Differentiation Scenarios

Ms. Miller’s 6th grade class is reading the book Tuck Everlasting. She knows the book is difficult for some of her students and doesn’t stretch some others, but she likes to have students read some novels together. Ms. Miller utilizes an interactive journal throughout the novel. She assigns different groups of students different prompts to which they must respond. All prompts deal with the same skill but some prompts are scaffolded more than others.

Mrs. Lupold and her 9th graders are studying the Industrial Revolution in the United States. She has developed a concept-based unit. At the end of the unit, students are developing an artifact that illustrates how key concepts and themes (change, scarcity and plenty, interdependence) were reflected throughout the Industrial Revolution unit. Students can express their findings through a research paper, models, creative writing, drama, music, and other formats

Ms. Estes pre-tests her students on spelling in September. Typically, she identifies both students who work with 2nd grade words and those who top out on an 8th grade list, as well as the range in between. She uses a spelling procedure that is the same for all students, but each student works on a particular list indicated by current spelling performance. She color-codes the lists rather than labeling them with grade equivalents

Mr. Grant often organizes whole-class volleyball games in his physical education classes so his students can learn to function as a team. At other times, he divides the class in half. At one end of the gym, students play a volleyball game. Mr. Grant asks different students to referee these games: students with leadership skills and students who are comfortable with the sport. At the other end of the gym, he assembles a group of students who need to perfect a common skill, such as setting the ball, spiking the ball, or receiving the ball without shrinking from it.

Students in a middle school science class are beginning to learn about the characteristics of mammals. The teacher assigns each student a mammal to investigate. For each mammal, the teacher provides a small box of books at varied reading levels. The teacher is differentiating content by

Students in a middle school science class are studying heat transfer. The teacher has designed various learning opportunities to explore the content using avenues such as cooking, engineering, etc. Students are allowed to choose the avenue in which they will explore heat transfer. This is an example of differentiating content by

Mr. Jacobs is teaching a lesson about capitalism. He provides his students with various methods of accessing the content (e.g. videos, graphic organizers, articles). Students choose the method in which they access content. This is an example of differentiation of content by