How do you differentiate lesson plans?

2 Why differentiate?

Differentiation is beneficial for both students and teachers. For students, differentiation can increase their engagement, motivation, confidence, and achievement by allowing them to work at their own pace, explore their interests, express their creativity, and demonstrate their understanding in different ways. For teachers, differentiation can make teaching more rewarding, satisfying, and fun by allowing them to tap into their students' strengths, passions, and needs, and by fostering a positive and collaborative classroom culture.

3 How to differentiate content?

Content refers to the information, concepts, and skills that you want your students to learn. You can differentiate content by varying the level of difficulty, complexity, and depth of the material, as well as the sources, resources, and materials that you use to deliver it. For example, pre-assessing your students' prior knowledge and readiness and grouping them accordingly can be beneficial. Additionally, providing different texts, videos, podcasts, or websites at different reading levels or formats can be useful. Offering different types of scaffolding such as graphic organizers, outlines, or vocabulary lists can also support comprehension and retention. Furthermore, allowing students to choose their own topics or subtopics of interest within a broader theme or unit is an option. Finally, using tiered assignments or tasks that have different levels of challenge or complexity but share the same learning objective is another way to differentiate content.

4 How to differentiate process?

Process refers to the activities, strategies, and methods used to help students learn and practice the content. Flexible grouping strategies, such as homogeneous, heterogeneous, or mixed-ability groups can be employed depending on the purpose and goal of the activity. Different options for students to access and interact with the content can also be provided, such as direct instruction, inquiry-based learning, cooperative learning, or independent learning. Incorporating different learning styles and preferences into teaching methods and materials, giving students choices and voice in how they learn and practice the content, as well as differentiating the amount and type of guidance, modeling, questioning, and feedback given to each student or group based on their needs and progress can all help to differentiate process.

5 How to differentiate product?

Product refers to the outcomes, assessments, and evidence that you use to measure and evaluate your students' learning and understanding of the content. Differentiating product can be achieved by varying the criteria, format, and audience of the assessment, as well as the opportunities and resources that you provide for students to demonstrate their learning. For instance, using rubrics, checklists, or scoring guides that clearly define expectations and standards for each product; providing different options for students to show what they know and can do; allowing students to choose their own product format, topic, or audience; offering different types of support like peer review or teacher feedback; and providing multiple opportunities for students to showcase and celebrate their products.