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More on differentiated lesson planning...

The text How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms (Tomlinson) was recommended to me a few weeks ago. I have to say, as a full-time college student, mentor, employee, and fiancé who is ecstatically planning a wedding, I don’t have a lot of extra time for reading. But something stuck out about this text…and I ordered it.
After reading two chapters I’ve been recommending this book to every teacher/teacher candidate I know. It’s a great tool to have.
I believe that too often, we hear differentiated lesson planning and get this image in our minds of one teacher and 25 different students, each requiring a different method of teaching and the overwhelming impossibilities that are in our minds are burned there are they just get worse and worse over time.
The bottom line is that every student is different; each individual in your classroom will take in the information you give in a different way. This is inevitable. So where do you start?
According to Tomlinson, the very first thing you have to do is identify the needs of the below average student as well as the above average student. This is your range. Identifying this range can come from assessments, but also from observations, looking at a student’s previous work, talking wit the student, etc… By knowing this range and understand it, you will be less likely to teach above or below your student’s level. If you have a gifted learner and their mind is never challenged, what happens to their potential? If you have a student who struggles and you are constantly reminding that student that he/she is struggling, how will they ever succeed?
When you’re teaching a lesson, you focus should be ‘how can I connect what this student already knows with the new information?’
You have to know your students; they don’t come with manuals. You have to be aware when Jaime can’t understand you because school is the only place that he hears English, or how confused Erik is because he only understands the story if someone else is reading it, or how peaceful school is for Sarah because it’s the only setting that allows her to escape the abuse at home.
If you don’t know your students, how will you reach them? If you can’t reach them, how will you engage them? If their brain is not engaged in learning, how will learning take place?