Educational Buzzwords...D: Differentiated Instruction

I am a member of the PD (professional development) committee. The summer before last, three of us and our principal went to the SDE National DI Conference it was in Chicago at the time (now it's in Las Vegas) and we spent a wonderful time eating, and learning, and discussing the awesomeness that is differentiated instruction.

What is DI?

1. Differentiated instruction is a way to reach students with different learning styles, different abilities to absorb information and different ways of expressing what they have learned.

Ways to differentiate...

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We went to the conference to gather ideas about how to incorporate differentiation in our school and we spent quite a bit of time breaking down what we learned into presentations during faculty meetings throughout the school year. We then had four in-depth after-school sessions to fill in the gaps.

Faculty Meeting PDFs
DI #1
DI #2
DI #3
DI #4
DI #5
DI #6
DI #7

Below you will find short explanations of each session with links to PDFs of the slides. If you would like to learn more or would like those slides, just give me a holler at smj274@gmail.com and I can email full size flipcharts or PDFs...it just wouldn't feel right selling them as most of the graphics and none of the ideas are originally ours. Enjoy!

Session 1

Learning and the Learning Environment. Who are you as a learner? How do you learn? Use these as a basis for our to differentiation.

Session 2

Tiered Lessons and their use in the workshop model. We use Cris Tovani's Catch and Release model and catch and release through entrance and exit slips.

Session 3

What is the flow of instruction in a DI classroom? How do you incorporate all of the...stuff? How does one go about adjusting assignments? How does one use flexible grouping effectively?

Session 4

Homework and Assessment...can I can use DI during my assessments? If so, how? What is your grading philosophy?