Page 22 - Learning for All – A Guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12, 2013

20 • Learning for All
Differentiated Instruction: Guiding Questions and Checklist
To check that assessment and instruction are varied to:
• suit diverse learning styles and preferences;
• engage students with diverse interests;
• support students who are at different stages in their readiness to learn
and provide scaffolding, emotional support, and opportunity for practice.
Guiding questions
• How can I set up the classroom to support differentiated instruction?
• What elements of the learning environment can I differentiate to help all
of my students learn?
• How can I differentiate the ways in which I help students learn new concepts?
• What sorts of questions can I pose in order to stimulate thinking among all
of my students?
• How can I differentiate the strategies and tools I use to assess students’
progress towards their learning goals in a way that enables each student to demonstrate his or her learning?8
A checklist to guide classroom practice
DIFFERENTIATE CONTENT
❏❏ Vary content (e.g., provide content at different levels of difficulty; enable students to extend knowledge and skills) to suit student readiness, interests, motivational needs, and learning styles.
❏❏ Unpack the big ideas of the curriculum to create achievable learning goals.
❏❏ Introduce new learning and pose open questions as appropriate to the
student’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). DIFFERENTIATE PROCESS
❏❏ Use various assessment strategies to match students’ strengths, learning style preferences, interests, and readiness.
❏❏ Use various types of learning activities and various grouping strategies to draw on students’ strengths and provide support in areas that need improvement.
❏❏ Use a variety of instructional and management strategies that engage all modalities.
❏❏ Provide students with opportunities to choose from an array of activities and projects that involve differentiated processes.
❏❏ Monitor students’ response to the differentiated strategies used, and assess their progress on a regular basis.
❏❏ Provide the accommodations and/or modifications that are specified in the IEPs of students who have special education needs.
(continued)
8. Adapted from Differentiated Instruction Educator’s Guide: Getting to the core of teaching and learning (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007).