Differentiated Content: Complexity, Resources, And Environment
Differentiated instruction through complexity relates to providing different levels of difficulty in the material used by to students, based upon their needs and abilities. In teaching a differentiated math class, for students on a very low level, doing drills or exercises that teach them the basic mechanics of doing fractions might be appropriate, for example. Higher-level students might have exercises with more complex problems, and gifted students might engage with word problems or even create their own mathematical problems using the concept. All students are learning about the same subject area, but in a manner which addresses their different levels of ability and levels of preparedness.
As well as different levels of ability, the principles of differentiation also acknowledge that students have different kinds of 'intelligences' through using different resources. Some students learn best kinesthetically while other...
For students who are visual learners, incorporating charts, pictures, and other graphics into a lecture on civics can be useful; for kinesthetic learners getting students to move around the classroom or incorporating field trips into the syllabus to get them excited about learning American history can be helpful. Ideally, in a differentiated classroom, multiple resources are deployed to fully engage students.
A differentiated environment may require that students to learn slightly different things at different times. Breaking up the class into reading group levels enables some students to work at their desk while teachers engage with one of the groups. The classroom environment may be designed to create 'separate areas' for such individualized and cooperative learning. The environment can also be designed to engage students with different kinds of intelligences, such as having maps hung all over the walls illustrating the period of history the class is…
