Teaching differentiated instruction in middle school classrooms

¶ … Ground

It is noted that if the middle school years are especially challenging for eleven to thirteen-year-olds and their parents then they certainly will be for teachers as well. What characteristics of this age group should you keep uppermost in mind and what general approaches to instruction should you seek to implement?

Middle school is a notoriously challenging life phase for children, and a notoriously difficult age range to teach. "There simply is no single learning template for the general middle school class" (Tomlinson 1995). Middle schoolers are poised on the brink of adolescence, but they are still children in many ways. The degree to which they are 'children' or 'teens' is often very individual-specific, and depends upon the physical, intellectual, and emotional stage of the child. A middle school teacher may have to cope with a classroom of children who are flirting with one another like teenagers, sitting alongside children who still play with toys. Girls often enter puberty sooner than boys, further complicating the teacher's instructional challenges. Students are struggling with the need for independence from their parents, fitting into a peer group with similar interests, hobbies, and clothing styles, as well as the fact that they may not yet be ready for the future-oriented challenges and responsibilities of being adolescents, just yet ("Development: Middle school and early high school," 1997, Puberty 101).

There is no single instructional strategy that can perfectly address such heterogeneous needs, as well as address the usual discrepancies in preparation, interests, ability levels, and learning styles. One instructional approach particularly helpful with middle school children is that of creating a differentiated class where a teacher may offer a variety of ways for students to explore the same areas of curriculum content, use different instructional strategies, and deploy different assessment techniques to make use of children's multiple intelligences (Tomlinson 1995).