Develop Your Staff
printer friendly >
Develop Your Staff Archive >
Professional development activities that have proven effective will be included in Develop Your Staff. Your contributions are welcome. Send them to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Differentiated Instruction in the Mixed-Ability Classroom. Part 2: Deliver the Workshop
In Part 1, I outlined the fundamentals of differentiated instruction: what it is, what it is not. Also listed were two resources for background reading—for you and for a group of teacher leaders willing to help facilitate the workshop.
Have you and the teacher facilitators read and discussed the literature? Read more >
If so, you’re ready to roll.
Agenda
1. Introduction
Use an icebreaker like “Interest and Skill Survey.” Read more.
Outline the workshop benefits for participants: what they will know, understand, and be able to do when the day’s work is done.
Preview the follow-up work: expectations for lesson planning and delivery, available resources, and ongoing support from you and building colleagues.
2. Overview of Workshop Packet
Present the fundamentals via transparency or PowerPoint slide (paper copies in packets, of course). Fundamentals should include “What Differentiated Instruction is NOT” and “Principles of a Differentiated Classroom.” Read more >
Preview the literature you’ve copied, including Differentiated Instruction: One District’s Journey >.
If you can buy each participant a copy of Carol Tomlinson’s The Differentiated Classroom, great! If not, try to purchase one copy per team or grade level. Point out the Checklist for Planning to use as follow-up. Read more >
3. Workshop Activity: Build Learning Tasks with Bloom’s Taxonomy
Teacher facilitators present examples from their own classrooms, outlining specific learning tasks that build thinking along a continuum of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Sample Tasks for Water Pollution
- Knowledge: Know the definition and list common pollutants
- Comprehension: Summarize main causes of pollution in water
- Application: Bring in samples of polluted water to investigate
- Analysis: Test for pollutants, comparing stream and pond water
- Synthesis: Formulate a plan to clean up polluted water
- Evaluation: Recommend procedures to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, with a list of costs vs. benefits.
Teacher facilitators work with breakout groups (teams, curriculum areas, grade levels) on the following:
Choose a lesson topic that can be used or adapted by every teacher in the group.
Brainstorm student tasks and/or work products along the continuum of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Chart the tasks on a transparency for presenting to the whole group.
Schedule a follow-up meeting of the work group to discuss application, problems, new ideas for differentiating, issues raised in the readings.
IMPORTANT: You and your administrative team should visit each meeting noting positive work to report back to large group.
4. Wrap-up
Ask a member of each breakout team to present their learning tasks to the large group. This is a good time to voice positive observations from your visits.
Inform staff of your intent to focus on elements of differentiation when reading lesson plans Click for more. Inform staff that you and/or a member of the administrative team will attend the follow-up meetings. Get a copy of the dates and times from teacher facilitators, and make attending the meetings a HIGH PRIORITY.
Thank teacher facilitators (remember, it’s not easy to take a leadership role with your peers) and write them a letter of appreciation.
