Differentiated Instruction Analysis

When a teacher alters the way they present a lesson or adjusts an assignment or activity for specific students, they are differentiating their instruction. Re-teaching a lesson also offers a way to differentiate instruction because when you re-teach, a teacher will use a different technique and differing examples to teach the same content that was taught before in an attempt to reach those students more successfully. In order to appropriately differentiate instruction in the classroom, a teacher must pay attention to three student characteristics, which Tomlinson (2001) has identified as: readiness, interest, and learning profiles. Student readiness refers to how much background knowledge a student has relating to a specific topic. Student

There being many benefits to this type of instruction, one of them is that it helps the teachers to address the learning needs of each and every student. This is able to be done by targeting the student characteristics that we discussed earlier that Tomlinson has identified (readiness, interest, and learning profile). When wanting to plan for differentiated instruction, knowing your students' interests and dominant learning styles can permit the teacher to plan learning lessons and activities that categorically target what students would like to learn and how they learn best (Servilio, 2009). When teachers are able to target and teach to the students' readiness level, they can accommodate a student who has mastered the lesson content and is ready to be challenged and similarly for a student who is struggling with the lesson content and is in need of a modified lesson that will guide them in mastering the content. Once a need is identified, the teacher should respond by finding a method or a solution to answer the need that has been presented in order for all their students to be successful in learning (VanSciver, 2005). As

Tomlinson (2001) has referenced the work of Bess and Brandt, in which they declared "Two powerful and related motivators for engagement are student interest and student choice". Looking into ways in which to engage students, one way is to find content in which they demonstrate an interest. When a student is passionate about a specific topic, they are more likely to participate and engage directly in the learning that is to be done (Tomlinson, 2001). Another way that could be used to capture students interest into a lesson is by presenting a choice in the learning activities they are to