Differentiated Instruction is the philosophy that enables teachers to plan strategies in order to reach the needs of the diverse learners in the classrooms of today. It is not a set of tools but a philosophy that a teacher embraces to reach the unique needs of every learner.
Differentiated Instruction meets students where they are and offers challenging, appropriate options for them in order to achieve success.
At the most basic level, differentiating instruction means “shaking up” what goes on in the classroom so that students have multiple options for taking in information, making sense of ideas, and expressing what they learn. In other words, a differentiated classroom provides different avenues for acquiring content, processing or making sense of ideas, and developing products.
What we call differentiation is not a recipe for teaching. It is a way of thinking about teaching and learning and is based on the following beliefs.
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Students who are the same age differ in readiness to learn, their interests, their styles of learning, their experiences, and their life circumstances.
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The differences in students are significant enough to make a major impact on what students need to learn, the pace at which they will learn it, and the support they need from teachers and others to learn well.
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Students will learn best when supportive adults push them slightly beyond where they can work without assistance.
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Students will learn best when they can make a connection between the curriculum and their interests and life experiences.
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Students will learn best when learning opportunities are natural.
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Students are more effective learners when classrooms and schools create a sense of community in which students feel significant and respected.
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The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.
When a teacher tries to teach something to the entire class at the same time, “chances are, one-third of the kids already know it; one-third will get it; and one-third won’t. So, two-thirds of the children are wasting their time.”
-Lilian Katz, Professor Emerita of Early Childhood
Education at the University of Illinois
© North Carolina Teacher Academy

The teacher is clear about what matters in the curriculum
No one can learn everything in a textbook or in a single subject. Because the brain is structured to forget more than can be remembered about a topic, it is important for teachers to fashion instruction around the essential concepts, principles and skills of each subject.
The teacher understands, appreciates, and builds upon student differences.
Our experiences, culture, gender, genetic codes, and neurological wiring all effect how we learn and what we learn. The teacher unconditionally accepts students as they are and expects them to become all they can be.
Assessment and instruction are inseparable.
In the differentiated classroom, assessment is ongoing and diagnostic. Teachers do not see assessment as something that comes at the end of the day or the end of the unit to find out what students have learned; rather, assessment is today’s means of understanding how to modify tomorrow’s instruction.
The teacher adjusts content, process, and product in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile.
Content is what the teacher wants the students to learn and the mechanisms to accomplish that. Process describes activities designed to ensure students use key skills to make sense out of essential information.
Products are vehicles through which the students demonstrate and extend what they may have learned.
All students participate in ‘respectful” work… engaging, relevant, challenging, neither frustrating nor boring.
In the differentiated classroom, the teacher does not show respect for students by ignoring their learning differences. She/he continually strives to understand what individuals need to learn most effectively and attempts to provide learning opportunities that are a good fit for each learner.
Students and teachers are collaborators of learning.
Teachers are the chief architects of learning; students should assist with the design and building. The teacher is the leader who attends closely to her/his followers and involves them thoroughly in the journey.
Goals are maximum growth and continued success.
The teacher’s job is to help each student be the best that he or she possibly can be. No weakness in understanding or skill is overlooked. There is no such thing as “good enough”
Flexibility is the hallmark of the classroom.
The teacher draws on a variety of instructional strategies that help focus on individuals and small groups, not just the whole class. The teacher and students work together in a variety of ways. They use materials flexibly and employ flexible pacing.
© North Carolina Teacher Academy

 a new idea or an instructional strategy.
 what a teacher does when she or he has time.
 individualized instruction.
 tests at the end of a chapter to see “who got it”
 fragmented teaching of unrelated ideas.
 “one size fits all” instruction.
 giving some students “watered down” tasks and others more of the same work to do.
 a way to track students or make homogeneous groups.
 every student completing the same work at the same time in the same way.
 tied to a text or directed by text.
 prescriptive, imposing on specific model of teaching on all.
 merely more work for the “gifted” students and shorter assignments for the struggling students.
“ In differentiated classrooms teachers begin where students are, not the front of the curriculum guide.”
“Teachers in differentiated classrooms are students of their students.
-Carol Ann Tomlinson
© North Carolina Teacher Academy