Differentiated instruction

This theory is related with the child-centered approach, where the students are directly involved and invested in the discovery of their own knowledge and education. The main point is that learners are the focus and, in that way, they become fully engaged in the learning acquired process. How we can do that? Asking questions and leading students to solutions nurtures student's natural curiosity. 

To achieve the child-centered approach in the classroom we need to meet the individual needs of all students, and that is the differentiated instruction.

As a teacher we should work to accommodate and build on student’s diverse learning needs. The better way to deal with student’s difference as Carole Anne Tomlinson said in an interview, is “keeping kids together in the context of high-quality curriculum but attending to their readiness needs, their interests, and their preferred ways of learning”.

To obtain a well-run differentiated classroom there are three hallmarks to be taken into account:

• Teacher-student connections (active relationship between teacher and student).

• A sense of community in the classroom (kids have to understand and appreciate their differences).

• The quality of the curriculum being used (give kids the most robust materials seeing them capable of learning)

We must be clear that achieving the differentiated instruction in a classroom is not an easy practice because may be in one day we have five or six classes, but it is not impossible. There are some techniques that help teachers to know what students needs are. For example, to keep a kind of diary where noted things they learn about kids. It’s also a good way give students periodic surveys asking them about what they particularly liked and what they found particularly difficult.

Finally I want to record a phrase from Carole Anne Tomlinson interview that really defined the main goal of a teacher:

“Let's assume students can all do good work, and let's attend to the ways that they need us to teach them in order to get there”.

Here I am attaching a video where you can see the differentiated instruction in a school: