The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners

This book offers a solution to teachers who work with students of diverse backgrounds, readiness and skill levels, and interests. The book describes a way of thinking about teaching and learning called differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction means that teachers begin where students are rather than the front of a curriculum guide, and they accept and build upon the premise that learners differ in important ways. The 10 chapters focus on the following: (1) "What is a Differentiated Classroom?" (2) "Elements of Differentiation," (3) "Rethinking How We Do School--and for Whom," (4) "Learning Environments that Support Differentiated Instruction," (5) "Good Instruction as a Basis for Differentiated Teaching," (6) "Teachers at Work Building Differentiated Classrooms," (7)"Instructional Strategies that Support Differentiation," (8) "More Instructional Strategies to Support Differentiation," (9) "How Do Teachers Make it all Work?" and (10) "When Educational Leaders Seek Differentiated Classrooms." Three of the chapters describe actual lessons, units, and classrooms with differentiated instruction in action, examining elementary and secondary classrooms in nearly all subject areas to show how real teachers turn the challenge of differentiation into a reality. An appendix presents two models to guide differentiated instruction. (Contains 84 references.) (SM)