students who need you the most. In that way you can join a group of 5-6 students and do with them low preparation activities and once a month try to work with the a more difficult activity to see where is their level at that moment. So once you do that you can see the results in a year and from that point the upcoming years seeing that you now have a guide to assess and attend the different needs in the class and that from a difficult methodology you now have an habit. As she says, education is not a sprint, is a marathon and you must work every day to get the results, little by little and never surrender. So differentiated instruction is not possible from one day to another but by being constant.