21st Century Strands & Strategies
Chapter: Strands & Strategies: Deep Dive
22
Differentiated Instruction
Differentiation is a teacher’s response
to students’ needs, guided by general
principles of differentiation such as
respectful tasks, flexible grouping and
on-going assessment and adjustment.
“Differentiated Instruction is responsive
teaching rather than one size fits all
teaching. To increase student
achievement, educators proactively
plan varied approaches aligned to
what students need to learn, how they will learn, and how they will show what they
have learned.”
Watch the video below to see how a new teacher uses differentiated instruction to
engage her students in a chemistry lesson.
Source: The TeachingChannel
The Five Tenets of Differentiated Instruction differentiated instruction help teachers
focus, “accept and build upon the promise that learners differ in important ways”
(Tomlinson, The Differentiated Learner, 2004, p. 2). These five tenets, along with the way
teachers adjust content, process and product in response to student readiness, interest
and learning profile are the foundational pieces of a differentiated classroom.
