Differentiated Content: Complexity, Resources, and Environment Differentiated

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 students learn best visually.

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 studying for visual learners or providing toys in a corner that reinforce mathematical concepts for kinesthetic learners.

In my own classroom, I try to differentiate content by introducing the same subject in a variety of ways, to stimulate student interest. For example, when teaching multiplication tables, I might have students go through flashcards, to reinforce the memorization of the times tables. This can be helpful for verbal learners. For mathematical learners, I explain the concept of what the multiplication tables mean, in terms of multiplying groups of items.

For visual learners I like to demonstrate how different groups of items are multiplied, connecting the times tables to visual pictures. All of these differentiated methods are important for all learners, given that they ensure students understand the concept behind the process, but different students, depending upon their learning orientation, might respond to specific approaches with greater enthusiasm. Regarding differentiation by complexity, students with additional challenges may have outside support to help them learn the material the rest of the class is covering.